‘I can’t believe I’m wasting my time trying to save them from the foxes,’ Sam said.
‘Would Gran actually miss them if we just let nature take its course?’ Kenzie asked hopefully. ‘I mean, really?’
Her mother hesitated for a moment as though considering it, before shaking her head. ‘She named them all.’
It was getting darker, the sun low behind the tree line.Jack is no fool, Kenzie thought, trudging through the long grass, wishing she were anywhere but here. When the neighbour had called to let them know Gran’s guinea fowl were out on the road, he’d quickly volunteered to babysit Poppy.
‘Okay, one more try. You go wide around them and walk them back along the fence line, slowly,’ Sam said.
Stupid. Idiot. Birds.Kenzie stomped her way back through the open gate. ‘You go through there,’ Kenzie said out loud, waving her hand pointedly at the open gate. ‘You just walk through that.’ She circled behind them and moved them back towards where she wanted them to go.
‘Don’t make any sudden movements,’ her mother called, ‘or they’ll—’
Kenzie’s foot twisted on the uneven ground and she let out a startled yell, causing the flock of eight guinea fowl to shoot straight up into the air, into a tall tree.
‘—fly,’ her mother finished wearily.
‘Sorry!’ Kenzie yelled.
‘It’s all right. I give up. Let the foxes get them,’ Sam said, dragging the gate closed. ‘Let’s go home.’
Just then, there was a loud flutter and crash above them. Kenzie looked up to see the gangly creatures flap and bump their way out of the tree in the most ungraceful manner to land inside the chook pen that she and her mother had just spent the last forty minutes trying to herd them into.
‘All this time and they could have just flown in themselves?’ Kenzie asked, incredulously.
‘They do that,’ her mother said dryly.
‘Never ask me to look after these things on my own, Mum,’ Kenzie begged. ‘I don’t think I’m farm-girl enough to cope.’
Her mother put her arm around her shoulders as they followed the dirt road back to the house. ‘You’ll do,’ she said, confidently.
Nine
When her phone rang the next morning, she didn’t open her eyes immediately, hoping it was a wrong number and they’d hang up. The insistent noise continued, though, and with a drawn-out sigh, she searched blindly for the phone before holding it up and seeing a number she didn’t recognise on the screen.
‘Hello?’ she answered, swearing to herself that if this was a telemarketer, or worse, some kind of scammer, she would lose her shi—
‘Kenzie?’
The voice instantly made her sit upright, wide awake. ‘Yes.’
‘It’s Ewan … Campbell,’ he added, almost uncertainly, as though she’d possibly forgotten who he was.
‘Hi.’
A silence fell for a moment and Kenzie wondered if maybe the line had dropped out before he spoke again. ‘I guess we need to talk.’
Her heart dropped. This was the moment that everything was going to change forever. A sickening sensation began to pool in the base of her stomach.
‘I’d like to meet our daughter.’
For a moment, Kenzie couldn’t answer, a surge of protectiveness roaring through her. Poppy washerdaughter.
‘Kenzie?’ he added uncertainly when she didn’t say anything.
‘I’m visiting my family for the weekend, in Burrumba, down in New South Wales. I won’t be home until Tuesday.’
‘I was planning to head down to South Australia tomorrow. Maybe I could stop in on my way south?’
