Set In Stone

by Ros Baxter

  Lou swallowed. ‘So what do you need from me?’

  Her father nodded, knowing they had a deal. ‘Well,’ he said, rubbing his chin, ‘first I need help with the books. I need you to look over them for me, see if you can see … anything. Anything I might have missed.’

  Lou nodded. Forensic accounting was a core part of mergers and acquisitions. It wasn’t her training, but she’d become pretty expert. She could hear in his voice there was more. She knew her father was good, at least as clever as she was. He would have been over those books a thousand times. ‘What else?’

  He paced down the veranda, running his hands through his hair as he came back again. ‘I’ve got some land,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘Actually, the council has some land. It’s good, it was a good investment. I read the tea leaves, I guess.’ He shrugged humbly; there wasn’t a trace of arrogance in this man. ‘I could see what the gas companies were doing, the kind of land they were after. I knew they’d come calling.’ He studied Lou hard. ‘But now I need to make the deal. And I need to make a really good one.’

  Lou nodded, the pieces coming together.

  ‘Who is it? Which company?’ She started to search for and catalogue all the things she knew about these companies. Pieces of ASIC information, share price data, everything she knew about how mining companies operated.

  ‘Clean Gas,’ her father said slowly. ‘You know them?’

  ‘Not really. A bit.’ Lou knew they’d been expanding aggressively, and their stock price had soared. One of her clients had done a deal with them not too long ago. A good deal, too. Everyone had been happy, in the end.

  Another thought entered her head. Gage, the night before. His reaction to Piper’s question about whether Lou was a lawyer, and that perhaps she might help them with the gas company. Perhaps Gage was negotiating with them too? By the look on his face, it wasn’t proving easy. Piper had told her how tough times were in the drought, and Lou knew how much money was available in gas right now. It was the only piece of mining that was still growing, given the economic climate. Maybe she could kill two birds with one stone? Repay his hospitality; help him out with his deal too? If anyone knew how to negotiate a solid deal, it was Lou.

  ‘How long are you staying?’ her father went on. He never asked her for anything. He’d never been angry that she stayed with her mother, through all of it, right until the end, and he never blamed her when she finally turned on her heel and left for good without a word. He’d never asked her to stay, back then, and he’d never asked her reasons for leaving. He’d funded her education and did the best he could, in his own clueless way. He visited her sometimes in the city, but he’d made no demands.

  Lou looked at him now, pacing Gage’s veranda, and she could see how worried he was. His face had looked the same for the last thirty years – long and wrinkled and dimpled and charming, with that perpetually worried air. But now it looked different. Worry had bitten deep into it. And he looked thinner.

  Lou could never understand why he had stayed. After Skye was done with him, he had no real place here. But she guessed that was just the way Gary loved – completely. It was the way he’d loved Skye, and it was the way he loved his adopted home. When he’d run for mayor, it had seemed the most natural thing in the world. To Skye, and to the townsfolk, this brilliant, sweet outsider had come to help and save them all. Come to manage all their problems.

  Lou looked at her father, and a wave of love and affection washed over her. ‘How long do you need me?’

  He held out his arms to her and she stepped into them.

  Chapter

  6

  Killing me softly

  Sunday was a rare bubble of quiet in Lou’s life. Nothing open, nothing to do after she spent a couple of hours on her laptop, arranging leave and handing over critical pieces of work to her second-in-command. She found herself wandering Sunset Downs in Piper’s wake. The girl was the most enthusiastic tour guide she had ever encountered. All of Piper’s economy of movement and speech disappeared when she was out and about on the property. She became a lover – waxing lyrical about the physical beauty of the place, sure, but also about its processes and products. She showed Lou the feed sheds like other girls her age might show off a new dress, as she explained Gage’s strategy for getting through the drought. ‘We’ll be right,’ she said. ‘Dad’s got things sorted, as much as anyone can. We’re already getting along better than most.’

  Then Piper took Lou to the experimental paddocks, where Gage was trialling hardy new crops like guar, a legume native to the desert regions of India and Pakistan. She beamed as she showed Lou the green stalks and told her: ‘They use it all, y’know, the protein, hulls, endosperm – all of it.’

  Lou nodded like she knew what endosperm was.

  Piper was full of agricultural knowledge and it became quickly apparent that she had worked beside her father almost from the moment she could walk, listening, absorbing and becoming authoritative on every subject from weather patterns to international trade. As they walked to the horses’ paddock, she even told Lou about deciding to leave school. She knew exactly what she wanted to be, and how to go about it. She was continuing her study in agriculture and horticulture via distance education. She told Lou she dreamed of working the property with her father and, in time, opening a restaurant there, relying solely on local produce. When Lou asked her why she couldn’t wait until after school, Piper’s face darkened. ‘I don’t like young people,’ she said shortly. ‘They’re irresponsible.’

  Oh man, if only Piper had known Gage back in the day.

  ‘And they’re mean,’ she continued, jumping on a horse and racing it around the pen.

  Lou knew damn sure that was the truth. She tried to imagine what variety of mean Piper had been subjected to, the only child of Gage Westin and the granddaughter of Bo. Growing up with two taciturn men might have made Piper a little less than tolerant for some of the antics of her schoolmates, and she must have seemed very different to the other kids. Lou’s heart ached as she watched the girl whip around the pen like the devil was at her back. The ride seemed to improve her mood.

  ‘Animals are never mean – never!’ she called, then she vaulted from the animal like she was a circus girl and landed neatly at Lou’s feet, red-faced and panting, but her eyes flashing with joy.

  ‘Not all young people are mean,’ Lou started, wanting to convince this girl of … something.

  ‘Hmm,’ Piper had said shortly, waving her hand as though the conversation was done. ‘Maybe, but I never met many of those ones. Least not at school.’ She paused. ‘That’s not quite true, maybe one.’ Then she waved her hand around again, to indicate the property. ‘Some of the ones I met here are okay. Jackaroo’s kids and that kind of thing.’ Her face was so open and so honest, and Lou reflected that she knew quite a lot, for someone who was only seventeen.

  Suddenly it was Monday, and already Skye had been discharged. There she was, sitting on the veranda, braiding Piper’s hair. Lou knew she shouldn’t be wishing her mother had stayed in a little longer.

  She trudged up the steps, trying to assess how Piper felt about being beautified by Skye. Her eyes were closed and her face serene.

  ‘Hi Mum,’ Lou said neutrally. ‘You got back early.’

  Piper’s eyes flicked open as she heard Lou’s voice. The girl smiled, leaning back against Skye’s knees. She looked much, much younger than she had yesterday, giving Lou the tour of the property. Lou noticed she was wearing a simple cotton dress, and a smear of pink gloss adorned her full, pretty lips. Lou narrowed her eyes at her mother.

  Skye smiled. She was sitting on the edge of one of the squatter’s chairs, wearing a pale green dress that tied at her tiny waist. Her legs were crossed, a sparkly flip-flop hanging from one pink-toed foot as she concentrated on the braid. She flicked her eyes over Lou’s tank top and jeans. ‘Bo got me early,’ she said, returning her eyes to the braid. She giggled. ‘I said you were coming, but he said he missed me and I sho
uld come home with him.’

  ‘And what did Dr O’Brien make of that?’

  Skye waved her hand as though swatting away a fly. ‘Huh. That old grizzleguts, she’s never happy.’

  ‘Go figure,’ Lou said, stamping past the two to get to the kitchen. She’d had a restless night, full of dreams that chased and clawed at her, and as a result she’d slept later than she’d planned. ‘Oncologists have such a fun job.’ It was a mean comment, and Lou couldn’t decide what had inspired it. She’d been many things to her mother over the years – a disappointment, a burden, a stranger – but she was sure she’d never been mean. She just didn’t have it in her. Not even on that night that had changed everything. But something hurt about watching Skye sit there with the delightful, unpretentious Piper, braiding her hair and either coercing or inducing her to wear lipstick.

  Lou closed her eyes against the memories that the sight conjured. Another time, another little girl leaning against her mother’s legs. Lou knew just how Piper felt – like the sun had deigned to stop by and make friends with you for a while. It was very, very warm in Skye’s orbit. And Lou realised that must go doubly, triply, for a girl who had never had a mother.

  Skye widened her eyes at Lou, who realised Piper mustn’t know about the cancer. She felt like kicking herself for the oncologist crack, and looked away, feeling guilty.

  ‘Your dad still seeing that nice librarian?’ Skye asked. Her voice was sweet and soft, but Lou knew enough about tone to know exactly what she was doing. The question wasn’t meant for Piper at all. And it found its mark, deep in Lou’s tummy.

  Lou turned when she heard Piper jump up. ‘I don’t know,’ she snapped, pulling viciously at the braid and grabbing the brush from Skye’s hands. ‘Far’s I know, it’s only been a few dates. Anyway –’ She ran the brush quickly through her hair, doing away with all the tiny remnants of braid. ‘It’s not really any of our business who Gage sees.’

  Lou tried not to smile. Piper’s vicious defence of her father was so like Gage – her eyes flashing, her body tensed for the fight, right down to those slender fists that were balled at her sides.

  Skye just smiled and started packing away her little sequinned case of ribbons and bands. ‘Still,’ she said when she was done, leaning back in her chair. ‘She seemed like such a nice young thing.’

  Did Lou imagine it, or was the emphasis on young? Not her imagination – she could see it in her mother’s eyes. Skye wanted to hurt her.

  Lou needed to say something, to make it okay for Piper, but her tummy was still spinning at the news. Gage had a girlfriend.

  ‘She’s fine, I guess,’ Piper said defiantly, moving far from Skye and settling herself on one of the stairs next to the timber post Lou was leaning against. ‘For a townie.’ She said the word like you might say ‘axe murderer’.

  Lou recovered her composure and held out a hand to Piper. ‘Will you help me find some brekky? I’m sure you ate hours ago.’

  The question did the trick. Piper looked down at the functional leather watch on her wrist and clucked her tongue. ‘Oh my God, Lou, it’s half nine. Haven’t you eaten yet?’ She rose quickly, a determined look on her face that almost worried Lou after the serious pancake feast she’d been witness to yesterday.

  ‘Short people don’t need to eat as much as you giants,’ Lou said by way of apology as she followed Piper into the house.

  Piper snorted. ‘You’re not a dwarf.’ And she laughed. ‘No offence to dwarves.’

  Lou was happy to follow the girl. Now that she had mentioned it, her tummy was starting to rumble, and she was sure Piper would find something to sate it. It also took them both away from Skye. And right now, that was exactly where she wanted to be.

  In The Land That Time Forgot, nothing could be done online, and if there was anything worse than a day of filling out forms, Lou now knew what it was: a day filling out forms with her mother in tow. Skye did not understand forms. More than that – they irritated her, with their tiny boxes and their lack of free text options. Completing insurance claims; going through the mill of change of circumstances forms at Centre-link; accompanying Skye to sign police statements; filling out lease applications on her behalf at Baxters Realty. By midday, Lou’s mother was tired, fractious and more than a little bitchy.

  ‘Thank God,’ Skye groaned as she sucked the dregs from the caramel milkshake Lou had bought her after she had declared she was ‘parched’, and Lou swung Gage’s ute into the long drive. She had felt a little uncomfortable driving it at first, but public transport simply wasn’t a viable option in Stone Mountain and Mr Robinson didn’t drive his cab on Monday. As she circled down by the stables, Lou noticed a big black motorbike lying on its side in a stand of flame trees, and wondered if it belonged to Gage. But it seemed a little showy for his style, and the careless way it had been parked didn’t gel with the way he treated his vehicles either.

  Lou pushed the thought away and sighed. ‘I said you could stay at home.’ She looked over at her mother. Skye’s mouth was pulled into a petulant line, and her skin was very pale. Lou reminded herself, for the hundredth time that morning, that her mother was very sick; that this wasn’t just her usual frustration with boring jobs. ‘I could have got authority for ones you needed to sign. Jeez, Mum, you only got out this morning. You need rest.’

  ‘I’m not dead yet,’ Skye growled as she dug into a silvery purse, flicked down the sun visor and started applying raspberry lipstick to her wide, full mouth.

  No such luck, Lou thought, knowing she didn’t quite mean it; a familiar instantaneous flash of guilt bloomed in her. But, on the other hand, she had been required to endure her mother trotting out her well-practised monologue about the overbearing nature of the bureaucracy at every office they had visited. Lou pulled over carefully into the little space near the main house, and turned off the ignition. She closed her eyes and tried to focus more on her mother and less on the overpowering smell of Gage in this damned car. For the last three hours, she’d felt like she was driving around in a bubble of cut-grass, sunshine, clean denim and whatever that spicy deodorant was that Gage favoured. ‘How do you feel, Mum? Do you think you should have a little nap this afternoon? Maybe I should get the doctor to come by?’

  ‘No,’ she said shortly, sticking her bottom lip out. ‘Bo and I are going fishing this afternoon.’

  Fishing? Skye had once said she’d rather shoot herself in the face than date a man whose idea of a good time involved the great outdoors. My, how the mighty had fallen.

  Like he had heard his name being taken in vain, Bo appeared from the house as Lou and Skye emerged from the car, Lou weighed down with bags of groceries.

  It was the first time Lou had seen Bo since her return to Stone Mountain. He had disappeared sometime after dropping Skye off from the hospital, and Lou couldn’t say she was sorry. Her memories of Gage’s father were far from pleasant. Twenty years ago, when Lou left town for good, Bo could only have been in his early forties but he had seemed far older. He would lurch down to the waterhole occasionally, silent and brooding, usually with a bottle of something tucked under his arm. He would perch himself on the grass and watch the antics of the kids, until Gage noticed him and escorted him away. Or he would sit on the long veranda of the Railway Hotel, a beer propped up in front of him, looking unwashed and full of bad ideas. Even then, looking at Bo, it had been possible to see where Gage got his hot-cowboy good looks, but somehow, with Bo, handsome had turned to seedy and corpulent, and a stain of bitter recklessness had marred his features.

  Lou blinked as Bo descended the stairs from the veranda and took the groceries from her. ‘Hello, Louise,’ he said, his voice an older, bittersweet version of Gage’s deep honey. ‘Long time, no see.’ He looked her up and down. ‘You look as pretty as a picture.’ Lou blinked again as she relinquished the groceries in shock and took in Gage’s father. He looked good. Really good. Almost as tall as his son, he was well dressed and clean shaven. His face was squarer than Gage’s; h
e reminded Lou of a handsome country preacher. His hair was cropped and almost completely grey, but his green eyes were clear and bright and his skin had the tanned vigour of a man who had lived a clean life in the outdoors, which just went to show Mother Nature had a sense of humour. His physique was finely muscled, and he wore simple blue jeans, a checked shirt and brown, elastic-sided boots. The only nod to the life Lou knew Bo had really lived was the presence of deep lines around his eyes and mouth, and a long scar running down one cheek, close to his ear. Lou remembered the origin of that scar. She had seen the newspaper the day after the biggest brawl Stone Mountain had ever seen – Bo frozen in black and white, bloody and dissolute, on its front cover, being hauled away in cuffs.

  Gage hadn’t come to school for three days afterwards. Lou remembered, even now, how she had felt for him. She knew what it was like to have an infamous parent.

  ‘Mr Westin?’ Lou tried hard not to make it sound like a question, but the shock transformation was too much.

  ‘It’s Bo.’ He laughed, a kind, warm sound. ‘And I don’t blame you for looking so surprised, love. But I guess twenty years is long enough for anyone to clean up their act. Even me.’

  Lou shook her head and tried to make some apologetic words, but he cut her off.

  ‘Now don’t worry, Louise,’ Bo said, holding out a hand to Skye, who took it like a blushing bride. ‘I get it.’ He started up the steps, Skye’s hand in one of his, the groceries in his other. He stopped and turned back. ‘Didn’t take me quite twenty years.’ He laughed again and Lou felt like the young Marty McFly in Back to the Future, when he sees the new reality of his successful parents, and feels the world has turned some revolutions while he wasn’t looking. ‘It was Gage. After Pip was born, he told me I could clean up or fuck off for good.’