She hadn’t had a business partner since her father died.
She missed Emil. Missed his threadbare slippers and bathrobe, his old man smell, missed the way he looked at her and saw a child, missed being known. Missed the woman he had thought she was. Missed being his daughter.
She missed having a business partner. Making money multiply wasn’t her forte. She invested in things that died. She’d rather run a bloody charity.
The question was, could Ron manage money?
She went back in. Ron put down her phone.
Nev perched on the edge of the couch, spread her knees, tented her fingers. “I’ll make you a deal. If we don’t get any of those fat checks, I won’t go next year.”
“Deal,” Ron said.
Her guilt about burdening Ron with this boring adult problem lightened somewhat the next morning when she woke to find pomegranates in all the shoes: wedged deep inside the wellies under the bench in the mudroom, nestled in her sheepskin slippers under the bed, bowing out the sides of the white trainers by the back door, even plugging every last one of her dad’s cowboy boots in the guest bedroom closet.
She hadn’t gotten around to cleaning out that closet yet; it still smelled like Emil. The big man had small tastes. When he found something he liked he stuck with it. When she was younger she had dismissed that about him, written it off as a quirk, a fatal lack of creativity, but as she grew older she had come to admire him for it, even emulate him. Imitation was the highest praise.
He had left behind three pairs of black bootcut jeans and jackaroo boots, never worn, size Ron. Nev shook out a pair of pants, held them up to the window. She went to the kitchen, put the pants and boots on a chair for Ron. Then she finished packing her suitcase.
19
CRAMPS
Ronnie’s drive home from footy practice in Edmonton felt longer than usual. She leaned out the window of the Ford to let the air cool her face. Up on the Tablelands, night air was chilly and humid. Judging by the mottled patterns on the road and the occasional sparkle of headlights on the pavement, it had sprinkled while she was at footy practice. Rain brought a familiar smell up from the clay.
In the middle of April, autumn, the night sky over Tinaroo’s hills left a pale blue glow above the mountains. On the western horizon a dark line of clouds hung low, forming a shredded purple terrace that could have been a flock of cranes.
She had been feeling gross all day with period cramps. On Saturday her team had played and won their first match of the season: Round 1. She hadn’t felt good then, either, but she had powered through and scored twice.
Cyclone season was officially over, and Nev had returned from Kigali—two more reasons to celebrate.
Her sports bag rode in the passenger’s seat. She liked dog-sitting Gaia and Blair, and liked sleeping in Stone House, but looked forward to camping in her tent tonight so she could wake up to birdsong.
When Nev was gone the house didn’t feel empty; the fridge still held the same half-full condiments and glass pitcher of iced tea, the bedsheets still smelled like cigar smoke and vermouth.
Physical therapy that morning in Atherton had gone well. The left wrist couldn’t extend or flex as far as the right one but the range of motion was improving.
She reached the turnoff for Boar Pocket Road and turned right.
She passed Nev’s drive on the right. A few minutes later she slowed down, signaling left, and turned left down toward the creek. Car tracks led downhill. She hugged the road back in the direction she had come. For a few minutes she drove towards Nev’s house. Then she peeled away from the road and downhill to the right toward the trees and the creek. Gum trees. Dark forest.
A clearing appeared, then her campsite. She was fond of it, even proud of it. A blue tent sat under a grey tarp that she had strung on paracord between four trees. She parked her truck beside a barbeque and a circle of stones. The dogs jumped down, sprinted into the dark, chasing the scent of brush turkey, nosing among dead eucalyptus leaves for fresh pademelon scat.
An iron tripod stood over the ashes of her fire pit. Hanging from the tripod was a shiny tin can billy. The heart of the home was the kitchen, and the heart of the kitchen was the kettle.
The American turtle research intern she jokingly called her “karaoke boyfriend” because she sometimes hooked up with him behind the pub on Wednesdays had disappeared, unexpectedly flying home to the US without saying goodbye. She didn’t miss him exactly, but she hoped he was all right.
She picked a newspaper from the pile, crumpled a page at a time, then tossed the balls into the center of the firepit. The headlines were about the banana blight. She arranged a circle of sticks in a cone shape around the newspaper, then lit the paperwith a lighter. She added progressively larger sticks until the fire was big enough that she could add logs.
The fire cracked and popped. She fetched two spicy snags from the esky in the bed of her truck, speared them with sharp sticks and roasted them. Being alone did not bother her. She wasn’t afraid of the dark, or the outdoors. Nothing bad had ever happened to her when she was camping.
Five months until the custody hearing.
Five months until try-outs for the Brisbane Lions.
The next morning, she was still on her period and cramping worse than usual as she helped Nev replace the roof of the screen house down by the creek. She volunteered to go up on the roof. She always volunteered for the dangerous jobs, because she liked them. A cramp forced her to stop nailing plywood to rafters with the nail gun to wait for it to pass. It didn’t, so she drank water. On one of the ladders, Nev paused with a hammer poised in mid-air. “Dain’y? If you’re feeling unwell, get down.”
“Cramps.” Ronnie climbed down the other ladder and took an ibuprofen, then climbed back up the ladder, continued nailing plywood to rafters with the nail gun. Her boss, who excelled at detail work, carefully nailed a thin strip of metal flashing around the bottom edge of the roof.
