A Girl's Guide to the Outback by Jessica Kate

Author:Jessica Kate
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2020-01-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

Jules sat on the burned-out shell of the old Suzuki DS 80 motorbike, tailbone sore from the hours she’d been here, and stared at a moonlit rock with googly eyes and a pipe cleaner smile that rested on the dirt between three dog collars and a turtle cage. She sniffed back the remnants of her tears, salt in her nostrils and mouth. Rubbed at goose bumps as the night breeze wrapped its cold fingers around her arms. Leaving the house in footy shorts and a Brisbane Broncos T-shirt may’ve been shortsighted. But she’d needed to come to the burial ground of all her favorite things—including the urn that contained Dad’s ashes.

She’d made the pet rock that marked the spot to look like Dad in the second grade, and it’d sat on Dad’s office windowsill for years. Unconventional tombstone perhaps, but fitting.

Was there really a chance she’d need to dig him up?

Curse this boot on her leg. Were she free from it, she’d go borrow Mick’s dirt bike and take out her frustration on the overgrown track Dad had formed with the tractor when they were kids. But no, she was trapped. In more ways than one.

She smacked a fist against the cold metal frame of the bike she sat on. Ow. Pain radiated up the bones in the side of her hand. That was stupid.

She punched it again.

A vehicle rumbled along the track, which was corrugated from the hooves of three hundred cattle. Mick’s ute. She’d know that engine anywhere.

Light danced across the bush paddock, reflecting back at least three sets of mystery eyes, as he swung the ute around to park behind her. The engine stopped, and the ambiance returned to cane-toad croaks and the occasional moo.

She didn’t turn around when footsteps crunched toward her. Just kept her eyes on the googly ones that stared back, unblinking.

Mick appeared in her peripheral vision, squatted by the front of the bike, and rubbed the decal 80 with a fond touch. His T-shirt and board shorts from the cricket game were gone, replaced by jeans trendier than anyone wore in this entire district and a flannel shirt she suspected was his dad’s.

She cast her eyes downward. Crocs. He had his feet jammed into rainbow-swirl Crocs. His mum had unusually large feet.

A giggle bubbled up even as hot tears rushed to her eyes yet again. Blinking them away, she swallowed to try to stop the sensation of her throat closing. On the day that she felt more dread than a mouse outrunning a brown snake, he was here. Despite everything that’d happened between them. He still came.

“So, I talked to Sam.” Mick’s voice came out gravelly, quiet. “You’ve been out here awhile.”

Probably four hours, give or take. What conversation had Sam and Kim had after she left? That would’ve been an interesting one to see.

Mick swiped a cobweb from the bike’s clutch. “Wanna go for a drive?”

“Wanna go for a drive?” Those had been her favorite words at the age of fifteen,

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