Yesterday's Dust by Joy Dettman

home from his trips. He’d dressed her in those early years. He’d bought the jade-green frock, he’d bought the shoes and sheer stockings and the golden earrings.
    I’ve got nowhere to wear them, Jack. We could have used thatmoney. . .
    Jack had given up on Ellie. He’d continued to bring home his parcels from Narrawee – pretty dresses, fancy shoes – but all for Liza. Everything had been for Liza.
    Johnny refilled his glass. Ann looked at him, then to where he was looking.
    â€˜She still scrubs up well, doesn’t she?’ she said.
    â€˜Little dabs of powder, little puffs of paint, make a girl’s complexion, something that itain’t,’ he said.
    â€˜Bron did her make-up. I told her we should go into the makeover business.’
    Silence again. They shared many silences. Johnny had given this sister life, and his love, perhaps attempting to balance the love his father had lavished on Liza. For a while it had been them against the world. When he’d heard that the skeletal remains of Liza had been found, he’d come running back forlittle Annie, unaware of what he’d find when he got there. He’d found a woman, determined, and strong, a woman with a husband.
    He’d gone home that Christmas Eve convinced that one way or another he was going to rid Mallawindy of Jack Burton. Since the day he’d found Sam’s burned bones at the old Aboriginal burial grounds out at Dead Man’s Lane, he’d known why his father had spent half of hislife at Narrawee; he had played two roles, his own and his twin brother’s.
    John knew that he should have gone to the police back then, but a boy’s loyalty is strong, and frequently misplaced. To protect Ellie, he’d kept his silence. Hadn’t wanted to break her childish heart. Maybe he’d been lying to himself. Maybe he’d never had guts enough to go to the police.
    Cowardly little bastard .
    ThatChristmas Eve his father had been the one who ran, but John had known where he would be found. There were things he’d had to do in the city, so he drove the hire car there, then continued on to Narrawee where he’d found the white stone mansion unoccupied. For two nights he’d slept in his hire car, waiting for his father to arrive.
    As a youth John had once spent a day sharpening the old wood axe,convinced he could split his father’s head wide with it as easily as he might split a small block of wood. He had honed the worn blade of his mother’s carving knife to razor sharpness one evening, convinced that he could cut out his father’s heart and feed it to the pigs. In Narrawee he’d had neither knife nor axe, but his bare hands would find a way to rip that bastard apart.
    Jack Burton hadnot shown his face, nor had May, so John had returned his hire car and caught the bus to Warran and to Ann. She had taken his case and placed it in the spare room, so pleased to see him, eager to spend time with him.
    It was after David had gone to bed that he’d broached the subject of his father. ‘I know he’s not at Narrawee, Annie, but he’s somewhere. Find May, and we find him. We’ve got him.’
    â€˜They’re at the flat in Toorak. I drove him there that night,’ she’d said. And his world crashed, and out of the wreckage cameanger, raw and red and aimed at his sister.
    â€˜You drove him down there?’
    â€˜I thought you would have guessed.’
    â€˜That night? That’s where you disappeared to?’ She had nodded, held a finger to her lips. ‘In God’s name, why, Annie?’
    â€˜I don’t know why, but I did it.’
    â€˜He’sgoing to pay.’
    â€˜And what do we gain? More months with reporters hanging around our doors. Him in jail, or back in Mallawindy when the cops don’t believe you. Forget him.’
    â€˜They’ll believe us. Have you still got Sam’s ring?’
    â€˜It was