around her neck. âIâm trusting you not to lose it!â
Laura wore the key proudly at first, displayed over her clothes. But she grew older and came to understand that it was not a special object of precious metal, as its importance implied, but a cheap, tinny padlock key. The string grew grey, frayed, was replaced. Laura mostly forgot she was wearing it. Collecting the post became just one more daily task. Still, she did not remove the key, even to bathe; against her chest, it was a small but solid measure of her fatherâs esteem.
Laura found their box in the row of rusty old tins, reeled the small key up over her collar and worked it in the padlock. The main road rolled away, flat, in both directions.
In the distance, the dirt shimmered, narrowing to a point where it disappeared into the horizon altogether. The straight brown road and valley were bare compared to the mess of trees around their house. Once, Laura had thought sheâd seen the tiny speck of a person coming towards them. She choked on her breath, almost called out, and squatted in the gravel. But it was nothing, she quickly realised, straining to see. No one there. It was just a trick of the land, of the light.
Laura let Vik carry the mail â more sympathy cards, she guessed â as they walked home on the grass beside the road. In the gravel shoulder were dead things. Snakes, birds, kangaroos. Laura held her breath as they passed a flyblown body. Eventually, the carcass would wear away, under pressure from the weather and the flies; each afternoon, a little more decay. Sometimes they passed the dislocated body of a snake, killed by Bruce for being too close to the house, the limp carcass draped over the flabby wire of their boundary fence.
âWhy do you put them on the wire?â she had asked once.
Bruce shrugged. âSends a message.â
Laura dumped her schoolbag, swollen with homework, on the kitchen floor.
âThat you, Lor?â Bruce called from the back door. âGot some seedlings here â veggies and that to put in if youâve got a tick. Mrs Burton down in town gave âem to me for that chook shed I helped her with a while back.â
Laura shuffled through the house in her school clothes. She planned to mention the work she had from school, how the dinner still needed to be picked and cooked, the chooks locked up, the fire set. But when she came to the screen and gazed out, she found Bruce sitting, hunched on the back step. He looked up at her as she reached the door, face dappled by the shadow of the big gum near the line. Laura was struck by his expression. He seemed like heâd just woken up from a dream, posture splayed and unsteady.
âIâll just get changed,â Laura said evenly, going back into the house.
She did the planting as quickly as she could, then hurried to wash up. Vik had deposited the unopened letters on the sideboard, adding them to a teetering pile. They fell in a cascade of coloured paper as Laura rushed past. Envelopes scattered like leaves over the gritty boards. She knelt down, huffing. âTurn the bloody light on, would you?â she said to Vik. âHelp me get these up, come on.â
Seeing the cards spread across the floor, Laura felt she was looking at Kathâs disappearance through a telescope â fully understanding how wide-ranging its effects had become. It was not contained within their little family at all, but known and understood by a vast array of people in all kinds of places. What happened to them, she saw, had somehow gotten loose in the world. It was bigger than their house or their land, and real.
Laura put her hand on the nearest envelope, pale pearly pink, and hesitated. Vik sank beside her, each girl on hands and knees. Fanned out, envelopes of understanding and best wishes. Vik picked up a green one, not much bigger than her hand. She turned it over, then back. Laura thought of that other note, made smoke. How easy it
Clive Cussler, Paul Kemprecos