The Australians' Brides. Lilian Darcy

was certain that she’d seen shame in him when he’d said those words.

       D’you honestly think you’re the only one it’s ever happened to?

      Shame? Why?

      They had common ground, it wasn’t a source of shame, and she thought they should grab at it and make use of it, but he clammed up and wouldn’t talk about it, said it wasn’t important, he couldn’t explain, she should just forget it. Carly’s arrival on the veranda a moment or two later gave him an easy way out that he snatched up as shamelessly as a serial dater might claim, “I lost your phone number.”

      “Woo-hoo, Carlz!” he said. “Ready for another big day?”

      Knowing how much she didn’t want to feel pressured about her writing and therefore not wanting to pressure Callan in return, Jac let it go for the time being. Instead, she hugged Carly, closed Lockie’s old notebook and took it into the house. Four pages was enough for now. Four pages was good. Even a sentence would have been good, so four pages was actually great.

      Three days later, she’d written fifteen.

      They still weren’t a part of anything. Too disjointed and personal for a story. Too poetic for a diary. Not jazzy and chatty enough for a blog on the Net.

      She wrote about the colors of her favorite hen’s feathers in the sun, about the feel of bread dough in her hands, and the words that Kerry had used when she’d taught the recipe and the technique. She wrote two pages of stuff she imagined herself yelling at Kurt, not in his huge executive office or out front of Carly’s preschool, but the things she would have yelled if she’d been standing on the rock ledge at the water hole about to jump in, while Kurt was down on the sand—and okay, admittedly, since this was a fantasy, cowering there.

      She wrote out the words six hundred thousand acres and they looked really good on the page, much better than just the numbers. They looked so good that she found out some other numbers from Callan—the distance around the perimeter of Lake Frome, the length of all the fences on his land, the height above sea level of Mount Hindley and Mount Fitton and Mount Neil—and wrote those down in words, also.

      She wrote about all the new things Carly did, and the new discoveries she made.

      Including a snake.

      Yep, bit of a shock, that. She and Carly had gone out to collect eggs before lunch on Tuesday and hadn’t even seen the huge, silent thing coiled against the shade cloth at the side of the chook house until they were close enough to touch.

      Oh … dear … Lord.

      Her heart had felt like it had stopped, but Carly’s scream was more one of surprise than fear. Kerry had come running from her vegetable garden and had quickly been able to tell them it was only a carpet python.

      Right.

       Only.

      Harmless, Kerry had said. Really. Wouldn’t even squeeze you to death, which had been Jac’s second theory, once she’d abandoned the toxic venom idea.

      “Take a look at it, Carly,” Kerry had invited, and Carly had looked.

      From a little farther away, so had Jac.

      They’d seen the markings and Kerry had told Carly her version of an Australian aboriginal myth about a lizard and a snake who had taken turns to paint markings on each other’s backs, which had kept both Carly and Jacinda looking at the python long enough to really see its beauty.

      Because it was beautiful. The markings were like the neat stitches in a knitting pattern, with subtle variations of creams and yellows on a background of brownish gray—gorgeous and neat and intricate. Jacinda was discovering so much that was beautiful on Callan’s land, and Callan watched her doing it, knew she was writing about it, and seemed to be happy with that, even though he didn’t say very much.

      On Thursday, they drove for three hours with Carly to Leigh Creek in the truck, and picked up fence posts and postcards, among other supplies. The town was modern and neat and pretty, with young, white-trunked eucalyptus trees and drought-tolerant shrubs flowering pink, yellow and red. For lunch they stopped in a tiny and much older railway town called Copley just a few miles to the north of Leigh Creek and ate at Tulloch’s Bush Bakery and Quandong Café—well-known in the area, apparently, as well as a popular tourist stop.

      “You have to taste a quandong pie for dessert,” Callan decreed, so the three of them ate the wild peach treats, which tasted deliciously tangy and tart, something like rhubarb, inside a shortcrust pastry with crumbly German-style streusel on top.

      Jac sat in the café for a little longer and wrote her postcards, while Callan entertained Carly by taking her for a wander around the quiet little town. The postcards were tough, and there were lots of places where her pen hovered over an uncompleted line while she searched for words. But she managed to fill the space in the end, and included Callan’s e-mail address. “I’d love to hear from you, if you get a chance,” she told both her brothers, hoping they would realize that she meant it, hoping they’d care enough to respond.

      On the long journey home, Carly fell asleep in the seat between them, and with her sweet-scented little head on Jac’s shoulder, Jac got sleepy as well. They’d left pretty early this morning, and Callan had even let her drive for part of the journey. In a truck of this size, on outback roads, it had been a challenge but she couldn’t have chickened out. It seemed important, right now, to push herself in new ways, to prove her own strength—to herself, more than to anyone else.

      Proving yourself did definitely leave you sleepy, though.

      The smooth gravel of the road hummed and hissed beneath the wheels, and even the sight of a group of kangaroos bounding away across the red ground didn’t do more than make her eyes widen again for a few moments.

      Callan teased her when she woke up again. “You had a good nap, there, judging by the size of the wet patch on your shirt.”

      “Oh! Was I—?”

      Drooling? True, Carly sometimes did, in her sleep.

      Without speaking, he handed Jac a tissue, but there was no wet patch that she could find. She wadded the tissue up and pelted him with it. “I was not!”

      “Snoring, muttering, reciting Shakespeare and your bank account number. Kept me awake, so thanks.”

      “I was not! Pass me another tissue!” Even though it wasn’t a very effective weapon.

      “Okay, I won’t mention any of the other things you do in your sleep.”

      “I snoozed lightly. For about ten minutes.”

      “Forty-five, actually.”

      “You mean we’re nearly back?” Taking a better look at the surrounding country, she recognized Mount Hindley approaching to the right. She knew its distinctive silhouette, now. “Oh, we are! I really did sleep!”

      “Yeah, my conversation was that interesting.”

      “You didn’t say a word!”

      They grinned at each other over Carly’s head and it just felt good.

      On Friday evening, he asked her, “Do you still want to see the animals drinking, down at the water?”

      “I’d love to.”

      “Because we could do it tomorrow, if you want.”

      Apart from Thursday’s trip into town, he’d been working hard since Sunday to get the new mustering yard completed, going out to Springer’s Well with Pete first thing every morning and not returning until late in the afternoon, leaving Lockie behind after that first day because of School of the Air. The mustering yard was almost completed now, Jacinda knew, ready for the next roundup of cattle for trucking to the sales down south.

      Pete had had enough of the twice-daily drive between Arakeela Downs and Nepabunna by Monday afternoon, on top of the even rougher trip out