The Road to Winter (24 page)

Kas takes my hand and leads me into the bedroom, to Rose. She leans over until her forehead rests on her sister's. As she does, her mother's ring slips out of her shirt and falls onto Rose's chest.

‘I promise you,' she whispers, ‘I promise you I'll find your baby.'

Kas straightens and turns to me. ‘The baby needs a name,' she says.

I don't know why the answer comes so quickly, but it's as though the name has been there, waiting to be spoken.

‘Hope,' I say. ‘Let's call her Hope.'

Ray is standing at the door. ‘Come on, you have to go,' he says, urgent again. ‘It's getting lighter.'

Kas kisses Rose a final time before backing away into the kitchen.

I'm left alone with Rose. Her face is cold when I touch it. I kneel down by the bed and put my head on the pillow next to hers.

‘Hey,' I say. ‘It's me, dog boy. I'm sorry I couldn't look after you better.' My eyes cloud with tears. ‘But I promise I'll look after Kas. And we'll find Hope and bring her home so she can swim in the sea. And I'll teach her to surf. But I've got to go now. I've got to go, Rose.'

I roll her name around in my mouth like I did the night I met her.

Kas has pulled an old coat around Willow's shoulders and has hitched her onto her back. Ray hands me a small bag with some food.

‘When you reach Red Rocks Point, check the tide,' he says. ‘If it's low enough, follow the beach all the way back into town. You can't risk the cliff tops track. They might be watching it. Leave the horse here, but take Rowdy with you. Wait for a week then come back to me. Catch me a couple of bunnies, if you can. I've been missing them.'

I put my arms around him. He waits a couple of seconds before saying, gruff-like and embarrassed, ‘All right, enough of that now. You've got to get moving.'

Kas hardly seems to realise what's going on. She walks straight out the door and I have to grab her arm before she breaks cover.

‘Wait,' I say. She turns and looks at me with blank eyes. ‘We've got to keep low, Kas. They could still be out there.'

I take Willow off her back and hand her the bag. Rowdy is standing on the top step of the porch, sniffing the wind. He seems unconcerned; I take that as a good sign.

We run across the home paddock to the shed. Even pulling Willow along, I'm faster than Kas, who is still limping. After we've cleared the fence, we walk through the bush in silence, all the way down to Red Rocks Point.

By the time we reach the first of the big granite slabs, the sun has risen and is warming our backs. Rowdy is restless. He knows we're going home, but the tide is too high for us to get
all the way along the base of the cliffs to the river mouth. By the look of the wet sand further up the beach, the tide is dropping.

We find a nook where we can't be seen. Kas sits with her back to the rock. Her head is up, but her eyes are closed. I sit next to her. Little tremors run through her body and she swipes at her tears with the back of her hand.

‘It's not fair, Finn,' she says, finally. ‘It's not fair. She didn't do anything wrong. Everything she did was to protect me.'

I kick at a loose stone. ‘Nothing's fair,' I mutter. ‘Nothing's been fair since the virus. None of the old rules apply anymore.'

She turns her head away and catches a tear before it falls.

‘It's
never
been fair for Rose and me—not even before the virus.'

She balls her hand into a fist and hits the granite again and again, until I grab her arm and pull her into me. Big sobs wrack her body and I feel every one of them against my chest.

By mid-morning the tide has dropped, allowing us to make our way back along the beach to Angowrie. It's a beautiful day, with the sun glistening off the water and a regular swell breaking on the sandbars.

Looking at the waves shaping up and peeling left and right takes my mind off the pain I feel in my body. And the ache in the middle of my chest. Kas walks a few steps behind me.

It takes us a couple of hours to reach the river mouth. The low tide means we can wade across, but we check for danger first. I scout upriver until I can see the road bridge, but there's no sign of life. The Wilders' camp on the other bank is deserted.

Crossing the water, Willow on my back and Kas by my side, I try to remember how long ago it was that Rose and I waded over to escape from Ramage. However long it is, I wish I could go back and have that time again. I'd have done things differently; I'd have kept Rose safe.

When we reach the other bank, Kas walks ahead, her wet clothes clinging to her body. In all the drama of the last few hours, I'd almost forgotten how close we've grown to each other, forgotten that we've kissed and kept each other warm through the night.

But all that's been buried under the weight of losing Rose. Just like when Dad died, and then Mum, it'll take time for everything to sink in and for us to work out what to do next. Willow needs to be looked after and there's still the matter of staying alive, finding food, keeping safe. Maybe it'll be weeks, months even, but somewhere in all of that, Kas and me will find some space to talk about us.

Winter is starting to push in, the first storm hitting Angowrie last night. I'd forgotten the noise the town makes in the wind, the gates left open to swing and creak, all the loose roofing iron banging where the screws have rusted out. In a way, we don't mind the bad weather. It will push the Wilders back to Longley and hopefully keep them there for the winter.

Kas has spent the last few days moving in slow motion. I see small sparks in her when she's playing with Willow, a smile that escapes without her realising, or the way she scoops her hair behind her ear and looks up at me sometimes. Every now and again she brushes past, maybe deliberately, maybe because
we are so cramped in the house, but each time I reach out to hold her, she's gone. I feel the loss of Rose too, but compared to Kas I hardly knew her.

Kas sleeps with Willow and sometimes I hear her crying in the night. In the mornings she looks as though she's hardly slept, her eyes red and her hair matted. Willow seems to have a way through to her that I don't. She crawls onto Kas's lap and snuggles into her chest. Sometimes I wish I could do the same, to feel her body against mine again, to hold her and make the pain go away, even just for a while.

I started hunting the day after we got back from Ray's. We needed fresh meat and fish but, if I'm honest, I wanted to get back into some sort of routine too. There's comfort in it, doing what I know best without having to think about it.

Whenever I head out, I ask Kas if she wants to join me. She never does. Willow has become my shadow, though; she likes getting out of the house, no matter how bad the weather. The ocean is too churned up for me to dive, but we can usually get some crabs out on the reef, and there are always rabbits to be caught.

The traps were where I'd left them, hidden in the hollow log up by the fences. I brought them back home and greased them, making sure the plates and springs were easy to set. Then I fell back into my old pattern of laying the traps in the evenings and rising early to check them in the mornings. If it wasn't for Willow padding along behind me, I could almost believe it was just Rowdy and me again, the two of us keeping each other company, skirting around the back of the golf course and
climbing the ridge to the fence lines. But I know there will be no going back to that life—everything changed the day Rose arrived.

The first rabbit stew I cook draws Kas out of her room. The smell fills the house. We haven't had any fresh food since the abalone I caught before we went to Ray's.

When the rabbit's cooked we sit around the table and eat, slurping and crunching our way to the bottom of the pot. I think it's one of the best meals I've ever eaten. The wind is howling outside, and every few minutes squalls batter the roof with hailstones.

When she's finished, Kas pushes back her chair and crosses her arms. She hardly speaks now, so it surprises me when she says, ‘I've been thinking…'

‘What?' I ask.

‘Do you reckon Ramage would have made it back to Longley?'

‘He had the trailbike. He could have taken Hope and that woman with him. The rest of the Wilders could have followed. If these storms keep up no one'll be crossing the range for a couple of months at least.'

‘We need to wait out the winter,' she says, her voice loud against the hail. ‘Then…'

I've known this was coming, I just didn't expect it so soon. ‘Then what?'

‘Find Hope and bring her back here,' she says, the old steeliness returning to her voice.

‘And what about Ramage?'

She clenches her fists and plants them on the table.

‘I'm going to hunt him down and kill him.'

The hail begins to ease to a steady rain.

‘You don't have to come if you don't want to,' she adds.

Somehow my answer is made simpler because I know I won't have to act on it straightaway. It'll be months before we can travel.

‘If you're going, I'm going too,' I say, avoiding her eyes.

In the morning I paddle out for the first time in weeks. The storm has backed off, but I know the next front won't be far away. With each duck dive and the feeling of the familiar surge underneath me, it's as though the events of the last month, the fear and the love and the death, are all washed clean, at least for a while.

Rowdy keeps watch on the beach, chasing seagulls and snapping at the whitewater like it's something he can catch. The swell is small but clean, and I surf wave after wave, each one bringing me closer to that balance that's been missing since the day Rose arrived—a balance that doesn't seem to exist on land anymore. Like it always does, the ocean stops time and only the exhaustion in my arms and shoulders tells me it's time to paddle in.

Rowdy bounds out through the shore break to meet me, and I see two familiar figures sitting halfway up the dune. They rise slowly to their feet and walk down to the beach, their feet sinking in the soft, dry sand.

As they come closer, Willow does a cartwheel, her blonde
hair flying in the wind. Kas hangs back, her eyes following each wave as it makes its way into the river mouth.

‘D'you reckon you could teach me how to do that?' she asks.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book has felt like a collaboration from the beginning—so many people have invested their time, energy and faith in it. My thanks firstly to the members of each of the writing groups I have been part of over the last four years—I am lucky to have been surrounded by such talented writers and readers. Special thanks to Melanie Cheng and Terry Gunn, who read the early drafts and helped in the development of the manuscript. To my YA trial readers Scarlett Murray, Jesse Stapleton and Chloe Schneider who convinced me I was on the right track and provided invaluable feedback on how to make it better. Thanks also to the other writers who have contributed along the way—Amber Woodward, Michelle Wright, Siobhan Sheridan and Michelle Irving.

To my wonderful local supporters Nicole Maher and Nan McNab, who have been unfailingly encouraging and supportive; to Toni Jordan for her assistance and advice in developing the manuscript; to Favel Parrett, who took the time to give me the benefit of her experience when I needed it; to all the editors of the journals, magazines and anthologies who saw enough in my writing to take a chance on publishing it (especially Jock Serong and Mick Sowry from
Great Ocean Quarterly
, still my favourite layout and story!); to Caroline Wood and Margaret River Press for the use of the beautiful studio at Margaret River; to Anna, Jason, Harriet and Matilda for my writing home-away-from-home at Falmouth; to all at Writers Victoria who do so much to nurture and develop writers in this state; and to Amanda Lohrey for the wise counsel and long chats in her kitchen.

Thanks also to the whole team at Text—from the staff member who picked a raw manuscript off the slush pile, read it and actually liked it, to Rebecca Starford for her calm, no-fuss editing, to Steph Speight, Jane Pearson and Kirsty Wilson.

Above all, to my family, who make it all possible by creating time for me to write and who constantly nourish and support me in every aspect of my life—Lynne, Oliver, Maddy and Harley. They're keepers, the lot of them.

And finally, to my parents, June and Bert, who blessed me with a childhood not unlike Finn's, with the freedom to roam, explore, discover and learn.