Going back out to her car, she looked around. Her house was one street back from the main road and there were five houses on one side and five on the other. Hers was surrounded by a thick wire fence. The front yard had a small stretch of lawn, then a garden bed holding a single bravely flowering geranium and lots of red dirt.

The familiar street and view of the silos at the end of the road made her pause.

She really was here.

Will really was dying.

Her mum really couldn’t do this without her.

With only her mum to do the farm work and look after Will, she knew she would be needed in the next week or so because seeding was about to start. Well, it was if it rained.

It seemed to her that it was unfair to expect people to continue with their lives as normal when life was anything but that. But, as her father used to say, life goes on.

Zara wanted to yell and scream at the sky and tell the universe that what was happening to her family was beyond what anyone should have to endure. Her father was dead and now her brother was dying!

Since her dad had died, her mother and Will had run Rowberry Glen well together. Their lives were settled and stable. They had a routine—Will checked the sheep and did the heavy work, and Lynda helped out in all the other areas. That was until Will had become too weak to manage the farm work. There’d been talk of employing a workman, but she didn’t know if that had happened yet.

Will still lived in the same house as their mum, as there weren’t any other houses on the farm. Zara knew it hadn’t bothered either of them, because the farmhouse was large and almost in two sections. Will had his side and Lynda had hers. Zara recognised, though, that Will had been lonely. One night he’d told her he’d signed up to a dating site, then the next day he’d been embarrassed and tried to take down his profile. Not before a couple of the women in town had seen it, and he’d been teased mercilessly at the pub the next time he’d gone in. Zara had tried to tell him that it was very common to try to meet someone through dating sites, but his embarrassment had stopped him from trying again. Everyone in town would’ve known he’d found someone through the internet.

‘Who’d want me anyway?’ he’d said in his pragmatic way. ‘I’ve already had cancer, and I’ve not got a lot to offer anyone.’

‘That’s wrong and you know it,’ Zara had exploded at him. ‘You’re kind, caring and funny. Not to mention good-looking … apparently,’ she’d added. ‘Not that I’d know!’

They’d laughed but Will had never mentioned it again.

The shock had been immense when he’d had his first bout of cancer two years ago. A healthy young man, with his life in front of him. It had been stage three and an operation had removed lymph nodes in his groin. The doctors had been hopeful, even though the cancer had grown through nearly all the layers of the colon. There had been rounds of chemo, low blood counts and another operation. Will had spent weeks in hospital in Adelaide—the surgery had been too major for the Port Augusta hospital, which would’ve been closer to home. But it had meant Zara could visit him after work every day. It had been tiring and draining for them all; Lynda had come on weekends or when she’d been able to get away from the farm. Someone still had to be checking the sheep and making sure everything was running smoothly.