Happy birthday, Rainbow. I would be with you if I could.
She blew out the candle, thought about making a wish, but didn’t. Asking would jinx it.
It took everything she had not to jump in the truck and go to her, scoop her up in her arms and take her away, the way Matilda-Jane had disappeared her into the Outback in that goddamn white van.
A familiar truck engine outside jarred her back into the present. Nev knocked on the front door, whistling, carrying an esky. “Happy days.” Nev hung her Akubra on the hat tree and toed off her boots on the mat inside the door.
“You’re in a good mood.”
She watched Nev stack frozen packs of lamb and mutton from last year in Reg’s freezer like bricks. Nev must be clearing out to make space at home, and that was why she was whistling. A new batch was coming to fill the freezers at Upsend Downs. She must have deposited a fat check that morning, hence the whistling.
Yesterday, Upsend Downs had sent eighteen hundred lambs and two hundred ewes to slaughter—the fruit of a year’s labor. Nev and Kazi had driven them on horseback to a neighboring farm to be butchered. Ronnie was a little disappointed that she had missed it.
“How did it go?” she asked. Droving days were her favorite.
“No problems,” Nev said, pulling groceries out of the cooler she had brought. “I came to cheer you ladies up.”
Nev slowly covered Blaise’s kitchen counter with produce, then proceeded to cook snails and amuse bouches, new potatoes, carrots, lambchops, rocket and toasted pecan salad.
For dessert she made lemon custard tartlets with strawberries and crème brulée. Nev ate the green tops of thestrawberries. While she cooked, she sang along to Madonna’s “Material Girl” in a gravely alto with perfect pitch. She had brought three wines that paired with the courses. A French country dinner party.
Ronnie had no appetite, but kept her company while she cooked. The spread on the dining table after Nev plated all the courses looked like something out of a magazine.
Reg took Nev’s picture before shaking her hand. “Mate. I know this isn’t for me, but I’m thanking you anyway.”
“You’re welcome.” Nev dug in, serving herself.
Afterwards, telly blaring in the family room, joeys wrapped in warm bath towels sucking bottles of milk on everyone’s laps except Ronnie’s, she accepted the steaming mug of tea from Blaise with a grateful, “Thanks, mum.” The word sounded twee from her mouth, but “step-mum” was too formal.
Reg grinned. He noticed that shit. She did it for him.
Nev perched on the arm of the couch. She scratched Nev’s back through the thin flannel.
After a while Nev stood behind her and massaged the tight muscles at the base of her neck. She closed her eyes. Another birthday in the books. On days like this it was tempting to be cynical, to lose hope.
The state had tried to sever the maternal bond.
But it had failed.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket. An email from the lawyer, originally from Maude and forwarded. “It’s here,” she said. “The list of conditions from Maude.”
Reg and Blaise crowded around her to read it over her shoulder.
a. Do the social worker’s home visit at your parents’ house
b. My parents want to have a chat with your parents
c. I need to meet Nev. My parents want to see the farm.
Within minutes, Reg called a social worker to schedule a home visit, Blaise called Maude’s mother, and Nev was on the phone with the lawyer, talking over the logistics of what a supervised visit from Maude and her parents would entail.
When Ronnie woke from a nap, sunlight on the wall was warmer, golder, and her dad played folk songs from the sixties and seventies on guitar on the back veranda with Nev—Phil Ochs, “There But for Fortune,” and Gale Garnett, “We’ll Sing in the Sunshine.”
She listened for a while, then walked to the kitchen to fix herself a plate of leftover lamb.
She walked out onto the veranda, sat across from her dad and Nev. They had been smoking cigars and drinking whiskey.
Cold slices of roast lamb were delicious.
