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pain in her chest. Breathe, just breathe . After a few seconds she was able to go on. “The fire continued to advance this way. There was no one to stop it. My house and outbuildings were burned to the ground. Leif sent me a message about an hour before he died. He couldn’t get out. He wanted me to head into town and stay with his parents. But I couldn’t leave the horses.”
    Why hadn’t Leif listened to the weather bureau and positioned the firebreak on their side of the ridge? Was it because the fire was heading toward Timbertop and he wanted to help their neighbor? It had been a judgment call. A fatal one.
    Damn Leif. Always had to be the hero.
    “Where were you when the fire went through?” Adam asked.
    She turned her gaze toward him but she wasn’t seeing him, she was seeing the black sky and hearing the unearthly roar of the fire, breathing in the choking smoke. “I was in the dam. Shane and I got in the dam, right out in the middle where I had to stand on my tiptoes. Shane kept wanting to swim to shore. I had to hold him in my arms. Hold him up so he could breathe. There were only three inches of air between the surface of the water and the smoke. We stayed in the dam for four hours.”
    Adam swore. “That must have been awful.”
    “I was lucky.” He looked surprised. She went on fiercely, “When people commiserate and tell me how sorry they are for me, losing everything, I say, no, I was the lucky one. I’m still alive.” Whenever she started feeling sorry for herself she thought about Leif, caught out in the bush with no protection from the inferno racing up the mountainside.
    She had the garage to live in and her horses had shelter, albeit temporary. One day, the house and stables would be rebuilt. She would have a home again.
    She started Bo walking again, and soon they came to the paddock. It was black and barren all the way from here to the garage, three hundred yards on the right.
    She and Adam didn’t speak again until they approached the horse shelter, a three-sided corrugated iron box. Major emerged and whickered to Bo.
    “What are your horses grazing on?” Adam said. “There’s not a blade of grass in there.”
    “I buy timothy-hay and have it trucked in.” It was expensive, but she was used to most of her income going toward the horses. Some days the road back to solvency and a normal life seemed like a mountain she was climbing, but there was only one way she could go—onward.
    She slid off Bo, removed his bridle and replaced it with a halter before letting him into the paddock. She would brush him down later.
    “Did the horses get into the dam as well?” Adam asked.
    “No. When the fire got close I opened the gate and let them out. They ran around the yard for a bit and then headed into the woods.” She still had nightmares about hearing their screams as burning shards of the barn’s corrugated iron roof rained down. One had struck Asha in the neck.... “Four of the five I have left came home one by one over the next week. Blaze was found months later. The rest I never saw again.”
    “Do you think they’re alive somewhere out there?”
    She cut him a scathing glance. “I’m too old to believe in fairy tales and happily-ever-afters.” She’d tried to find her horses. For weeks she’d gone up to the high country, scouting the alpine meadows and talking to the ranchers and park rangers.
    “Sorry,” he murmured.
    There was that pity again. Pity and charity. They had to be the two worst virtues in the world. They reminded the person on the receiving end that they needed help. That they were victims.
    Brushing past him, she strode toward the garage at a fast clip with Shane at her heels. “I’ll get you that sugar.”
    He caught up with her halfway across the yard. “Why don’t you sell up and move?”
    “If you have to ask that, you don’t know me,” she said, opening the unlocked garage door.
    “No, I don’t. That’s why I’m asking.”
    She tossed her hat on