Read Nature of Ash, The for Free Online Page B

figure that’s the way it was. I was about twelve when I finally worked it out and, if I’m honest, it’s put me off her ever since. You’ve got to be pretty damn selfish to leave your husband with a four-year-old and a disabled newborn. No wonder poor old Grandma eventually flipped her lid.
    Back at the apartment the answerphone is chock full of messages about Dad. There’s three calls from the media, one from a funeral director, and the rest are from his friends and work colleagues. I can’t face calling back. Instead, I take advantage of Mikey’s unusual compliance to head down to the community garden to do an hour’s weeding so we can earn some free veges. His massive appetite is more predictable than the weather — the only death I reckon would curb it would be his own. God forbid .
    We score a pumpkin, cabbage, broccoli, salad greens and silverbeet, though a quick check of Dad’s cupboards makes it clear this won’t be enough to keep us going for long. So we walk over to the supermarket, where there’s been a rush to stock up on basics. The few items on the shelves have doubled in price since last time I shopped down south. I end up blowing nearly a hundred bucks of the money Dad deposited into my account. All this buys is bread, rice, flour, porridge, milk, loo paper, soap and a dozen eggs. Quite how I’m going to keep on feeding Mikey’s voracious appetite, I’m not sure. If prices keep on rising at this rate I’ll have to use the food bank till I know how much Dad’s worth. Unless he’s got some money stashed away, we’re really screwed.
    I cook us up some porridge to fill our guts, then setup Mikey on the game console again while I try to get my head around what happens next. First I call back the funeral director, who tells me that a simple funeral will cost twelve grand. Jeezus . I hedge, saying I need to contact Dad’s lawyer, and hang up fast. Twelve grand? The chances of us finding that sort of money are zilch, I’d have thought, but I’m going to have to get hold of the lawyer anyway, so may as well do it now. And that means finding contact details.
    Dad’s study is his sacred place: the one room we’re banned from if Dad’s not here. It’s in a mess, papers spilling right across his desk and others stacked in piles on the floor. I start to sort each stack to separate out his private papers from his work, amazed at how he held all these different projects in his head. At the bottom of the final pile I find four envelopes addressed to Dad, each one numbered and dated on the outside in his distinctive scrawl. I open up the first to find a sheet of paper filled with cut-out letters forming words. An icy charge shoots up my spine as I line up the four sheets in order on the desk.
    TRAITOR.
    WE KNOW WHERE YOU WORK.
    YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
    BYE BYE. BOOM!
    They prove he bloody knew all right — the last is date-marked Thursday, the day before the bomb. But why in hell are these notes here, not with the cops? I feel sick. Who did Dad think he was? Bloody Superman?
    I dial Jeannie’s number again but get her answer-phone, so leave a message asking her to call right back.Maybe if they do forensics on the paper they’ll catch the pricks red handed. Then, by god, they’d better bloody slam them into jail to rot. Perhaps a little torture too? Yeah, definitely. Enough to make them regret their actions till their dying days.
    I force myself to keep on searching through more of Dad’s stuff. Eventually I find the section in his filing cabinet where he keeps his private papers, rifling through all sorts of shit. Now I find a letter from a lawyer confirming that she’s just received his latest will. It’s dated only four weeks back, the day after threat number two. Surely this proves he took them seriously — so why, oh why, has it ended up like this?
    I ring the number on the letterhead but it’s an after-hours service. When I explain who I am, the operator assures me he’ll contact this