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Chris Larsen or Brian Geraghty. She couldn’t imagine being married at all. Her future seemed unimaginable, despite the letter from the university. In the accident that had killed her mother, Ruth had been thrown clear. ‘Thrown clear to have a life ,’ Nan had said all through her childhood, in that low passionate voice which always made Ruth feel uneasy. ‘A special life, Ruthie.’
    Only what if she wasn’t special? Ruth walked on along the path. For a while it ran beside a windbreak of tall poplars whose bright leaves flashed with light, and whose long shadows striped the land. Then the windbreak ended and the path went on across a stretch of open land until it reached the crossroads where the Old Western Highway met the Barinjii Road. This was the place where her mother had died. She and Dad had been coming home from a trip to Narromine when their car had hit an unlighted semi on the turn into Barinjii. Her father had been in hospital for two whole months and had come out of it a different person. ‘Your dad used to be a laughing kind of boy,’ Nan had told Ruth. ‘He used to sing – you’d always know when Ray was about because you’d hear the singing.’
    Ruth couldn’t imagine it. Dad was grey and quiet as a shadow; you forgot about him, you hardly noticed he was there. To think of him laughing was difficult enough, but to imagine him singing was impossible, like trying to imagine a horse crowing, or a big old rooster barking like a dog.
    Her mother had simply died, her blood leaking out on the highway long before any ambulance had arrived. Ruth had been a baby in a carry-cot on the back seat. She was strapped in, but the cot hadn’t been, and when the semi ploughed in, the cot had sailed out of the open back window onto the verge of the road.
    Thrown clear. It did seem special, though in a rather frightening kind of way. She walked out into the middle of the crossroads and stood there quietly. Since they’d built the bypass five years back there was very little traffic; you could stand like that for half an hour without a single car going by, and there wouldn’t be a sound except for the wind and the chirp of crickets and the twittering of tiny birds in the long grass of the verges. Ruth closed her eyes and felt the sun on her face and a small warm breeze that teased gently at her hair. She waited.
    After a few minutes she sensed her mother come from some other place and stand silently beside her. She could feel her there.
    â€˜Do you think that’s crazy?’ she’d asked Fee. ‘Do you think it’s crazy that someone would come back from being dead just to see you?’
    â€˜No,’ Fee had answered. ‘No, I don’t. She was your mum; of course she’d come back to see you! I’d come back to see you, if anything happened to me.’
    â€˜Oh, Fee!’
    â€˜I would.’ Fee had smiled. ‘And I’m not even your mum!’
    Ruth reached into the pocket of her skirt and took out the crested envelope. She opened the flap, drew the two sheets from inside and held them out as if inviting a person standing next to her to read. ‘This is the letter from the university, Mum,’ she whispered. ‘And these are my marks, see? And the scholarship.’ She gave a little skip. ‘Oh, Mum! I’ll be living in Sydney, imagine!’
    A bird sang out in the sky. The pages trembled in Ruth’s hand, and it seemed to her that beside her on the deserted road there was a small ripple of delight and excitement, of purest, happy glee.

five
    With a big box under one arm and the basket of hydrangeas over the other, Margaret May went in through the wooden doors of Saint Columba’s. The interior of the church was dim and brown, except for those places where the sun pressed against the high arched windows and its light fell through the jewelled robes of saints and kings and angels.
    She walked on down