by Maya Linnell
Penny wiped her hands on the grass, stepping away to let the mother claim her offspring. Cameron slipped his hand into hers as they walked back to the UTV.
‘How cool was that, Aunty Pen? I reckon farming’s the best job ever.’
Penny smiled, looking back at the newborn they’d helped welcome into the world.
‘It’s pretty hard to beat.’
Frogs croaked and burbled away in the dams, their calls echoing across the property. The moon was voluptuously full, casting a luminescence over the yard and paddocks beyond. The promise of a bright day ahead lingered on the still horizon. Penny sipped her tea as she watched for shooting stars, searching for a sign she was about to make the right decision.
Instead of the twinkling skyscrapers and traffic streams she had once admired from her apartment windows, she soaked up the hazy Milky Way, its natural beauty undiminished by streetlights or headlamps.
She tugged Annabel’s old woollen beanie lower over her chilly ears and wrapped Angus’s jacket closely to her body. She thought back to previous occasions she’d searched for answers in the night sky. The time after her fight with her mum, when Annabel had pushed the university brochure into her hands. What would life be like if Mum had encouraged me to stay on the farm, instead of dismissing the idea?
Penny took another sip from her mug, gagged at the tepid tea and set it down on the deck. Rusty nosed her hand, angling for attention, and Penny stroked his glossy coat as she fast-forwarded to a few weeks after her mother’s accident. Evenings when she’d sat in the wicker chair again, tears rolling down her face for the mother she had lost, the rift between them that had never been resolved. And then, just a few short weeks after that, she’d curled her feet underneath her on a moonless night, pledging to that very same blanket of stars that she would do what it took to make Annabel proud.
Penny felt a familiar twinge of regret as clouds rolled over the moon, casting the paddocks into darkness. She weighed up the dream she had shelved so many years ago in favour of the career and lifestyle she had devoted her adult life to, to honour her mum’s aspirations. Did Mum really believe the cash bonuses, the overseas trips, the lurks and perks of a city life would make me happy? What was it about farm life that she’d been so set against? And why didn’t she have the same dreams for the other girls? Lara’s words from the bike ride rushed back to her. Or was it true that Annabel had urged them all to look at their various career options and she’d misunderstood? She sighed, feeling like she was going around in circles.
‘What do you think, Rusty?’
The dog’s tail thumped against the boards, and a smile spread across Penny’s face as she observed the stars twinkling brightly in the moon’s absence. Even in darkness, there was light. A shooting star streaked across the sky, a flash of brilliance before the moon broke free from its cloud.
Perhaps there really is no place like home, she thought, stroking the dog’s velvety ears. She shuffled the options around in her mind until the right combination settled into place, and sighed. I know what I want to do—what I need to do—but am I brave enough to take the next step?
Fifty-three
Nerves urged Penny to walk faster across the driveway. She fumbled with the back doorhandle, almost dropping the armful of brochures.
‘I’m home, Dad,’ she called out through the laundry, as she tugged her arms from the jacket. A grunt of acknowledgement filtered from the lounge room and Penny tucked Dr Sinclair’s bundle of information into the laundry cupboard. She would share it with Angus after a cup of tea and a piece of his favourite cake. More chance of a warm reception, she thought. But first, it was time to make the second call she’d been mentally rehearsing all morning.
She pulled the phone from its charger, took the stairs to her bedroom two at a time, and sat in the window seat as the call was connected.
‘Boutique Media, Charlotte speaking.’
‘Charlotte, it’s Penny.’
‘About time. I wouldn’t normally take calls in the middle of lunch, but I’ve been picking up way too much slack for you and it’s got to stop. Seriously, you’re crazy if you think I’m going to keep bending over backward for you.’
Penny shrugged off a catty thought about Charlotte’s willingness to bend any which way for Vince and straightened her shoulders. When they go low, we go high.
‘I need to talk to you about the client meeting next weekend if you can spare a second?’
‘You’re lucky my lunch date isn’t here yet. Let me guess. Are you too busy wrestling snakes and dodging kangaroos to finish the presentation? I suppose you need me to do all the work for you again?’
‘You know as well as I do, Charlotte, that I’ve done my fair share on this project. But as it turns out, I won’t make the meeting.’
‘What? You can’t renege on this now, Penny. I’ve got three other projects on deadline. Georgie is going to have kittens.’
‘I’ve just spoken to Georgie,’ said Penny. Her gaze wandered out the window to Tim loading hay bales onto the tractor forks. She ignored Charlotte’s impatient huff, leaving the silence to linger for a beat longer.
‘I’ve got bigger fish to fry out here. You want my job so much, it’s yours.’
A gasp came down the phone line.
‘You’re leaving marketing for farming? You’ve got to be kidding me.’
Penny watched the dogs running behind the tractor as it motored down the laneway. The corner of her lips twitched at Charlotte’s reaction.
‘I don’t expect you to understand, but yes, I’ve resigned.’ Penny felt a weight lifting as she said those two words for the second time that day. Even Charlotte’s laughter, like sandpaper on stainless steel, wasn’t enough to extinguish the thrill.
Penny rose from her seat, her finger hovering over the ‘end call’ button. But as Charlotte’s laughter subsided, a familiar voice whispering in the background caught her attention.
‘You ready, babe?’
Penny froze. It wasn’t just any voice. It was Vince’s voice.
The breath caught in her throat, her mind jumping from one justification to another. Working lunch? Maybe it’s someone else?
She strained to hear over the background noise, cupping her ear. There it was again. The man she had thought she would marry. Penny felt a hollowness in the pit of her stomach for the wasted emotion and brainpower she had poured into salvaging their relationship, her vision for their future that was pockmarked with more holes than a slice of Swiss cheese. Vince’s phone had been switched off all morning and he still hadn’t responded to her urgent message to call her back. Now she knew why.
Penny cleared her throat, calling loudly into the phone.
‘Charlotte? You still there?’
The muffled sound and background voices went silent.
‘Oops, I thought I’d hung up.’
‘I just wanted a final word about Vince. You can have him too. I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot barge pole.’
Penny’s hand trembled as she hung up the phone. She wasn’t sure if she’d done the right thing, but damn, it felt good.
Lightning flashed across the pre-dawn sky, illuminating the farmhouse at the end of the driveway as Tim turned the ute towards McIntyre Park. As if in reply, the kitchen lights flickered on, and his heart beat faster when he saw Penny opening the curtains, her silhouette graceful as she strolled around the kitchen. Tim blew out a breath, wishing away the buzz of attraction he felt whenever he thought about her. He’d managed to avoid her the last few days much to Eddie’s disgust, who began each day with her name on his lips. Eddie had an excursion this morning. He would be sitting down to an early breakfast with Nanna Pearl right now, fuelling up before he joined a busload of other special needs people to see a theatre show in Hamilton.
It’s gonna be hard on him if she heads back to Melbourne, thought Tim, brushing his feelings aside. When, not if, Patterson. He didn’t dwell on his thoughts about losing her to the city a second time and instead c
ast his mind to the day ahead as he neared the house. The rain would at least give him an opportunity to tidy up the shed.
Tim twisted in his seat, assessing the tin building that housed the machinery. Another bolt of lightning struck to the west. The intense flash of light dulled, but he could still see a strange yellow glow coming from the shed window. Tim squinted, then slammed on the brakes. What the hell? The gravel squelched beneath his tyres and he hit the ground running.
‘Mac! Mac!’ He vaulted onto the deck, and ripped the back door open. ‘Quick, Mac. The shed’s on fire!’
Fifty-four
Penny recoiled at the smell of burned plastic and squinted against the onslaught of acrid smoke as Tim flung open the shed door. A coughing fit made her bend double, but she forced herself to straighten up. McIntyre Park was her family farm, she wasn’t going to let someone else do all the dirty work. She tugged the neck of her jumper over her mouth and nose before following Tim inside.
Flames climbed up the vertical blinds and licked at the workbench, devouring a stack of old newspapers. The black benchtop had blistered and buckled, but otherwise, the damage was minimal. She breathed a sigh of relief and yelled above the noise.
‘You take the extinguisher, I’ll get a blanket.’
She grabbed an empty grain sack from the shelf and flung it against the wall. Her back pressed against Tim’s as they worked on opposite ends of the fire. Tim blitzed the flaming bench with retardant as Penny worked her way upwards. The smell of singed arm hair floated into the putrid air. Eventually, the flickering flames vanished.
Penny panted, her arms aching as she threw down the sack. She strode outside and ripped the jumper from her face, too busy drawing mouthfuls of fresh air to appreciate the kaleidoscope of pink, silver and orange stretched across the sky, or to notice that the storm had cleared. She doubled over, trying to breathe more easily, when Tim’s feet appeared in her vision. She felt his warm hand on her shoulder.
‘Nice work, Mac—we got there just in time.’
He cleared his throat roughly as he shuffled through the charred bench clutter. Clinking porcelain rang out. ‘Missing a few mugs? There’s still a few more on the bench, all cracked and blackened. I’m no firefighter, but I’d say the fire started at Angus’s old radio. Looks like he’s been spending a bit of time out here.’
Penny spat out a layer of foul-tasting grunge before turning back to Tim, wiping a sooty hand across her mouth.
‘Lucky you spotted it before it reached the jerry cans and the chemicals.’
‘Or the machinery. Kinda tricky to finish the winter crops with a scorched tractor.’
An air of cohesiveness swirled around them as they walked towards the house together. Penny tried to slow her movements in contrast to the adrenaline pulsing through her body. Tim’s impeccable timing had just saved them thousands of dollars.
‘I’ve had that radio for donkey’s years. It’s still as good as the day I bought it,’ said Angus, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
Penny pushed a mug of coffee in front of him and wiped her hands on a fresh pair of jeans.
‘Not anymore, Dad. But it could have been a lot worse. Imagine if we’d seen it an hour later, or if it was the middle of summer. The farmhouse, the shearing shed and who knows what else would have gone up in smoke—all in the blink of an eye.’
‘She’s right, Angus.’
Penny turned to see Tim behind her and felt grateful for his support. In her father’s khaki shirt and slightly short jeans, he looked like a mini Angus. His tone was calm and measured compared to Angus’s defensive voice.
‘Well, what’s a fella supposed to do now? I’ve got no little hidey-hole anymore. These four walls are driving me insane, and I’ll go mad if I have to do another month of those stupid stretches.’ Angus thumped his wrist on the table like a petulant child.
Penny pushed past Tim and emerged from the laundry a moment later with the armful of brochures. She placed them on the table and took a seat next to Angus.
‘I’ve spoken to Dr Sinclair. She gave me some pamphlets about the National Centre for Farmer Health. They’ve got loads of resources … counselling, support groups.’
She looked up at her father. His lips were pressed firmly together, his gaze unseeing out the window.
‘I know you’ve had a rough few months, but let me make you an appointment, see what they have to offer. There are groups for people who’ve been through farm accidents, Dad, both online and in person. Let me help you fix this.’
She waited for his answer, but he remained silent. She could smell his shaving cream, sense the loneliness and despair underscoring his hostility, and yearned for her mother’s ability to talk him out of a bad mood.
Tim nodded at her before taking his cup to the sink. He slipped into the hallway. She turned back to Angus. His good hand played with the edge of a leaflet, worrying the corner with his thumbnail. Penny watched his shoulders shudder silently. He pressed a wrinkled handkerchief to his face.
‘I’ve already lost one parent, I can’t sit back and lose another,’ she whispered.
Angus’s voice was gravelly, raw emotion stilting his speech. ‘I’m a miserable old bastard. I don’t know … it’s hard to … tried to drag myself out of this hole.’ He reached for the coffee with shaking hands, droplets splattering onto his faded shirt. Clearing his throat, he set the mug down with a clatter.
‘It broke my heart when your mum died and you rushed away to the city, like I’d buried two of the most important women in my world. And what do I do when you come back and try running the farm? I’m jumping down your throat and finding fault because I wish it were me out there in the paddock. Me working the dogs. Me managing the shearing. Too busy feeling sorry for myself.’
Penny reached for his hand and covered it with her own. She silently wiped away her tears as she watched her proud father fumbling with memories and regrets.
He squeezed her hand. She pressed it back.
‘Even if everything had burned to the ground this morning, we’d still have each other. It’s not too late to get things back on track, Dad.’
Angus blew his nose, his eyes red as they met hers.
‘Okay, I’ll talk to the doc. But I want you to be straight with me. I might be a useless cripple, but I’d have to be blind as a welder’s dog to miss the rift between you and Lara. And now Angie too? You’ll need a ten-ton dozer to smooth that over.’
Penny looked out the window at the machinery shed, the damage that could have been so much worse. Would she look back at her fractured family unit one day and feel that it too had disappeared in the blink of an eye? She needed to fix this fissure before it festered into an impassable canyon. Penny pushed up from the table and reached for her phone.
Fifty-five
Chairs scraped against the wooden floorboards, and plastic plates were handed around as the aroma of cheese and tomato filled the kitchen. Penny lifted a piece of pizza from the box and groaned as grease dripped from the limp slice.
‘Plenty of room for improvement at the takeaway place,’ she said, looking around the table with a forced smile.
Lara stiffened at the comment and opened her mouth to reply when Evie piped up.
‘It’s the best pizza ever, Aunty Pen. Everybody loves Pino’s,’ she said, her braids swinging from side to side.
‘Sometimes, if we’re lucky, we get to order pizza on the last day of school,’ added Cameron.
‘Pizza, pizza, pizza,’ said Eddie, demolishing his piece and reaching for seconds.
They sat around the dining table like actors in a play. Penny watched Lara murmuring to Angie, Angus talking with Tim at the far end of the table, and the children spread out between Pete and Diana. Diana rescued a loaf of garlic bread from Harry’s laden plate and doled out slices to the rest of the table. Elliot took advantage of her diverted attention to flick pieces of mushroom at Leo, while Cameron and Evie sat shoulder-to-shoulder beside Eddie.
This lunch is the weakes
t excuse for a family meal this table has ever seen. Where’s the happiness? Where’s the hum of carefree conversation? Almost as absent as Annabel.
Penny dismissed the thought and sampled a second slice, hoping the Hawaiian was better than the supreme. No such luck. She pushed the plate aside and tried for another smile.
‘The Italians wouldn’t call this pizza, Evie. One day, when you’re older, you can travel to Rome. Their pizza is so tasty, you’ll never eat this stuff again.’
‘Here we go again, Little Miss Jetsetter sharing pearls of wisdom, with just a touch of superiority. How novel.’
Penny saw Lara’s eyes narrow as she spoke. Always watching, always ready with a negative comment.
‘We’re here to try and work things out, Lara.’ She held her palms up in front of her. She wasn’t going to let this fail before it had even started. Penny’s gaze flickered to Tim. Their fledgling teenage relationship was a prime example of something she’d let wither and die without the skills or experience to save it—damned if she was going to keep repeating the same mistake.
‘On that lovely note, I’ll kick this family meeting off to a start. We all need to get things off our chest so we can move forward. We did this exercise at our last team building day; I think it’ll be good. Everyone says something positive, something constructive and something they’d like to improve.’
Penny scanned the room and moved on before Lara could offer any further snide remarks.
‘I’ll go first. I’m pleased everyone made an effort to come for lunch today. Offering to run the farm hasn’t been a light decision, nor has it been easy. I know things have been strained these last few months, but I’ve officially quit my job in Melbourne so I can concentrate on the farm and get our family back together. I’m open to suggestions, but I want to make this work. For all of us.’ Penny felt everyone’s attention on her, from Diana’s proud smile to Angie’s surprised silence.