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great
pleasure in reaching and opening the door for her.
    “Seems like I am always opening things for
you, Miss Henry,” I said, with a crooked tilt to my mouth. I expected her to
blanch, to look at me with a double take and some ounce of
recognition—something, anything. Instead, she strode a defiant, determined line
and without missing a beat, she said, “Oh, fuck off,” walking straight through
the opened door and leaving her dad and me in stunned silence.
    A real piece of work.

 
     
    Chapter Six
     
    Miranda
     
     
    “I don’t give a
damn, young lady. You check that behaviour and leave that attitude at the door,
do you hear me?”
    My dad was pissed, clearly. Gone were the
warm, welcome smiles and niceties from mere moments before. Instead, a raging
bear had come bursting into my room, his face so red, a vein pulsing in his
neck; I thought he was about to burst a blood vessel. I had sat on my old bed,
taken my shades off and rubbed at my fatigued eyes, zoning in and out of his
rant-like speech but listening enough to take in words like ‘ashamed’,
‘disgusted’ and ‘embarrassed’. All the strong ones. I hadn’t the energy to
argue, to say sorry, because I wasn’t sure that I really was. Well, maybe
taking my anger out on ‘gate boy’ was not really fair, nor had been nearly
running him over in the first place; still, the moment I drove into the drive
and spotted his yellow Ford, I knew for certain that this was the person Dad
had hired to take Max’s place. I felt my stomach twist at the memory of his
hand pounding on my back window as he yelled obscenities at me. I had stopped because
I had seen him come off the gate hard, and momentarily winded. I had had every
intention of asking if he was okay, but as soon as he started mouthing off at
me, the monster caged inside me reared its ugly head and instead I flipped him
off and left him behind in a trail of dust, relishing the thought that I had
the last say, or action anyway. A brave move surely, until I had come to the
realisation that I was about to be face to face with him. My heart had pounded
as I rolled into the drive. Maybe I would just apologise and explain that I was
just having a life crisis with coming back to Ballan to do my daughterly duty.
At the end of the day, I really should be thanking him. After all, he was going
to be looking after Moira, meaning I wouldn’t have to. I could probably just
visit for a little while and be free again, as long as my parents didn’t want
to investigate what I wanted to do for the rest of my life now that I was home
from Paris. To be honest, I really had no idea myself, and, try as I might, I
was not becoming a farmer’s wife. No way.
    So sure, I would extend a peace offering of
sorts to yellow Ford driver, and I had completely intended to, until I came to
a halt out the front of the homestead and saw him standing there on the
verandah looking mad as hell next to Dad. His arms crossed across his chest,
glaring down at me.
    Fuck!
    Okay, so I had clearly not thought any of
it through. I hadn’t meant to be so hostile towards Dad; if anything, I wished
I could rewind the moment and just have hugged him and said it was good to be
home like any good daughter would, instead of stomping my way and telling a
stranger where to go. So I took the lecture—took it with every hollered shout
from my dad—as it really was a sign of being home. The amount of times I had
been lectured as I sat on my bed was too numerous to count, but unlike all
those times, I responded in a way that really did silence my dad.
    “I’m sorry,” I whispered, looking down at
my hands. I felt like a child, not like some woman of the world I thought I
was. Maybe it was the bone-jarring fatigue that had stripped away all my
bravado, or the fact that I had never seen my dad this angry before, not even
when I was caught underage drinking at Tyler Mackie’s. No, not even then.
    He was silent now. I didn’t look up to see
if his