The Good Daughter by Honey Brown Page A

after it,’ she says quietly.
    He thumbs through the pages, opens at a random spot and starts reading again. She fidgets because he’s bending back the cover, because he’s not reading front to back, and because he’s in her bed and reading.
    ‘This is bothering you, isn’t it?’ He doesn’t wait for her response, but closes the book and twists onto his side, pretends he’s going to lob the book over onto the chair. Rebecca reaches up to take it from him.
    ‘Here,’ he says, placing it with exaggerated reverence into her hands, ‘I’m sure Stephen King would be flattered you keep his novels looking so unread.’
    His arm snakes around her as she puts the book on the bedside table.
    ‘Will we go and have our picnic?’ He pulls her into him, kisses the back of her neck. ‘Or stay here …’
    ‘Where were you going to take me?’
    ‘It’s cold,’ he says.
    ‘It’s not cold.’
    ‘It’s windy.’
    She moves her arm to block his hand from wandering any further down her body. ‘It’s not that windy.’
    He continues to kiss her neck. He edges his fingers beneath the band of her tracksuit pants, but when she’s unresponsive he groans and gets up from the bed.
    ‘What is it about eating while sitting on the grass that women find so appealing?’
    This, she’d like to tell him, is why it appeals – the river, the moving sky, the sheltered spot, the way he lies propped up on one elbow and wipes the back of his hand over his mouth, and the way the conversation winds like the breeze, never jarring but always fresh. ‘… in pubs or bars,’ he is saying, ‘it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s not some kind of industrial site or gold mine. I’ll pick fruit or shell scallops before I’d ever pull on a hard hat. I’ll go up through Queensland and right up Cape York, across into the Northern Territory. You have to time it right though, so you’re not travelling through during the wet …’
    She’s sitting up, cross-legged, eating a slice of what he’s told her is pecan pie. It’s so sweet it makes her teeth ache.
    ‘… Broome and along the coast and then back east. I mean, I say it like that, but it’s a time frame of years. Ten years I reckon sounds fair. Then I’ll go overseas.’
    ‘Will you ever settle down?’
    ‘Never. I want kids, I want a tribe of them, but living in a shack on the beach, home-schooled maybe, able to hit the road and move on …’
    ‘Lovely,’ she says, laughing. ‘What makes you think someone will want to do that with you?’
    ‘I’ll be tamed by old age by then – I’ll be a better catch.’
    ‘Sounds like a bad deal for the wife.’
    ‘Do you want to be her?’
    She throws a pecan at him.
    ‘You’ll be too old then anyway,’ he says. ‘I’ll want a sexy young thing to settle down with.’
    ‘Well, I hope you leave your run too late and can only pull some wrinkly biker chick with green tattoos.’
    ‘Nasty.’
    She relents. ‘Not really.’
    ‘Aw, that’s sweet – you don’t want to give me bad karma. I tell you what, I’ll send you a postcard with my sexy young wife’s measurements so you know your hex didn’t stick.’
    ‘You better do it before she has the tribe of kids.’
    ‘Good point.’
    The bike is parked behind them. They’re on private property. There’s a hayshed a couple of hundred metres away and the remnants of an old farmhouse. The river is choked with willows and blackberries but this section of the water is clear; it’s light grey and rippled with the wind.
    ‘Why haven’t you gone already?’ she asks him.
    ‘Money,’ he says, and rubs his fingers together. ‘It takes money to go from town to town living off the dole.’
    ‘Then you’ve set yourself back, buying me the jacket?’
    ‘I’ve saved up enough. I can go.’
    ‘Why don’t you, then?’
    ‘I was tempted to keep riding last night.’ He puts two cups on the grass and pours tea from the thermos, holds out one for her to take. ‘I’ve been arguing