The Good Daughter by Honey Brown Page B

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    There are the covered yards to check, the storage area beneath the shed, the drenching pits: he takes the dipping pole and drags it back and forth through the black water. He goes down on his belly in the pine needles and looks below the row of pines, checks the hayshed in the paddock, the pump shed at the dam, walks all the way over to look in the bush lean-to. He runs an eye over every rippled dam he passes.
    It’s midafternoon when he stands again at the side gate of Rebecca’s. The dogs react in a way that confirms Rebecca isn’t home. They stand in a pack and bark at him, a few of the braver ones coming forward and showing their teeth.
    Zach hisses at them, like you would to scare away a cat, and they explode with increased ferocity, lunging and jumping at the gate. He steps back, feels his nose wrinkle.
    ‘Sit down,’ he snarls.
    The noise of the dogs blocks the sound of the car approaching. It is slowing, beside the letterbox before Zach sees it. The less aggressive dogs run away, but the German shepherds and the heeler cross stay.
    Zach ducks down so as not to be seen. It’s his father’s car at the gate.
    On the dogs’ level now, Zach eyes the animals through the wire, finds himself with dry grass between his fingers, sun hot on his scalp, noticing the grooves in the dogs’ teeth, and the bloodless colour of their gums. He edges sideways, positions himself to see through the junk in the front yard. The remaining dogs slink with him, alert, interested by his odd behaviour.
    Rebecca is in the front seat of the car. Zach watches his father talk to her. She has her body angled away from him. His father gives her one of his brief tight-lipped smiles. Rebecca gets out, straightens her clothes. ‘Thank you, Mr Kincaid,’ she says.
    So typical of something his father would do: offer her a lift, reaffirm himself like that. Typical also for him to back up the car the way he does, before she is even at the gate, no time to wait and no inclination to see her safely inside.
    Only Zach sees Rebecca’s steps slow up the driveway, the way her face falls and her shoulders drop, the way she takes a breath as though to calm herself.
    He hears her say, ‘Hey,’ to the three dogs who greet her.
    She smiles and touches their heads, mutters nonsensical things, singles out each animal for affection, and then brings her gaze up to look for the missing three.
    Only Zach sees that she is crying. She wipes the tears from her cheeks.
    It seems then that she looks right at him, but there are objects between them, and if she does see him it’s only a part of his shoulder, a small section of his face, not enough for her to comprehend what she is looking at; so unlikely a person would be crouched low watching her, she can’t conceive it.
    ‘Come on,’ she calls.
    The dogs near him circle in their attempt to have her understand. She calls to them again, and after a couple of frustrated barks they run to her.
    To leave without being seen Zach has to follow the fence line down to the road. He crabs along like some army commando, has to check for cars before climbing the fence out onto the roadside. He places his feet carefully so as not to make too much noise in the fallen bark beneath the trees.
    Only when he is out on the road does he straighten and walk normally again.

15
    As always when he’s away, Rebecca’s father speaks quickly and with warmth. These are the times he tells her he loves her, that she’s a good daughter, and that he thinks of her as his own. It’s the drugs. He takes amphetamines, assures her there’s a not a truck driver who doesn’t. The calls can be comical, all sorts of things spoken about – politics, sport, health, diet. This, Rebecca gathers, is the man her mother was first attracted to – the philosophising funny man, what he is to his fellow truck drivers. The man her mother settled with, and, hopefully, fell in love with, was the quiet and unassuming man tinkering in his shed. Dual