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Another option was picking up an international backpacker who was in town to pick fruit in the apple orchards. Or maybe a shearer passing through on a shearing contract. Perhaps a fruit picker from Europe who happened to be a prince or something and we lived happily ever after in his overseas kingdom.
“Too easy,” I snorted as Marc Bolan faded out and Neil Diamond began to croon about his sweet Caroline.
Half of the problem with meeting a guy, let alone dating them, was doing so without Ryan threatening their life if they so much as said hello.
“The other half of the problem is me,” I sighed, easing on the brakes, spotting an old ute parked up ahead.
In any other place, I wouldn’t have bothered to stop and check, but this paddock was sacred, in a way. Taboo.
I parked behind and got out.
Nobody came here, except my family. Everyone on Turner’s Creek Road respected that.
I didn’t recognise the ute. Maybe Ryan had a loaner car from the garage where he worked. If it was him, I didn’t want to interrupt. Maybe he wanted to be alone at the place where a fire had drastically changed our lives ten years ago.
Where our father had died. Where I’d almost died with him.
Or, maybe something was wrong.
I strode to the rusty gate, giving only the slightest resistance as I pushed it open to investigate.
Dad would still be alive if we hadn’t moved out of our heritage-listed homestead and into the 1960s-era farmworker’s house four days before a bushfire flared and razed it to the ground, ripping apart our lives.
The fenced yard was overgrown with weeds and grass. Any plant that still had leaves was wilted and curled from last night’s early frost. Soon, everything that was green would die off for winter. The only thing left of the farmworker’s house were four concrete stumps, visible from the road like standing stones or, more accurately, tombstones.
I couldn’t see Ryan anywhere. I stood where the front steps of the house used to be and then I spoke to the wind, hoping it would take my words to my father, wherever he was.
“Hi Dad,” I whispered. “I hope you are here.”
My little sister Lily once told me she thought the wind in the trees meant Dad was listening. She’d been thirteen at the time and my heart ached, wanting it to be true.
My heart still ached every time I did this. I’d never told Lily I spoke to the wind. I should. One day.
The wind, cold and biting, tugged at my coat and hair, making the grass and plants sway.
“Dad, we never agreed about my thoughts on dating boys when I was sixteen but,” I inhaled, trying to find the right words. “I don’t know how to find someone like how you and Mum found each other.”
The breeze drifted around my face, like a caress.
“Dad, I’m tired of being lonely. I love home but it also feels like a cage. I don’t know what to do next.”
“I’m going to follow my dream,” I added, louder this time. The breeze intensified and then dropped. “I’m going to be brave. Strong.”
“I’m not doing anything wrong by being here.”
I stumbled back. That voice was not Ryan’s.
A heavily built man walked around an overgrown hedge. “I’m not doing anything wrong!” he called out. “I just wanted to look.”
I narrowed my eyes as he walked towards me.
“Brayden?”
He was an old high school friend who had recently joined the Ballydoon Rural Fire Brigade. But that didn’t explain why he was here. And calling him a friend was a stretch. He was just someone I’d known at high school. I’d barely spoken to him.
Brayden stopped, watching me warily.
“What are you doing here?” I bristled. The breeze picked up again.
