The Road Home Read Online Free PDF

and tan kelpie’s ears, cradling his head in her hands as she crouched down. ‘Oh, Dippa. I’ve missed you. How’ve ya been, hey?’ She lovingly patted his muzzle where it had greyed.
    Dippa tried his hardest to lick Lara’s hands as she felt a nudge under her arm and another wet nose pressed up close.
    ‘Hey, Roy. You’re lookin’ good too.’ Roy was Noah’s old Red Cloud farm dog and was a few years younger than Dippa. His body didn’t give away his age; Noah must still take him out a lot for a run behind the sheep.
    The dogs followed her to the back door of the house and sat themselves down on the concrete floor of the veranda. Lara opened the flywire door and let herself in. She loved that she didn’t have to use keys. She’d remembered not to lock her car – Noah had laughed himself silly last time she’d done that.
    The wooden door shut loudly behind her as she moved along the passageway, looking up at its high ceilings. She stopped at the second door. Her door. She opened it and walked into the light-green room with its white cupboards and bed.
    ‘Oh my God!’ She laughed, her hand coming to her mouth. Stuck on the wall were posters of Pearl Jam, Counting Crows, Nirvana, and a large one of Aaron Jeffery as Alex on
McLeod’s Daughters
. Mm, nice and strong. A lot like Jack. She smiled at the thought. Lara threw her case on the bare mattress and coughed as a dust cloud reached her. Noah obviously hadn’t stepped foot in here since she’d left.
    She pulled open the doors of her cupboard and was surprised tofind it half full. About four sets of jeans, her boots down the bottom, some singlets and work shirts. She’d always left her work clothes there ready to use when she’d come back from boarding school or uni. Most of it probably still fitted, and for a brief moment she thought about getting changed and helping Noah with the shearing.
    She slipped off her high heels and walked back out to inspect the rest of the house, deliberately bypassing the first door. It was her parents’ room and she wasn’t ready for that yet. Noah’s room looked much the same, too, except he now had a double bed and all his walls were clean of his sticker collection and repainted in a lighter shade of blue. Perhaps that was Amanda’s doing?
    Lara walked through the lounge room to the kitchen, flicked on the kettle and checked the freezer to see what she could make for dinner. After pulling out a small roast to defrost on the sink, she headed to the laundry and put on a load of washing for Noah. Then she sat back in her dad’s old vinyl recliner, resting her legs on the foot rest. Nothing had changed. It was as if it was 1999 and she was sixteen again. It was the same brown square-patterned lino in the kitchen and dining room, the same cream carpet in the lounge. There were small differences, of course – a dishwasher, she noticed, and the fridge and washing machine had both been updated. But otherwise it was a massive time warp. She could imagine her mum as clear as day standing in the kitchen as she wiped down the bench-top, or her dad taking off his boots by the door and leaving sweaty sock prints on the jarrah floorboards in the hallway. Tears threatened as she felt the memories engulf her. She recalled the number of times she’d crawled onto Dad’s lap in this very chair.
    She stared at the high ceiling and realised the brown stain hadgone. She craned her head around, looking more closely. The ceiling wasn’t sagging in the kitchen, either. Noah must have put in a new ceiling at some stage. Lara smiled and pulled herself up out of the chair. She didn’t want to look in her parents’ room as she liked remembering it the way it was, but knew she couldn’t put it off for ever. She’d often wondered what Noah had done with their bed and the old jarrah cupboards they’d inherited from their grandparents.
    Lara walked to their door, wondering for a moment why Noah hadn’t moved into this room as it was so much