As James approached, he recognised Leanne under the white hat. No longer the slight country girl, she had Doris’s gloved hand resting on her burnished forearm. When she saw James, Leanne dipped her head and mouthed a greeting. Doris had her chin lifted on an angle of supreme control.

James started to feel a subtle pain in his gut and slowed. Something about the gap in the earth below the coffin was unsettling. If Dad allowed this burial to take place it would put Tony beyond a legal line that even a senior policeman would have to move heaven and earth to undo.

A flock of raucous cockatoos landed in the big gum trees along the river at the bottom of the hill, drowning out the minister’s welcome. Everyone leaned forward slightly, but couldn’t catch what was being said. Yvonne and Pete’s girls were standing on pebbles and wouldn’t be still, so the minster’s verbal comforts were lost in their scraping. With a rush of wind and a rumble, a grain truck took the corner on its way up the hill and out of town, sending a dust cloud down over them all.

Before the coffin was lowered, James hid behind the memorial wall down the hill from the dunny. Tears had evaded him, and did so even when he put his back to the plaques and kept his eyes on the river. In the distance, the Kippen Road ran up the spine of a ridge which marked the start of his family’s farms.

He checked the car park a few times, waiting for everyone to leave. So did the grader operator smoking in the shade of the dunny. The guy gave him a nod and seemed resigned to waiting for as long as it took for all the bereaved to depart.

James acknowledged it with a nod in return, and picked his way between headstones until he stood by the dark-grey shaft of the Brandt’s memorial. At its foot, he found his grandparents. A large patch of lichen had spread across his grandfather’s name, but the much newer lettering of his grandmother’s still had a rich sheen. Old jars were perched at her side in a row, one of them toppled with long-dried flowers spilling from its neck.

He circled the family plot and found the simple plaque for Gregory. The letters were disappearing but his little brother’s age — one year and eleven months — could be read by the high angle of the sun.

James paused at those thirty-year-old letters – ‘Beloved son of Daniel and Rebecca Brandt’ – carved for little Gregory. He’d been told about his brother’s funeral, how Dad had wept so much on the way home that Mum had to take over the job of driving them to the wake at Glen Alpine.