Down Outback Roads by Alissa Callen

Author:Alissa Callen [Callen, Alissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Australia
Published: 2014-04-30T23:00:00+00:00

‘Braye, you’re not doing what I think you’re doing?’ Tish called out from behind the flapping sheet she was struggling to peg onto the clothesline. The rain may have passed but a roguish wind remained.

‘Braye?’ But only the warble of a black-and-white magpie perched on the iron bird bath answered. Tish eyed off the bird. Come spring and the magpie wouldn’t sing so sweetly. Tish was sure he was the male who swooped anyone who ventured near the tall gum where his chicks nested.

She secured the last peg in place and walked around the wet sheet. As she suspected, the green garden hose ran from the tap near the back door in the direction of the boys’ sandpit. Braye had asked at breakfast if he and Darby could build a sandcastle. An idea she’d agreed to, knowing it would prevent them asking every five minutes how much longer until Ewan would be home that afternoon. Braye had since decided every sandcastle needed a moat. Darby may have agreed, but he knew the rule that water wasn’t allowed in the sandpit, since Braye had once flooded it to make quick sand.

Tish repressed a smile. The characteristics that sometimes made strong-willed Braye a handful would stand him in good stead for dealing with life as an adult. She had no doubt Braye and Ewan shared the same stubborn Mackenzie DNA. Before pancreatic cancer had claimed Alice, Ewan and Fergus’s mother, she’d delighted in telling stories about headstrong Ewan, who as a small boy would put on his hat and boots in a heat wave and walk the long driveway to collect the mail for her on her birthday.

Tish tucked her shoulder-length hair behind her ears and headed towards the sandpit. Alice had also recounted stories about Fergus, but usually such stories involved the mischief he’d caused and had ended with the words, ‘I mean, look at that smile, how could anyone stay mad at him?’

Tish glanced at the uninhabited garden cottage, still visible through the screen of conifer shrubs that were yet to grow tall and wide. Fergus’s charming smile had dazzled her into believing she was in love with him. They’d met at the Sydney races. Fergus had been fun and attentive and had delighted in taking her home to the bush to show her off at every possible social function.

As for her mother, she’d been beside herself that her daughter had caught a man with acres and would live the life of the landed gentry. ‘All the French cooking lessons, the deportment classes and the private schools were worth every penny,’ she’d gushed the night Tish and Fergus had announced their whirlwind engagement. It had only been her quiet and bookish father who’d drawn her aside and questioned if Fergus was the right man for her. In her naivety, she’d hugged him and assured him Fergus was.

After their marriage and move to the cottage at Marellen, she’d realised she preferred getting her hands dirty to attending picnic race meetings. But

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