Hope's Road Read online

  His hip hit the ground. Hard. Boots was on his feet, barking and yelping.

  Oh holy hell, that hurt. Shit. His hip. Had he broken it again?

  But that was secondary to the pain that was hammering through his heart. Please God, no, not Montmorency!

  She couldn’t do it to him. Fuck it. She couldn’t do it to the family. Five generations of McCauley blood, sweat and tears.

  First time offered.

  The bitch. The lying, scheming . . . Just when he thought he could trust her, she did this.

  It was Mae. Mae Rouget all over again.

  Lying sprawled on his own wooden verandah, gasping with pain, Joe McCauley was shocked to find himself crying. Tears he should have shed years ago. For the pain throbbing down his leg. For the people he would never see again – not in this life. For his father, his mother, his brother. For Mae. For Nellie. All his regrets.

  It was all too late. All too fucking late.

  How could she sell Montmorency Downs?

  He should have known.

  The land-grabbing little fucker.

  Chapter 43

  Tammy had just climbed out of her ute into dismal weather when the bullet came skidding over her head.

  Bang!

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ the old man roared.

  What? They were back to this again?

  Oh my Lord. He’d seen the sign. She’d only just spotted it herself coming out the gate. It’d been like a kick in the guts. She couldn’t believe they’d have it up so quickly.

  ‘I don’t need you up here on my hill. Get the hell off my farm, you –’

  Tammy threw her arms in the air. ‘I know, I know. But if you’d just let me explain –’

  ‘There’s nothing to say!’ roared Joe. ‘The fuckin’ auction sign says it all!’

  Bang!

  Tammy ducked. The bullet was closer this time.

  ‘If you’d just stop shooting and let me come up there and talk –’

  ‘Talk? Talk! Get off my land! I know you wish you could offload this place too, you little strumpet. You’re just like your grandmother!’

  Tammy stood in the rain, a drowned rat, water pouring off her head, her body. ‘What do you mean, just like my grandmother?’

  ‘She wanted me first. Not my brother. But he had the best of it coming to him, so she chose Tom. It should have been me!’

  Bang!

  ‘Joe, just listen to me –’

  ‘No!’ the old man roared. ‘Get the hell off my property and never come back!’

  Bang!

  Tammy could feel herself getting angry. If he’d only just listen to her, she could explain. She would tell him about Shon forcing her hand. Tell him it was the only option she had, the only thing she could do.

  Bang!

  Oh hell.

  She jumped back into the ute. He was sitting on the top step of the verandah, red with rage. She could see him reloading the magazine with bullets, which any minute now he’d slot into his rifle . . .

  She’d better leave. No way was she going to be able to talk with him today. Possibly not ever. She wound down the window to have one last go, oblivious to the sheet of water now pouring through her window.

  ‘Joe? Can we just talk?’

  ‘Get off my property!’ he yelled again. Then he leaned forwards to grab at his leg.

  Christ, what had the old bugger done now? ‘Uncle Joe?’ she called. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Fuck off!’

  ‘Okay, I’m going. I’m out of here, you stiff-necked old bastard.’ She cranked the engine, put the ute in gear and took off, wheels spinning in the slippery mud. The last thing she heard was Joe McCauley’s voice, chasing her in the rain.

  ‘Good riddance to rubbish. And don’t ever come back!’

  The anger Tammy felt towards Joe escaped like air from a plumped-up balloon as soon as she reached the front gate of Montmorency. The big yellow sign seemed to mock her. First time offered.

  ‘This title is so old, it’d be an original,’ Hilary Stratton had told her. And Tammy could hear the crackling of thick paper over the phone. ‘Obviously the property hasn’t been sold before. That doesn’t happen very often.’

  She remembered the first time she’d seen that precious piece of her heritage. Her grandfather had shown it to her when she was a little girl. The paper it was on was called vellum.

  They’d been in the ancient office in the old part of the house. Musty, filled with cobwebs and dust, the room exuded odours of days long past. The title had been in an antique ornate frame up on the wall. Her grandfather had taken it down, carefully removed the backing plate and taken the vellum from against the glass. He’d let her touch it, saying, ‘Here, place your fingers on history, Tim Tam. And one day this will be yours to carry on the McCauley bloodline.’

  ‘I’m just organising the vendor statement, which includes the title of course, and any other certificates that pertain to the property. The flood level certificate from the Shire has been a bit slow. Is there a history of flooding on Montmorency? Will there be any difficulty with that?’ The solicitor had sensed a foreboding silence at the other end of the phone. ‘Never mind. All will be in order once the Shire gets their paperwork sorted. I’ll be in touch with a date for the auction.’

  Tammy drove down the drive and parked the ute. The phone rang as she made it inside. She looked at it – it seemed to deliver nothing but bad news lately. Finally she willed herself to pick up the handset, just as it stopped ringing. Good. Tammy went to walk away, when the damn thing started ringing again, insistently. Someone really wanted to get hold of her. It was probably Shon ringing to gloat about the property being on the market, something which he knew would break her heart. She let it go to the answering machine.

  ‘Tammy. Rob Sellers here. Just ringing to let you know they’ve put out a minor flood warning on the Narree River. The weir outflows have been upped to eight thousand mega­litres per day. They’re expected to keep rising –’

  Tammy, by then, had dived for the handset, anxious to catch the man before he rang off. Rob lived upstream of her, just below the weir wall, and he was the flood warden. ‘Rob! I’m here. What’s going on?’

  ‘Tammy. Thank God I’ve got you. It’s not looking good, mate. The telemetry systems that measure the inflows have gone down above the weir. We’re not sure of the volume of water coming but from what they’re saying further up in the mountains there’s a lot of it heading our way. I reckon we’re dead certain to go to at least moderate flooding so thought I’d give you the heads up so you can start dropping your fences.’

  Shit. This was all she needed. The cows were right where they shouldn’t be. The water came out of the river into her lower paddocks whenever outflows from the weir exceeded twenty-two thousand megalitres.

  ‘How long have we got, Rob?’

  ‘Not sure, mate. But I’d be starting to put your flood plan in action right about now. I’ll ring you back as soon as I hear from the weir-keepers. Better go. I’ve got a truckload of others to ring.’

  ‘No worries. Thanks, Rob.’

  ‘I’ll be in touch. Stay safe and get Hunter to help you.’

  ‘I will.’ Not while she was supposed to be keeping her distance. Plus she was perfectly capable of managing this.

  Rob rang off and Tammy wasted precious seconds trying to get Jock and Barb on the phone until she remembered they were off shopping in Melbourne, seeing it was so wet. They were staying overnight, where she didn’t know. And they didn’t have a mobile phone. Damn, damn, damn. Maybe old Joe could help her in the ute? Ha. He’d just thrown her off his property.

  All that time spent mending fences and forging trust with her uncle had come to naught. He was the only family she had left, and now he too was gone. She hadn’t realised just how lonely she really was unti
l Joe had come along – and Billy and Trav.

  Tammy felt her heart dip at the thought of Travis Hunter. She could feel a dark pit of anxiety deep down inside her belly. Whatever happened with his family, right now she was on her own. Again. And she didn’t know if she could bear it this time.

  The phone jolted her out of her reverie once more. She grabbed the receiver. ‘Tammy McCauley.’

  ‘Ha, ha, ha – got your comeuppance this time, haven’t ya, bitch?’ Shon Murphy’s voice, slurred and full of hate, came down the line. ‘That auction sign gone up yet? Bet that kicked ya in the guts. It’ll teach ya for sooling your good-for-nuthin’ uncle on me.’

  Why had she answered it? ‘I hate you, Shon Murphy, with every fibre of my being,’ she said out loud.

  Drunken laughter spilled from the phone. Laughter which then erupted into a fit of convulsive coughing and spluttering as her husband choked. Die you bastard, die, was all she could think as she slammed down the hand-set.

  The phone immediately rang again. Bloody Shon. He never gave up easily. The message bank clicked in.

  ‘Tammy, it’s Rob again. They’ve just upped the outflows to at least thirty thousand megalitres. It looks like we’re heading towards a major flood.’

  Shit.

  She dived for the handset. ‘Rob, I’m here. A major?’

  ‘Yep. Pretty sure she’s gunna be a big one. You can’t do this on your own, girl. Have you contacted Hunter yet?’

  ‘Nope. But I will,’ she lied. She’d be fine. Floods had come and gone all her life. She knew what needed to be done.

  ‘They’re expecting the water to be here by the morning.’ Rob’s voice broke into her thoughts. ‘I’ll ring both your mobile and home phones if I hear any more.’

  He disconnected quickly, no doubt in a hurry to ring the next person on his list. The man must live on adrenaline, reflected Tammy, what with his community ambulance work and this flood warden business. But, she had to admit, without people like Rob to spread the word, all those in the Narree flood zone would be so much worse off.

  She needed to move the cows up near the dairy. The young stock were on the run-off block with Jock and Barbara, out of the flood zone, so they would be right. The autumn calving cows and their calves were already near the house because of the wild dog attacks. They might get a bit wet but she’d had the laser grading people build up a high pad of dirt in that paddock a few years earlier for a new hay-shed. If the cattle moved onto that they’d be able to get out of the water, and if she deposited a round bale of hay in a hay-ring up there, that would see them through the duration of the flood. Then there were the fences. She needed to drop the wires so they would flow with the water rather than have the pressure and accumulated debris reef the posts from the ground.

  Tammy quickly sorted in her mind the best order in which to do all the work. Then she strode onto the enclosed back verandah, donned a Driza-Bone, a broad-brimmed Akubra hat and gumboots, and stepped out into the rain to do battle with the river-borne demon that was to come.

  Chapter 44

  It had been a disaster right from the start. Kat had stared at the old ute in consternation from the doorway of her motel room and had looked terrified when she spotted Billy bouncing up and down on the seat. ‘Hi there, Mum!’

  She’d glanced towards Trav and he read the panic in her gaze as clearly as he could read the tracks of wildlife in the scrub. His heart sank towards his Ariat high-top boots.

  She was going to bolt. Tammy and Joe were right. He shouldn’t have thought it could be any different: he should have told Billy she just wasn’t up to it and worn the boy’s grief himself. Putting it off like this was only going to make it worse. He could still hear Katrina’s quavering voice on the end of the phone that fateful day after she left.

  ‘Look after our baby. One day . . . tell him his mummy loved him . . . but I have to go. I have to leave to save myself, Travis. Can’t you see? I’ve lost me. So many hopes, so many dreams . . . all gone.’

  Hope – the stuff dreams were made of. He could tell her a thing or two about them being gone.

  ‘C’mon, Mum,’ yelled his boy again. ‘Get in. We’re heading back out to Belaren. I’ll show you all my stuff.’

  ‘Lovely.’ Katrina’s voice was faint. Her hands fluttered around the long auburn curls hanging down off her shoulders.

  Travis, still sitting at the wheel, watched it all like he was observing from above. He’d once hoped he and Kat would be together forever. Her spirit and more gregarious nature had balanced his preference for silence. She’d encouraged him to be something he’d thought he’d never be: outgoing and unreserved. She’d made him feel like the only person in the world capable of making her happy, of loving her and she, him. It was all an illusion, he could see that now. He could never be anything other than himself no matter how hard he tried, and that wasn’t good enough for Katrina. She wanted more than him – and their child.

  His ex-wife slid gracefully into the ute, where Billy grabbed her hand, eager to stake his claim on his mother.

  ‘Belaren is Nanna’s old place. You’ll love it,’ said Billy beaming, and then he shot a serious glance towards his father. It was a look of warning – be nice to her. You owe me.

  ‘Katrina,’ said Trav, acknowledging her with a nod. ‘You okay if we go out home? Billy’d like to show you where he lives.’ He was painfully aware of how stilted and polite the words sounded.

  Katrina’s eyes narrowed over Billy’s head. ‘Yes, that’s fine. So long as we don’t take all afternoon. I have to be back in town for dinner. Some artist friends of Alice’s. They want to organise another showing. A city gallery this time.’

  Yep, that was the way of it. Art before her son. He glanced down at Billy, who was frowning and shaking his head.

  ‘But Mum! Don’t you want to have tea with us?’

  Katrina had the grace to look slightly abashed. ‘I’m sorry, Billy, but this is really important to me.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Billy,’ interrrupted Trav, his voice laced with warning, ‘your mum’s made other arrangements. We’ll take her out to the farm and see how it goes.’

  Katrina seemed to withdraw into herself from that moment. Billy chattered on, pointing out this and that – things that were of importance or significance in his young life. ‘So that’s my school where Ms Greenaway teaches me. She’s away today otherwise we could’ve taken you to meet her. She’s really nice, isn’t she, Dad?’ Billy ran on before Trav could answer either way, continuing his litany until they turned down Hope’s Road. ‘And that’s where Tammy lives. She employs me to do farm work. And then that’s Old Joe’s place up there on McCauley’s Hill. You can’t see it clearly from here but he sure has the best view. He taught me to drive, didn’t he, Dad?’ On and on the child rambled, never pausing for breath, which only served to make Katrina’s disconnection more apparent.

  The mention of Billy driving was the only thing to jolt her. She had darted an appalled glance at Trav and he’d responded with a shrug. ‘He’s good at it,’ he commented in Billy’s – and possibly Joe’s – defence. Her big brown eyes widened slightly and then she sank back into her apathy. Trav didn’t know whether to be flattered by her confidence in his judgement or horrified by her lack of interest.

  The pain had ramped up a notch as they’d parked in front of the ramshackle cottage they called home. Kat’s face had said it all. This? This is what you call a house?

  They’d gone inside and Katrina had climbed the ladder up to Billy’s loft. Trav didn’t know what took place up there but it seemed like only minutes before she was back down again, crowding his personal space. He didn’t think any room would be big enough for him and Kat. Too much hurt, too much time and angst were lying between them.

  He couldn’t help but compare her to the woman who’d been in this room only nights before. Tammy had looked like she b
elonged here, despite her more affluent upbringing. She’d made the shabby smallness seem all the more cosy with her warmth and easy-going presence. She hadn’t made him feel defensive. If anything, she’d made him feel proud of the space he shared with his son. The way she wandered around the walls, asking questions about his photos, their homemade frames, enjoying the stories of the bush that went with each one. He could hear her laughter in the air, see the caramel in her eyes, feel the silkiness of her soft yet firm skin.

  Trav shook himself. You’re taking a break from her, remember?

  He moved to put on the kettle, trying not to look towards the fridge and the rum and coke he would have preferred, just to get himself through this. He glanced across at Katrina, who was trying to appear interested in a bright green grasshopper that Billy had caught and ensconced in a jar with nail holes in the lid for air. After doing some research on Tammy’s computer, the kid was planning to take it to school for Show and Tell.

  She was now heading for the couch like it was a refuge. She sat down for a few seconds, then was up again as if the seats were full of blackberry thorns. How on earth could he have even contemplated getting back with her? She was like a flitting moth, eyes darting here and there, not able to meet his gaze for longer than a glance.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ he asked, pulling out a couple of mugs.

  ‘Do you have herbal?’

  ‘Nope, sorry. Just normal stuff.’

  ‘Then no, thanks.’

  You would have thought she’d just take a mug of tea and pretend to like it. That was how you did things in the country. Just to be polite. To be mates.

  But this woman didn’t want to be mates. She barely wanted to be friendly. She was just biding her time until she could head back to town. Well, stuff her, he thought. She could put up with it for a few hours after what she’d done to him and Billy.

  So he let Billy drag her out into the wet. Let him haul her all over the hill in the rain. Pointing out the dogs, his bike, the track to the weir, and the place he called a cubbyhouse – a massive cypress tree so old the timbers had joined and made slabs big enough to stand on.