Stepping back into my own room, I flopped back onto my bed and stared at the ceiling. No spiders, just shadows shifting with the wind, I followed their path while listening to the sound of the shower running. At some point, I fell asleep, only to wake up late the next morning.
“Having trouble getting started?” Charlie asked with a smile when I finally emerged out into the main house.
“Just tired,” I said, slumping down into a chair. She set a mug of coffee down before me.
“The guys will be out all day,” she said. “Troy blew up the feed supplier’s phone. Their team is coming to pick up the sour feed and replacing the bad bales.” With a shake of her head, she smiled at me. “Best to steer clear of them today, because it’ll be a hot, shitty, dangerous job, moving that hay.”
The look on Troy’s face last night haunted me. After a long, horrible day, he had to wake up and face down another, with no end in sight. My fingers sank into my hair, raking along my scalp, like he had his face last night. Feeling like shit, I stared at the tabletop, only to focus on the black rectangle of Troy’s laptop. Pulling it closer, I smoothed my hand across the top and then glanced up at Charlie.
“We might be able to do something here to ease the burden.” I tapped the laptop. “Do you know your brother’s password?”
Chapter 26
Troy
“I need a beer,” Billy groaned that night as we all staggered out of the ute. Sparky wound his way between my feet, because he was still full of beans. The dog was the only one, because after hours and hours of hard slog, the rest of us were exhausted. My brother sniffed at his shirt, then blanched. “And a bath. A bath full of beer, that way I can absorb the alcohol through every pore, because damn?—”
“Hey.”
Charlie stepped outside and the way her hands went to her hips, her lips thinning, had me stiffening. What now? a small voice inside me wailed. I literally couldn’t deal with one more fucking emergency, but that’s not how farms worked.
“What’s up?” I peered past her, as if the answers could be found there. “What’s gone wrong now? Where’s Mackenzie?”
“In town, helping out at the triage centre this evening.” Charlie’s eyes glittered in the darkness in a way I hadn’t seen since the night she came home wearing a mark on her face Beau left. “Needed to make herself scarce for this.”
“Look, Charlie,” I said. “Can I just have a shower and a beer before you hit me with this next pressing emergency? I’m fucking exhausted and?—”
“When were you going to tell us?”
There were so many things my sister could be talking about right now and my brain rifled through each one, trying to anticipate which particular secret she was focussed on.
“Tell us what?” Bronson glanced at me then Charlie. “Tell us?—?”
“That Dad has been bleeding the farm dry.” Fuck… I could feel the weight of every stinking bale of hay I’d hoisted today in the burn of my shoulder muscles, but apparently I wasn’t done carrying shit. “That you’ve been sending him money, so much money.”
“What?” There were no smiles from Billy right now.
“This is a family matter,” Scotty said, taking a step backwards. “I’ll head to the bunkhouse.”
Because he didn’t want to witness the blood bath that was about to come, obviously.
“Thanks for all your hard work today, Scotty,” I said. “You did good.” Turning back to my siblings, I saw I had their entire attention for once. “Just…” What the hell did I say? I knew this day was coming. Just wished it wasn’t now. “Just let me have a shower?—”
“Better be a quick one.” Bronson was the last one I expected to scowl at me. “We need to know what the fuck has been going on.”
“And I’ll tell you everything.”
Walking inside, the weight lightened somehow. Taken off my shoulders without my permission, it left me light headed slightly, or was that just the loss of electrolytes from sweating all day? I scrubbed myself clean, but it felt like the cubicle was haunted. An invisible presence was in here with me, becauseMackenzie and I had gotten into the habit of showering together to ‘save water.’ I could almost feel her beside me, see her steady gaze. A curious mixture of empathy and iron will, it made clear there was no escaping what was coming.
“Dad wanted to sell the farm when he left,” I said, sitting down at the head of the table.
“When Mum was sick?” Charlie gasped, then looked around the table. “When we were still at school?”
My lips thinned, then I took a long sip of the beer in front of me. Billy clasped his tin tight, his face unnaturally pale.
“Yep. Told me he’d sell it. Said he would get a shit hot lawyer and ensure Mum got fuck all.” I met their gaze head on, but it wasn’t my siblings I saw, but the man I thought was a hero up until then. “Told me he wasn’t going to waste the rest of his life on this farm, working like a dog, then coming home to care for a sick wife. Said I’d understand one day.”
“Not sure how he came to that conclusion,” Bronson growled. “I still don’t fucking understand what he did.”
