Chapter Seven

The last sunlight of the day bathed the landscape in a warm, golden tone. The heat had subsided (if ever so slightly), but the air was now filled with swarms of mosquitoes. Tess was slowly walking up the hill, consciously feeling every step, taking in the smell of home with every breath. It was this wide, beautiful land that caused her to feel at rest, that suddenly filled her with this indescribable feeling that her worries were meaningless and that everything was going to be okay. At this precise moment, she realized that it had been the right decision to come back. Perhaps this was not the land she had grown up on, but it certainly was and always would be her home…although a part of it had gone with Claire.

Claire. She approached the simple, grey stone that marked her sister's grave, only to find out that someone had laid down a single rose in front of it. It had withered quickly under the heat, but Tess could not get herself to remove it. These roses did not grow on Drover's Run, they were the expensive, specially cultivated kind and she was pretty sure that she knew where this one came from…

Tess smiled sadly and kneeled down in front of the grave, laying her own bouquet of wild flowers next to the rose.

"Claire…it's been a long time." She tried to gather her thoughts, still staring at the cold stone. 1973-2003. "Nick and I are back to stay, which is good news, I guess. Not that Drover's wouldn't have been doing fine without me…Stevie's doing a great job and you'd be so surprised if you could see Jodi right now, she has grown up a lot. Seems hard to believe that she used to be that teenager who was afraid to get her hands dirty."

"It's good to be back, but…I'm not sure where I fit into the picture and I don't know how Nick feels about it. The company he was working with...well, they couldn't afford him anymore. That struck him, but you know Nick, he's not the most vocal person when it comes to talking about that sort of thing. I hope he'll be able to settle down here. The first thing he did was to drive to Wilgul to see how things were going there. I suppose that both of us- that we'll need a bit of time to get used to everything."

Tess remained silent for a moment, just staring at that same spot with the years. She realized that she was older now than Claire had been at the time of the accident. It was an awkward thing, to be older than Claire. Thirty had always seemed like a young age, too young to die at, but it had never felt quite as young to Tess as it did now. How strange, to be thinking about something like that…

"Don't get me wrong, I don't doubt that it was right to come back here. I…I brought Charlotte back. She's going to stay for her summer holiday. I think she likes it here; she's drawn to it, especially to the horses. She takes after you in that respect."

Tess swallowed, trying to fight back the tears that threatened to fall. "But…Alex and her are having some problems. He made a mistake once and never really corrected it, but he has to pay for it now, bitterly. Charlotte is pushing him away and he doesn't know how to deal with the situation. I don't really know what to do with those two. I…often wonder what you would say if you were here, or rather do. Come to think of it, you probably wouldn't say much. You'd tell me to stop talking to dead people and to get back to the sheep." She was still smiling, but her vision had started to blur.

"Oh Claire, this is not the way things were supposed to be. Whenever I tried to imagine the future, I pictured you and Alex, me and Nick and our children and grandchildren playing together. Corny, huh? But if that hadn't worked out, we still would have been those two crazy old ladies living with a bunch of cattle…but we won't be. And you won't ever…" She broke off the sentence rapidly and started to rearrange the flowers just so she had something to do, something she could control.

"But, you know, about our BOM- she's a fine girl. She's good at school, and she plays soccer. You should see her and Emily together, it's adorable. Peter…he did a good job, they seem…like a happy family. You-" And that was the point when Tess lost control because she simply did not have the strength to care anymore. "you'd be so proud of her…"

She started sobbing, slowly at first, still kneeling in front of the headstone. Her hand covered her mouth, but that didn't stop her from crying the tears she had held back for a long time. It was not so much the flood of memories that overwhelmed her, but the realization of what could have been, the pictures of Claire's and Alex's wedding, of her sister teaching Charlotte, the daughter she had only been able to take care of for less than four months, how to ride a horse, of all of them seeing the girl off to school on her first day, of Claire holding the niece she never got to know. Tess had said goodbye a long time ago, and yet that wasn't enough. There would never be an "enough", not since that day in the Ute when Tess McLeod could have died but didn't. She had come far enough to appreciate her being alive and accept the fact that her sister wasn't, but the pain of it would never lessen. It had made her realize that things did not happen for a reason after all, they just happened.

But she was angry at her sister, too, no matter how wrong it was. Coming back to Drover's had stirred up many old feelings, and one of them was rage. Claire had left her, Alex, the farm and, most importantly, her daughter. She had disappeared in a matter of minutes, just like that. And now it was up to Tess to sort out the mess this had caused, the indirect consequences of it. She was furious –wanted to be furious- and it hurt. God, it still hurt so much that she wanted to scream.

Yet screaming wouldn't help. Crying wouldn't help. Distraction wouldn't help. She had tried everything and on most days, just carrying on with life was okay. But the dead would still be dead and it was nonsense, a stupid cliché, how people said that the pain would fade with time. Perhaps one just got used to it a little more, day by day.

Tess had no idea for how long she had been crouching on the ground. She felt numb, empty and, in a way, tranquilized. The oppressive weight, which seemed to rest on her chest so often, had left. The sun had almost set; she would have to see that the girls went to bed soon. She got up, brushed off her pants and picked a few shrivelled leaves off the gravestone.

"Hey" a male voice uttered gently behind her.

She spun around quickly. "Alex!"

"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. But you probably wanna be alone, I'll come back another time."

"No, that's okay." He appeared somewhat bewildered, overtaxed by the situation. There was that helpless, sad look in his eyes that she knew all too well. "I was just gonna go see if I can help Meg with the dishes anyway."

Alex didn't appear to be listening; he was looking at her in a concerned manner. It was only then that she realized that it was probably impossible to overlook the signs which showed that she had been crying. Tess wiped her cheeks self-consciously and took a few steps away from the grave, about to go home.

"You alright?" he asked, observably worried.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

He nodded, his hat in his hands, in a way that made her want to tell him that everything was going to be alright, but of course Tess couldn't know that and wasn't even sure if she believed in it herself. She didn't know what to say. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"See ya."

She walked down the slope, trying to focus on the things she would have to get done this week, but turned around again. "Alex?"

"Yeah?"

"If you work on it, I think…you and Charlotte could get along. Just give her a little time, alright?"

"I screwed up, Tess. I doubt that a little time's gonna be enough in this case." He turned around and stared at the grave, lost in thought.

Tess sighed, wondering what Claire would have done.