Page 152 of Just One Look

“I’m all right,” he said. Gobsmacked, that was what he was. Lying on the turf staring up into the lights with the rain beating down on his face and the wind knocked out of him. Unable to breathe.

“I’ve left you something, though,” she said. “Money. Reckon you can use money. Though with your luck, I’ll live to a hundred and three.”

“I’m all right,” he said again. “I don’t need it.”

“It’s not your choice,” she said. “It’s mine, and it’s fair. Did you think,” she asked her daughter, “that I’d let you disinherit my grandson?”

“Mum.” Rita’s voice was shaking now. “We talked about this. I’ve worked my wholelifefor this. For the farm to be mine.”

“No,” her mother said.“Youtalked about it. When my husband died,” she told Dave, “run over by his own tractor, the stupid bugger, this was all sheep and cows. I had to sell them. Had to sell most of the land, too, because he had a whopping great mortgage on it. Rita was fourteen, and I was forty, a great lump of a woman without any skills of my own. Oh, men lined up at the door right enough. For the land. I wasn’t stupid. I knew that. And me not knowing anything but farm work, and then only the bits he trusted me to do. I planted the trees because it was something the two of us could manage on our own, Rita and me. Everybody laughed at me, said nobody’d pay enough money for avocadoes to be worth it, not in En Zed, and Aussie grew their own avos. Where would I sell them? Fifty years ago, that was. When I put the hives in the manuka? Same thing. Nobody outside of En Zed even knowing what it was, and nobody willing to pay for it, saying the taste was too strong. Hand to mouth, the two of us, eating from the veggie garden and the chooks, trading jars of honey for beef, and Rita leaving school at sixteen and helping me. Nearly lost the place three or four times, but we didn’t. Things are different now, of course, because those beehives and trees turned out to be worth something, didn’t they. Seems I wasn’t such a silly chook after all. But I didn’t do so well by my daughter, maybe. You took a wrong turn somewhere,” she told Rita. “Could never get you back, though I’ll say this for you, you’re still a hard worker. I’m better with trees than I am with kids. Not made for it, I reckon.”

The longest speech he’d ever heard his Gran make. She’d saved up, it seemed.

“Mum,” Rita said. “You can’t do this.”

Gran turned tired eyes on her. “It’s already done. Been done for years. Never wanted the drama, is why I didn’t tell you. Well, now we’ve got the drama. Probably for the best.”

“Why would I keep working here,” Rita said,“sweatinghere, giving this place my life, if it’ll never be mine?”

“You’re sixty-eight last February,” Gran said. “You’ve got your pension and your superannuity. You can’t take it with you, the farm. What does it matter? But if you want to retire, go on and do it.”

“And live here,” Rita said. “In this house with you. And know it’ll never be mine.”

“Buy yourself a wee caravan, if you like,” Gran said. “Do a bit of travel. Do all the things you couldn’t do before. It doesn’t get any easier after sixty-eight. If you want to do it, it’s time. I couldn’t. You can.”

“And how is Sofia meant to manage on her own?” Rita asked. “Without me, and without Lana?”

At last, Sofia said something. She’d been sitting silent, all her usual cheery assurance gone. “I think,” she said, “Lana may want to work with me, still, if it’s just us. We’ll get some of those kids on working holiday to help, hire somebody on, whatever. And I won’t sleep with them. And, Mum?” Her mother didn’t answer, but she went on anyway. “I knew she wasn’t drinking anymore. Gran knew. Why didn’t you know?”

His mother’s mouth opened, then closed, and suddenly, Luka felt a great wash of pity for her. He shouldn’t, maybe. He did anyway. He said, “You can’t give what you’ve never had. Get the caravan, Mum. Park it here. Or buy a section and build a wee house of your own, if you like, and plant some trees that are yours. Give yourself the space. I was happier when I left, and you could be, too.”

Gran said, “If you want the money now, Rita, you can have it. Your choice. It’s no use to me.”

His mother was still silent, still at a loss, and Lana said, “If it’s you and me, Sofia? Us working together, making the decisions?” She looked at Dave, who nodded and held her hand. “I’ll do it,” she said, her face breaking out in a smile. She laughed, then. When had Luka last heard her laugh? “I’ll do it.”