‘Gotta be a reason for it.’Because you wouldn’t buy back a pink stockman’s hat, unless it was stitched with memories too painful to give away.
And maybe… that hat was pink for a reason, such as the colour of a charity.Like one of Tanisha’s fundraisers—he had a few of those pink mugs sitting in the back of his cupboard at home.They were for a charity to help women with cancer, not just breast cancer, but the specialised nurses and places built specifically to help care for those women.
Did Amara make that hat for someone who had cancer?
Then it hit him.‘You made that for your mother.’Because she’d already told him she made hatswithher mother.
Amara didn’t answer for the longest time, as his boots crunched the soil beneath him as he trudged onwards.
‘Yeah… my mother.’
He felt the weight in those words.Even though he wanted to know more, he wasn’t going to push it, tucking away all his smart-mouth comments for a while.
Surprisingly, she held him tighter, as if in need of a hug.It happened so unexpectedly it stirred up some deep well of emotion inside, that spurred on his strength and desire to help her survive.He forgot the pain in his legs enough to even quicken his pace.
Amara didn’t speak for a while, just let the sounds of the bush fill the silence—the rasp of dry wind through the grass, the distant flap of wings, the steady crunch of his boots over the red dirt.
Then, just above a whisper, ‘I made it for Mum.’
Porter didn’t speak.Just kept walking.
‘She had a cancerous brain tumour.By the time they found it, it had spread everywhere.She didn’t want to tell me—didn’t want to distract me as I was going into the Nationals for polo.I was so consumed with myself, my fiancé, and the Nationals, I didn’t even know she was sick.’Her voice wobbled.
He felt it in the way her arms tightened just a little.
‘You didn’t see her.’
‘No.I was interstate.But looking back, she’d been doing odd things.’
‘Like what?’
‘Mum would ring and shout at me in the middle of the night, complaining about something I did when I was a kid.’
Porter asked as gently as possible, ‘Like… dementia or something?’
‘I thought so.I mean, I even told Dad about how she’d forget she was talking to me, or how she’d have these mood swings.And Dad,’ she said with venom to her words, ‘he just brushed it off as her dealing with menopause.Said her hormones were acting up.’
‘But they weren’t, were they?’
‘No.The brain tumour was aggressive.It affected her memory, her moods.Her… sense of self.Some days, she didn’t know where she was.Other days, she was angry—at nothing.Or crying over something that had never happened.’
‘When did you find out your mother was ill?’He’d be devastated if anything happened to his parents.
‘Not long after my horses were stolen.’She sighed so heavily, he felt the burden of it, too.‘With no chance of being in the Nationals, I came home to chaos.Mum… Mum was already gone.’
‘How?’
‘Suicide.When I got home, the search party had just found her…’ Her voice dipped, even softer now, but Porter caught the crack beneath it.‘Out at her favourite rocky outcrop.’
The way she saidfavouritehit different, like the place mattered.
‘Mum called it herquiet place.That when the world got too busy for her, she’d just go there and enjoy it, you know?’
Yeah, he understood that, more than she’d realised.
Porter had special spots too.Places marked by seasons, by silence, and by something that settled deep into his bones.He couldn’t explain it, but he’d felt it.That bend in the creek where the barra bit best.The secluded waterfall, where the heated rock pools steamed warm in winter.The ridge out near the border country—perfect for a beer at sunset and a moment to just breathe.
‘Makes sense,’ he murmured low.‘Everyone’s got one.That patch of land that feels like home, even when nothing else does.’
