Hunter
Five years.
Those were the words from the judge’s mouth. Culpable driving causing death, something, something, then five years.
Five years.
I’ll be twenty-five years old when he gets out.
None of us are surprised, yet all of us are in shock. My eyes meet Dad’s before he’s taken away. He’s aged about ten years in the two months he’s been locked up. I can see the toll of detoxing, regret, and self-loathing. But I also see genuine remorse, not only for taking Maggie’s life but for taking mine too.
He glances once at Annie, like he’s acknowledging this is a sentence for her also. Then he’s gone, out the side door and hustled into a car to be driven back to the prison, leaving his lawyer to put away his notes and return to his comfortable life. I want to be angry at the man, lay blame at his feet, but I know five years is at the lower end of what Dad could have gotten. His clean record prior to the accident was his saving grace. He never drank and drove on my watch.
We file out of the courthouse, and Annie doesn’t bother asking me if I’m okay. Neither of us are okay. Tom’s coming to collect her tomorrow to drive her to the airport. In the end, I was forced to make plans directly with her dad because Annie was stalling.
‘She needs to go back to Brisbane’ was the first thing he said to me when I phoned him that evening.
If he was expecting an argument, he didn’t get one. ‘I know.’
‘Not because of you or your dad,’ he went on. ‘Despite what you think, Dawn’s suffering as much as Annie. Her daughter’s within arm’s reach but living a life she can’t accept. Plus you’ve got an entire congregation circling like righteous wolves. Don’t underestimate the power of the pack.’
‘Can you help me get her back to Brisbane?’ I asked him quietly.
‘Of course.’
Tom booked her a one-way flight from Melbourne to Brisbane the moment he hung up. When I told Annie of the plan we had made, without her consent, she didn’t speak to me for two days. Two days of not speaking, not touching. Two days of torture.
Annie slips her hand into mine as we head for the ute. My fingers instinctively close around hers. Letting go requires conscious effort now.
‘How will you manage everything at the farm by yourself?’ she asks for the four hundredth time.
I open the passenger door and gesture for her to get in. ‘The same way I’ve managed for the past nine years.’ I close the door and head around to the driver side.
The second I climb in, she starts up again. ‘Farmers don’t get days off. You told me that. If I leave, I’ll never see you. That will be it, right?’
I doubt it’ll ever be it for me, but I don’t say that aloud. As tempting as it is to tell her to come visit, I know every trip will leave another scar on her. ‘Five years is a good outcome.’
She looks out the front window as I put the ute in reverse. ‘Dad wants me to do this diploma business to learn how to sell my jewellery.’
Through the tightness in my throat, I reply, ‘I think it’s a great plan. Go to Brisbane. Go study, learn, create stuff, be with your sister. Go have the life you’ve waited twenty years to live.’
Her eyes well up. ‘I’ll be two states and five years away from you.’
The burn at the back of my nose is uncomfortable, but I don’t dare sniff. If she glimpses any thread of hesitation on my part, she’ll grab hold of it with both hands.
That night we eat the quietest dinner we’ve ever had in the house, and then Annie goes for a two-hour walk without me.
‘Charlie’s not in his paddock,’ she tells me when she returns.
I haven’t had the heart to tell her Dawn was selling him. ‘I probably should’ve mentioned this earlier, but I saw an ad for him in the classifieds.’
‘Oh.’ She presses her lips together. ‘I suppose it had to happen eventually.’
‘I would’ve bought him if I could.’ I don’t tell her I tried.
She tilts her head. ‘And done what with him?’
‘Probably put him in a paddock and hope he learned how to be a sheep.’