Morgan's Law (29 page)

‘What are you talking about, Ruth?' Albert said, frowning at his wife.

‘Albert, for once in your life admit it. We all knew what Rose was doing. She flaunted her affair with Bluey Jenkins in front of your father to punish him.' She turned to Sarah. ‘She came home one afternoon and had the hide to tell her father that she was pregnant with Bluey's child. Asked what he was going to do about it. Just like that—brazen as you please. Stood toe to toe with her father and announced she was carrying a bastard child and dared him to react.'

‘What happened?' Sarah shivered despite the heat of the day as she pictured a young girl, terrified and alone, bravely standing her ground against the wrath of her tyrant of a father.

Albert turned away to stare out the window. ‘I'd never seen him so angry. I remember shaking in my boots, waiting for him to explode. But he didn't. He went pale. I can't remember a time before then, or since, that Patrick Morgan was ever rendered speechless, but he was that night.'

Sarah didn't dare speak in case Albert stopped talking.

‘He left the house and didn't come back until the early hours of the morning. He locked Rose in her room and forbade anyone to speak to her. The next evening when I returned she was gone.'

‘Did your father go after Bluey that night? Did
he
kill him?' ventured Sarah when it seemed Albert was not going to add anything else.

‘Bluey Jenkins came to the house the morning after Rose left—he didn't even know she was gone.'

‘What did he want?'

‘He came to announce he'd got Rose pregnant and that he wanted what was owed to him, otherwise he'd tell the whole district he'd knocked up a Morgan. He gave Dad the name of a shonky doctor in the city where Rose could have the situation fixed and no one would be any the wiser.' Albert's voice sounded cold, lifeless.

‘They were going to send Rose for an abortion?'

‘Apparently. Only she was already gone by then and Bluey was lucky he left here still breathing—barely, but he was alive.'

‘But someone killed him later.'

‘And the bastard got what he deserved.' Albert turned to look at her with a steady, authoritative glare. ‘Whoever killed him did the world a favour.'

It was clear that the old man was not going to say anything more on the subject. Sarah bit back her frustration, but was at least satisfied to discover that her gran hadn't been responsible for the shearer's death.

‘I guess, all things considered, she coped very well by herself,' said Sarah. ‘I have even more respect for all she managed to accomplish in her life now that I know the story behind it.' Ruth gave a bitter guffaw and Sarah turned a sharp glance her way. ‘Rose moved to a city thousands of miles away from her family and everyone she knew. She raised a baby alone, worked her entire life and not once did I ever hear her complain about anything. In my book that makes her pretty damn impressive.'

‘How do you think a seventeen-year-old single mother was able to afford a house?' Ruth asked venomously.

‘She worked hard.'

Ruth gave a snort of contempt. ‘That girl had everything handed to her on a silver platter all her life—she wouldn't have known the meaning of hard work. I came into this family and I was treated like a slave. I took over the books, I did most of the cooking and cleaning, but even disgraced and pregnant, your damn father couldn't help but cushion Rose's fall.'

‘What are you talking about, woman?' Albert's tone was brittle.

‘Your father made Rose a deal. She was to leave Burrapine and not come back, and in return he'd make sure she had a roof over her head.'

‘What? That's ridiculous. He had no idea where she was. He mourned her loss to his dying day. How would you know this?'

‘Who do you think handled the details?'

The look of horrified disbelief on Albert's face echoed Sarah's feelings exactly.

‘You couldn't have. You've never said a word . . . not in all this time.'

‘Because I was glad she was gone.' The old woman's voice shook with suppressed outrage. ‘But don't think that each time I heard you moaning about your beloved sister, I didn't want to scream. My God, even when she'd shamed the family and broken your father's heart, she was still made into some martyr. She was no better than a common whore.'

‘Enough!' Albert's roar made both women jump. ‘You were so caught up in your spite that you couldn't see the kind and gentle girl my sister really was. She did nothing to deserve this hatred of yours, Ruth.'

‘She had everything and she still wasn't satisfied. I would have given anything to have a father who adored me the way your father adored Rose.'

‘Your father may have been a drunken brute, Ruth, but you had everything you ever wanted here. Your jealousy has stopped you appreciating that. You're the one I feel sorry for. Rose only ever tried to be your friend, but you pushed her away.'

‘All she had to do was respect her father's one wish. The only time he'd ever denied her anything and she couldn't stand it. She deliberately disobeyed your father and continued to see William Buchanan. As far as I'm concerned she got everything coming to her.'

‘He refused to let her marry the man she loved. I don't think you can dismiss something like that as though it were nothing,' Sarah interjected, unable to hold her tongue any longer.

‘William Buchanan was only marrying her to get his hands on Burrapine—any fool could see that. Patrick was doing what any good father should.' Ruth snapped.

‘This whole time you knew she was alive and well and didn't say a word. How could you do that to me, Ruth?'

Sarah heard the pain and shock in Albert's voice and saw Ruth's expression waver. But the old woman held her ground. ‘Despite what you think, I didn't do this to hurt you, Albert. I had no choice. Your father was adamant— she was never to come back here and in return he would provide for her and the child. If I told you she was still alive, you would have insisted she come home and where would she have been then?'

‘We would have worked out a way to help her. Anything would have been better than believing she was dead!'

‘Really, Albert?' Ruth asked quietly. ‘You know as well as I do that if you had stood up to him he would have made your life a living hell—worse than it already was. I couldn't have stood by and watched that. We had our future to think of and I couldn't let the choice Rose made ruin our lives—and believe me, she did make a choice.'

‘Surely after he died you could have told me?' Albert said sadly.

‘Why? So she could stroll back in and take away everything that I'd worked so hard for? She had you wrapped around her finger, Albert. I didn't want her to come between us again—I didn't want to have to share you.'

Sarah's gaze drifted towards the mantelpiece and a photo of Albert and Ruth on their wedding day. It showed what an attractive young woman Ruth had been. It was hard to believe that this lovely exterior hid such jealous insecurity.

Albert stared at his wife. ‘I feel like I've been living with a stranger for the last sixty years.' Sarah could tell from the gutted, hollow sound of the old man's voice that he was deeply wounded and shocked by the discovery of his wife's part in his sister's disappearance.

She felt sorry for Albert. Whatever his part in all of this and whatever his faults, she knew he genuinely had loved and missed his sister, but she realised she needed to leave these two to work this out by themselves. Leaving the room without a goodbye, she walked from the house without regret or remorse.

This house may have been a part of her legacy but it was full of secrets and lies, and the sheer weight of its sadness was suffocating her. She wanted no part of Burrapine and with each kilometre passing under her wheels she felt its hold on her slowly falling away.

Twenty-Seven

Sarah saw the dark shape on the road and tried to swerve. The car veered across the road and dropped down into a shallow ditch. The high-pitched revving of the engine and the squeal of the brakes echoed in Sarah's ears as she clutched at her chest and fought to breathe. For a terrifying moment she thought she was dying. As the car went down into the ditch, the seat belt had pulled across her abdomen, reefing her back into the seat and winding her. Her lungs felt as though they were being crushed and the harder she tried to force air into them the worse the pressure got, until finally something gave and her diaphragm filled with air once more.

With shaking fingers Sarah reached out and tried to restart the stalled vehicle but no amount of swearing or begging would convince it to start. There was no way she was going to be able to get this car out of the ditch without help.

She scanned her body carefully for injuries. Aside from the lingering ache in her chest, all seemed to be in working order. She eased out of the vehicle and began to assess the damage to Tash's car. Somehow there was barely a scratch on it. Had it been her BMW in the ditch, she was certain there would have been substantially more damage. They built cars like tanks back in the seventies. Admittedly, traction control in her BMW would probably have prevented her from leaving the road in the first place, but Sarah was just happy she hadn't written off her friend's car.

Of the kangaroo, there was no sign—thankfully she hadn't hit the animal.

Steadying herself against the side of the car, Sarah took a few cautious breaths and tried to focus on what to do next. Naturally there was no mobile coverage and a glance in either direction showed nothing but empty road. The sun was low on the horizon and she realised with a sinking sensation that it would soon be dark.

Don't panic
, she told herself.
Someone will come along
soon. And with the luck I'm having at the moment it'll be
Adam and I'll never live it down.

But forty minutes later there was no sign of another car, her phone battery was flat, and it was dark.

Sarah had got back in the car to wait, recalling that every survival documentary she'd ever watched told you to always stay
with
your vehicle. But this wasn't the Simpson Desert, and it wasn't as though she was stranded in complete wilderness; she knew there were farmhouses somewhere nearby and it would be far easier to spot their lights in the darkness. Sarah got out of the car and started off down the road. It was a long way from town, but she was confident she would find a house and be able to use their phone to call into town for help.

Even though her eyes were now used to the dark, she still managed to stumble on the rough edges of the road. She figured if a car passed by, she'd have ample time to get off the bitumen and wave the driver down, and the rustling of unidentified creatures as they scuttled through the grass beside her meant there was no way in hell she was stepping off the road until she had to.

To keep her mind off all the things that could be making the rustling noises, Sarah hummed loudly. What looked like a mouse shot across the road in front of her and she squealed. And after two other similar encounters, she decided to pick up her pace and jog, keeping her eyes just above ground level and determined not to think about treading on anything squishy.

It felt as though she'd been going for hours, but it couldn't have been more than a few kilometres. She thought she'd have come across a house before now, but as far as the eye could see there was nothing but endless paddocks leading into the shadows of hills in the distance. There was barely even a handful of stars to be seen through the clouds, and the moon wasn't playing fair either, hiding along with the stars.

Now and again her mind began to replay all the horror movies she'd watched as a teenager. She forced away the creepy sensation of being followed by werewolves or a man with hideous long nails and a penchant for stalking people in their dreams, and began to think that even enduring Adam Buchanan's smart-arse comments all the way back into town would be preferable to walking any further out here in the dark, alone.

Suddenly, to her left, somewhere in the distance, she saw a flicker of a light. She gave a great sigh of relief; the glow, although dim, was definitely a sign that she was near people again. It was hard to judge distances in the dark, but as she continued to walk she noticed there was more than one light. An intersection appeared up ahead: a dirt road led off to the left, while the road to town veered off to the right. If she went down the dirt road, it would take her towards the lights. She couldn't remember how much further it was to town and wasn't as confident as she had been that she'd come across a house any time soon. So she took the gamble that reaching those lights would be a better bet than staying on the main road.

It was slower going on the dirt road. Her shoes kept slipping on the loose gravel, and potholes were hard to spot in the dim moonlight. She was grateful she'd invested in a cheap pair of sandshoes, though, and hadn't worn her strappy leather sandals—at least she'd learned
that
lesson.

The open paddocks that had surrounded the main road were now shielded by bush and scrub. As she followed the winding trail, she occasionally lost sight of the lights, only to breathe a sigh of relief when she spied them again through the trees.

She was growing tired and had no idea how long she'd been walking for—the shadows of the trees that ran along the side of the track made it impossible to even read her watch—but the stupid lights didn't seem to be getting any closer. She longed to take a rest, but the idea of sitting down on one of the many fallen logs on the side of the path was tempered by the thought of what might be sleeping inside them.

Gradually the lights seemed to become a little more distinguishable, and Sarah tried to figure out where she was. There was something very odd about the glow in the centre of the paddock up ahead, but before she could work out what it was, a low hum sounded in the distance. Sarah spun around, hoping to see the headlights of an approaching vehicle, but the road either way remained dark. The sound grew louder, however, and within moments a roar like an angry thunder god passed overhead, the noise almost deafening.