Page 151 of Just One Look

“May as well,” Rita said. “She’s spent enough time there.”

Another of those frozen silences.

Dave said, “What the hell?”

Lana said, “I got sober three years ago.”

Rita said, “Rubbish. You’re gone every Friday night. Saturday, too, these days.”

“She is,” Dave said, and now, his tone wasn’t nearly as genial. “For the last couple of years, since I moved up here, she’s been with me.”

“Have you told him?” Rita asked her daughter. “If you don’t, he’ll find out from somebody else, and that’ll be the marriage over. Best tell him now.”

“What, that I’ve had sex with too many men who didn’t care a bit for me?” she said. “Yeh, Mum. I’ve told him. That’s what you do when you think nobody can love you. When you think that otherwise, nobody will ever even touch you, and you’ll die alone.”

It was like Luka’d been shot. He sat there, frozen, thinking,Elle’s hearing this,and then he took a breath and said, “It’s true. I know, because I’ve done the same thing. Reckon you raised a couple of sluts, Mum.”

Dave said, his tone pretty bloody forceful, “She’s the best thing that’s happened to me, I’ll tell you that. Our pasts are dead and gone.”

A faint snort. That was Gran. She said, “They’ve told you, Rita. How’d you get all these kids, now? Find them in a cabbage patch, did you?”

“That’s no secret,” Rita said, and her color was high now. “What was I meant to do when I fell pregnant with Lana? In Aussie,” she told Dave, because, apparently, why not. “Seventeen, and the useless sod buggered off as soon as I told him. Met Sofia’s dad in the pub here, though. Like mother, like daughter, eh.”

“Well, no, Mum,” Sofia said.

“That’s right,” Rita said. “You’re off men now. You’ve got sense. And Luka? He was an Argentinian fella on a working holiday. Big, strapping bloke. Twenty-one, twenty-two, something like that. Good-looking, young and willing, and a bloody good worker. I did well for myself there. Sperm donors, eh. Some pay for it. I got them for free.”

Luka told Dave, “Ignore that if you can. Lana’s worth it.” The steam wanting to come out of his ears, or maybe something else. Maybe he wanted to block his ears so he couldn’t hear. Or to leave again, like always, but he couldn’t do that. He was here for Lana.

“You don’t have to tell me, mate.” Dave looked like he’d been blown about in a strong wind, and his ears had turned red, but he was still here, sitting in the chair like he’d been planted there, and you wouldn’t move him easily. “I know it.”

“I’ll be helping Dave in the garage,” Lana said. “Mechanic,” she told Luka. “He has his own place. And I’m leaving, Mum.”

Luka’d thought the atmosphere was tense before. Now, it was thermonuclear. Even though nobody said anything, and nobody moved. Rita finally said, “What?”

“I’m leaving the farm,” Lana said. “Moving in with Dave. Marrying Dave. Working with Dave.”

“You can’t,” her mother said. “If you leave, you won’t get your half, and you need your half.”

“You’ll disinherit her, you mean,” Luka said.

“That was always the agreement,” Rita said. “That the girls would get it, but they’d stay and work it until they did. That’s no surprise to you, and nobody can tell me otherwise.”

Sofia said, “I should be chuffed about this, I know. But Mum—no. It’s mine and Lana’s. It always has been. It’s a woman thing!”

“Too right,” Rita said. “And now she doesn’t want it. More for you, girl.”

“No.”

It didn’t come from Luka, though he’d have loved to be able to say it. It came from his grandmother. Everybody stared athernow, and she said it again. “No.”

“Mum,” Rita said. The flush on her cheekbones was deeper now. “She doesn’t want it. She’s not willing to work for it. Tostayfor it. I gave my life to this farm. I’m not giving it to her, and that’s that.”

“Maybe,” Gran said. “But it’s not yours to give. And it won’t be, because I’ve redone my will.”

His mum had been red. As he watched, the color drained out of her face. And that was the deck reshuffled. That was hanging upside-down on the carnival ride, and being left there.

“You’ll have a place here,” Gran said, “and a bit of money coming to you, too, but the farm goes to the girls. Reckon you’re all right,” she told Luka.