That night, curled up alone, without the comforting breathing of Waffles on his sleeping cushion next to my bed, I thought about the legacies between parents and kids, fathers and sons. The sense of entitlement that led Bob Shepherd to break into my home was the same sense of entitlement that had enabled Noah to take what wasn’t his. I’d spent the last week wondering whether Gordon Millard had passed his violence down to his son, but now, it seemed, he hadn’t. The thing was, though, no one would have been surprised if he had. For ten years, that’s exactly what people thought had happened. But Brett had resisted. I knew from when we were kids that he didn’t want to be like his dad, because that wasn’t his nature. It reminded me of a story I’d read once about two sons of an alcoholic. One son was an alcoholic and the other son didn’t drink. When they asked the alcoholic son why he was an alcoholic, he replied, ‘With a father like mine, what else could I be?’ And when they asked the non-drinking son why he was a non-drinker, he replied, ‘With a father like mine, what else could I be?’

CHAPTER 40: THE DECEPTION BAY SPRING FAIR

CHAPTER 40

THE DECEPTION BAY SPRING FAIR

I climbed out of my car with Waffles on the lead. The car park was filling as the citizens of Deception Bay headed to the town fair. In the middle of the oval, a huge space behind the CWA and scout hall, a Ferris wheel looped and carnival music played discordantly from several large speakers dotted around.

Despite the bandage wrapped awkwardly around his neck and under his jaw, Waffles held his head high and wagged his tail. He had been at the vet’s for a week. Every day, I had visited and sat by his cage in the animal hospital.

‘He’s going to be fine,’ the vet assured me. ‘The bullet missed any major arteries. We gave him a blood transfusion. Greyhound blood. He’s happy as Larry and probably faster now. You can take him home. Just be careful of his stitches.’

When Waffles pranced out of his pen, I marvelled at the resilience of dogs. For him, every day was a new day to be greeted with a wagging tail and visible delight for the array of possibilities: a walk, a possum to chase, a patch of sun to lie in, a scratch under the chin—a town fair. Now, watching Waffles sniff his way down the row of farm produce stalls, I vowed to try to learn from him—to try to delight in the small things in life.

‘Oh, Waffles!’ Norma O’Mealley appeared from behind the CWA table laden with baked goods displayed on a red-and-white-chequered tablecloth and bent to pat the dog. She faltered then looked from the dog to me. ‘Is he going to be all right?’