The Lost Man(55)

‘Yeah. They’ll still need a lot of this, though,’ Nathan said. ‘Property still needs to be run.’

‘By you?’

‘I have enough trouble with my own place.’

‘Who then? Bub?’

‘They’ll hire a manager, probably. I guess Ilse will decide. She gets Cam’s half.’

Xander ran his finger through the thin layer of dust on the lid of a battered storage box. ‘Cam didn’t give Bub a bigger share? Or leave anything for Harry?’

‘Doesn’t sound like it. Bub still has his third, though.’

‘Yeah, but you and Ilse have the rest.’

Something in the way he said it made Nathan look over in surprise. ‘So?’

‘So nothing, I suppose. But her half plus your sixth makes a majority. I wonder how Bub feels about that?’

‘He shouldn’t feel anything, it’s exactly the same split as it was with Cam.’

‘But it’s not the same, is it? When Cam was alive, it was him and Bub controlling the place –’

‘I’m not sure Bub saw it like that.’ Nathan thought about his brother scowling at the calendar in the study.

‘Well, either way, it was clearly you in the minority. Now it’ll be more like you and Ilse in control. It’s a different dynamic.’

‘It’s not. There’s nothing –’

‘Dad, mate,’ Xander said, a half-smile on his face. ‘It is.’

Nathan felt a flush creep up his neck. He didn’t reply.

‘Don’t worry,’ Xander said, reading his mind. ‘I don’t think anyone else has noticed. You should think about it, though. When it comes to decisions, who would you side with? Ilse or Bub?’

‘Neither. I’d do what’s best for the property.’ Nathan saw his son’s expression. ‘I would.’

‘All right. Does Bub know that, though? Or Ilse?’

‘Yeah, of course.’ Nathan frowned. Of course they knew, because it was the truth.

‘Well, that’s okay then.’ Xander opened another cupboard.

Nathan pulled a new box off a shelf. It seemed to hold nothing more than old electrical wiring. He stifled a yawn. He was getting tired now, but didn’t want to be the one to pull the pin. He sifted through it half-heartedly, looking at the black square of night outside the door. There was nothing to see, but Nathan knew he was facing south. Somewhere in the distance lay the stockman’s grave and beyond that, his own property.

His house would be empty, over the invisible horizon, but he could almost feel it sucking him in. It was actually a pretty decent house, with nice enough furniture. Jacqui hadn’t bothered taking a single thing other than Xander when she’d left. It was the land around the house that was the problem. It was a constant headache, but it was Nathan’s livelihood and he simply could not afford to let it slide, not even a bit. But sometimes, all the time really, he wished he had somewhere else to go. He hated that house. The place felt like a black hole that extinguished all the light in his life.

He had seriously considered abandoning the property, several times. Downing tools, leaving the door swinging open and driving away. Maybe try to get some work in the mines out west, but he worried he was getting a bit old for that now. And while Nathan could abandon the land, he couldn’t abandon the debts on it. They stayed on the bank’s balance sheets and would still need to be paid off somehow. Thank God that Liz and Harry had convinced him to keep his sixth of Burley Downs. After expenses, the income from that wasn’t enough to keep him afloat, but at least it was something.

‘Sell your place to Cam,’ Harry had said two Christmases ago, after a particularly bad year had left Nathan white-faced with stress. ‘You’re always going to struggle on your own. Let him buy you out, mate. Get the scale.’

Nathan had said he’d think about it. By that point, he had already privately asked his brother three times. Cam would dutifully pore over the spreadsheet Nathan had prepared, asking questions and stroking his chin as Nathan tried to find positive answers where none existed. Cam always responded in the same way, whether Nathan was asking him to look at a spreadsheet or begging him years earlier to put in a good word in town.

Cam would pause, for a fraction of a beat. Just as Nathan had done, once, under their dad’s hard stare when the tables were turned and it was a teenage Cameron who needed the help. It still surprised Nathan how much could be conveyed in such a thin slice of silence.

Cameron’s answer was always no.

Now, though, as Nathan looked out to the south, a new thought edged to the surface. Xander was right. And Bub, for that matter. Without Cam, things were different. Without Cam, Nathan realised, he could probably push the sale through, if he could get Ilse or Bub to agree. He let himself imagine for a moment what that might mean and suddenly, for the first time since he had driven over the crest and seen Cameron’s body under the tarp, Nathan could breathe a little more easily.

‘Dad.’

He dragged his attention back to the garage. Xander was holding something square and heavy-looking and partially covered by bubble wrap. A large paper bag lay discarded by his feet.

‘What’s that?’ Nathan dusted off his hands and walked over. He could see Cameron had written Ilse’s name on the bag in neat capital letters.