Nina and Ric sat drinking beer out on the back porch at Donnalee as the afternoon shadows lengthened. Sophie was playing circus games with the geese, tempting them with treats to make them hop through a hula hoop. Jinx tried to snatch a tidbit of bread and found himself on the receiving end of Odette’s wicked beak. He yelped and made a beeline for the safety of the verandah, trying to hide himself beneath Nina’s chair.
‘They’re so big now,’ she said, admiring the graceful birds. ‘Sophie’s done an amazing job.’
‘She has.’ Ric’s fingers reached for hers and they sat, side by side, holding hands like children. ‘Sophie loves those birds more than me, more than anybody.’
‘Any news of her mother?’
‘Rachael’s doing a little better.’
‘Must be so hard,’ she said. ‘First her mother and now her grandfather. That’s a lot of loss for a little girl to deal with.’
He squeezed her hand. ‘Let’s change the subject. No more sadness today.’
‘You’re right. We should be celebrating.’ Nina pointed at a curved streak of cloud in the sky. ‘See there? It’s Eva smiling down from heaven.’
‘I’ll look after Billabong, Nina,’ said Ric. ‘I swear I will. In a year or two you won’t know the place.’
‘I’ve got some ideas myself,’ she said. ‘I already drew up a five-year plan. To rehabilitate the marshes. Remove the weeds and feral animals. Get a full-scale revegetation program up and running. I’d like to take a biological inventory, do some trapping too, see what we’ve really got.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Working together like this, it’s a dream come true.’
‘I’ll work day and night, if that’s what it takes.’ His voice was husky with emotion. ‘For you, for Sophie. Together we’ll make Billabong the best bloody farm in the whole district. Better than Macquarie Station even.’
‘You can run cattle in the back blocks,’ said Nina. ‘But the marshes are off limits, right?’ Silence. She studied his face. Something was wrong. She repeated her question, and still there was no response. ‘What’s going on, Ric?’
‘There’ll have to be some changes at Billabong.’ He couldn’t look her in the eye. ‘The loan to buy the place is conditional on converting it to cotton.’
Nina’s mouth fell open. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘It’s not as bad as you think. I’ve been looking into this. There are better ways to grow cotton, more modern ways. Ways that are kinder to the land.’ He shifted nervously in his seat. ‘Dad’s already bought a heap of a new kind of cottonseed. Genetically modified to use less water, to resist pests and diseases so you don’t have to use as many chemicals. I’ve been reading up on the latest irrigation methods too. Some blokes are moving away from furrows to bankless channels and drip systems. And I was thinking of fencing off some parts, like you’ve done at Red Gums. Leaving them natural.’
Nina sat in stunned silence, a kernel of white-hot anger taking root in her heart. She tried to imagine the Ric that she’d known as a child, the river boy, doing this. No, that boy had vanished, and the person sitting next to her couldn’t have hurt her more if he’d spent years in the planning. ‘You’ll still have to clear,’ she said. ‘You’ll still have to drain swampland. You’ll still be destroying one of the rarest inland deltas in the entire country.’
‘I’ll be careful, I promise,’ said Ric. ‘Rivers aren’t rocket science.’
‘No. They’re a lot more complicated.’
‘Nina . . . I don’t have a choice.’
‘That’s crap. There’s always a choice.’ Her head hurt with a furious resentment that overrode her love for him. ‘There’s no kind way to grow cotton out here, full stop. It’s bad enough what you’re doing at Donnalee, but if you try it at Billabong? You’d better fucking well watch out. I’ll stop you, or die trying. Come on, Jinx.’ Her vision was clouding and she couldn’t see properly. Everything was misty. The dog, sensing trouble, scrambled for Nina’s ute.
Sophie stopped her goose show. ‘Dad? Nina? What’s wrong?’
‘Ask your father,’ said Nina over her shoulder as she reached the vehicle. What a fool she’d been. What a first-class fool. Lockie and Dad? They’d been right all along about Ric, about the whole Bonelli family. Why the hell hadn’t she listened to them? Well, she wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. She was done.