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patch, a too large vegetable patch, and this morning she’d come out here to pick the extra produce to sell at the shop, not to weed and dream.
    Wished Georgie would call. She didn’t wish her back. For the last ten years she’d been telling her to get out of Woody Creek and do something with her life. She had beauty, confidence and brains enough to do anything she wanted, and she’d wasted too many of her years already in this town, in that shop she’d inherited from Charlie White.
    Hoped she was well. Feared she wasn’t. She’d lost her sister, her home, her possessions, and been lucky not to lose her life. When you lose that much, it might be easy to walk away from the rest.
    She’d left a note Jenny had read so many times she could quote it.
    Dear Jen,
    Ta for the bed. I’m off to get my stitches out and to do something about getting a new licence. The shop is open. Leave it open if you like. I don’t want it.
    We sweep up what’s left over after each holocaust and glue it back into something that resembles what we might have been, then we go on. You said it, mate. I’ve done my sweeping, now I’m off to do the gluing bit.
    Love ya,
    Georgie
    Two weeks ago they’d put the shop in the hands of a Willama agent, as a rental property. To date he’d had one nibble from a Bendigo couple, though why any Bendigo couple would consider moving to Woody Creek, Jenny didn’t know. She would have moved to Bendigo. She would have moved to Ringwood, to Willama – anywhere. She loathed this town.
    And its business centre was dying. Back when she’d been a kid, the shops had been crowded on Fridays and Saturday mornings. There’d been few cars about, but plenty of bikes and horses. They’d had a shoe shop, a barber. Until the thirties, Woody Creek had its own undertaker cum cabinet-maker. These days cabinets were purchased ready-made in Willama, where Woody Creek’s dead now queued to be buried. Until the thirties, they’d had a saddler and a bakery, its pastries and fancy cakes set out in the window on pretty paper doilies. Miss Blunt and her father had run a thriving drapery and dressmaking business and Fulton’s feed and grain store had done a roaring trade. According to Emma, her brother Robert barely kept his head above water these days.
    Reliable transport was killing this town. With doctors, dentists, chemists and most of the big name stores in Willama, there was a stream of cars heading east on Stock Route Road each morning.
    The two big supermarkets had killed off a lot of Willama’s smaller businesses. At one time there must have been five small grocery shops scattered around. There’d been three butcheries in the main street, at least three bakeries and several small hardware shops. Most had closed their door and reopened as gift shops, hairdressers, clothing boutiques, coffee shops. Coles and Woolworths sold pretty much everything else.
    Hearing water sluicing down the pipes, Jenny looked over her shoulder. Jim had arisen. He’d never been an early riser. Granny had, and Jenny had caught her habit and couldn’t break it. She spent most of her mornings in the garden, another of Granny’s habits.
    She’d picked a dozen zucchinis. Prolific breeders, fast growers, she’d picked a dozen only yesterday, but the more she picked the more desperate those plants became to seed the next generation.
    She’d shed her seeds before the plant had reached maturity, and at times wasn’t certain she’d ever got around to maturing. Four kids she’d given life. Hadn’t wanted any of them, not when they’d been conceived. All gone now – not that she’d ever had Cara to lose. She’d walked away from her in ’44 and hadn’t set eyes on her again until ’66 – and couldn’t believe her eyes the night she had seen her. Cara looked like her. She’d had her hair, her brow, eyes, hands. Jimmy had looked a little like her, but he’d had Jim’s hair and hands. Georgie and Margot looked like their fathers.
    Cara