The Good Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page A

Zach’s name in the dust and wiping it away. She takes a fifty from beside the Easter egg her father has left her on the top of the fridge and heads out the door. The seat of the old sedan burns the backs of her legs, and the steering wheel is just as hot. She leans over and winds down the passenger-side window, checks under the visors for any spiders, takes the keys, throws a faded T-shirt onto the back seat and begins the necessary praying to get the old girl started.
    The idle is rough, and for a while Rebecca sits coaxing the motor, talking to it, rocking to spur it on. At the front of the property she jumps out to open the gate and get back in before the vehicle chokes. Her rushing makes the dogs bark and leap up beside her. It’s a comical routine – her tripping over dogs, the shuddering and gulping of the car, her fumbling with the gate latch and yelling at the dogs to stay in the yard, and then the sprint back and the mad scramble behind the wheel. She catches it before it dies, and sits revving the engine to be sure.
    She drives through the gate with the car door open. The air is thick with exhaust fumes and dust churned up from where she’s spun the wheels like some hothead. The dogs run out through the gate and spread out in all directions under the line of gums.
    ‘Hey!’ she shouts. ‘Get back here!’
    She gets out and whistles them, blinks the grit from her eyes. In the haze she sees someone walking down the road. The car chooses that moment to chug and cut out. Rebecca flops her head back, looks up at the cloudless sky. ‘Bitch of a thing,’ she mutters.
    She gets back in and tries to start the car – but of course it won’t start, and after a few turns it’s flooded. Divine intervention perhaps; it was beginning to feel like too much effort for a cigarette.
    A real hassle though, because there’s only one person who would be out walking this time of day, in this heat, dressed in a baseball cap and leggings, white top on, white teeth flashing – perfect, practised smile, like her European-sounding voice – and it’s someone Rebecca doesn’t think she should be seeing right now, not considering what she was doing a couple of hours earlier. She gets the feeling a mother can look into a girl’s eyes and see if that girl has been doing anything untoward with her son, and Mrs Kincaid more than anyone would have that ability – especially now Rebecca knows she’s an artist. It’s only increased the mystical aura around her.
    ‘Having trouble with the car, Rebecca?’ Mrs Kincaid says.
    ‘Not meant to be driving anyway … so probably just as well.’ Rebecca climbs out, sees there’s a smear of dirt on her calf and tries to rub it off.
    ‘Where were you going?’
    ‘Into town.’
    Because Mrs Kincaid is always walking, jogging, riding a bike past the front gate, the dogs bound up to her as though greeting a long-lost member of the pack. Rebecca’s heard Mrs Kincaid’s cultured tones on still afternoons, speaking softly to the dogs through the fence. An animal lover – it’s written all over her. She does the no-eye-contact thing and shows the dogs the back of her hand, curls in her fingers, doesn’t pat them on top of their heads but scratches under their chins.
    ‘Yes,’ she says in a soft voice, ‘you’re a good boy.’
    ‘I’ll have to wait,’ Rebecca says, swiping at the long grass by the side of the road with her foot, ‘and try again in a minute.’
    The cap shades Mrs Kincaid’s eyes and the top half of her face, but her sculptured chin and full bottom lip give enough of an idea of her beauty; the ponytail, sneakers, lack of make-up all somehow add to this.
    ‘Isn’t your father home?’
    ‘Nup.’
    ‘What do you need in town?’
    ‘I was …’ Rebecca pulls what feels like a childish expression. ‘I was going in to get a pack of cigarettes.’
    ‘Oh, well, I can help you with that.’
    Mrs Kincaid unzips the money belt she has around her waist and takes out a