Yesterday's Dust by Joy Dettman Page A

Sam’s ring. Sam is wearing it again. Let it end. For me, for David, for all of us, let it end here.’
    â€˜I want justice, Annie.’
    â€˜Don’t confuse justice with revenge.They’re different, Johnny.’
    â€˜Call it what you will, I want it.’
    â€˜And what does Mum do when you expose her puppet master?’
    He hadn’t been thinking of Ellie. Hadn’t wanted to think of her, but the words woke a place in him that had been sleeping. He had no memory of what he’d said next, but when he was done, she’d smiled, shaken her head.
    â€˜And I thought priests were big on forgiveness of sins.Forgive him his trespasses. He’s Sam – and a better Sam than the original. Forget him and get on with your own life.’
    â€˜What life? I haven’t got a life to get on with. I just tossed it in. He’s it now.’
    â€˜Then take your gun to town, Johnny. He’ll be at Liza’s inquest. Shoot him as he leaves the court and spread us all over page one again, then spend the rest of your life in a cage.’
    â€˜I’ve spentmy whole bloody life caged.’
    How did it happen? He didn’t know, but too suddenly their voices had been raised against each other and she’d closed the door, closed David’s bedroom door.
    â€˜Please keep your voice down, and remember, you’re not theonly victim here. I have to go down to that inquest. Do you think I want that? Do you think I want those cameras on me again?’
    â€˜I just realised I don’tknow you, Annie. I don’t know what you want any more.’
    â€˜I want to run. Every fibre in my body wants to get me into my car and just drive me to some place where I can wake up free, go to bed free. But I can’t run. I’m pregnant, so I’m stuck here, just like you are, and I have to go on, just like you do.’
    â€˜You’ll . . . you’ll sit in a room with him at the inquest, and you’ll lie for him?’
    â€˜Istarted it, so I have to finish it. It’s just the old fairytale, about a gardener and a motorbike. It’s just another Snow White and the seven dwarfs.’
    â€˜I don’t understand you.’
    â€˜I don’t understand me either, but it’s not important.’
    â€˜It’s important to me, Annie.’
    â€˜Your priorities are twisted. All I know, Johnny, is . . . is the day you came home, my world was ending. Mandy was dead and I wantedto die and then I opened the door and you were there. When I needed you, you came back to me.’ Her hands covering her face, she’d looked at him from behind the fan of her fingers. ‘Why are we fighting?’
    â€˜Over a mongrel dog that doesn’t deserve to live.’
    â€˜And that’s the reason I went to Mallawindy that night. I knew I had to get there before you – get him away from you.’
    â€˜You should have letme rip the bastard apart.’
    She had reached out a hand to him. ‘The only place inside me that isn’t a numb ache these days is the little place I saved for you. I searched for you forever.’
    He hadn’t taken her hand. ‘It’s not me you’ll be lying for at the inquest.’
    â€˜It’s not for him! None of it is for him! Driving him to Toorak wasn’t for him. It was making an end to it, that’s all. It was givingyou an out, giving Mum her missing Prince Charming. All I have to donow is get Liza home, get her buried, get her name on that bloody tombstone, then I’ve done enough, Johnny. Then it will be over.’
    â€˜Who are you?’ he’d said.
    â€˜Maybe if you’d stuck around instead of running, you might have found out. Maybe I would have found out a lot sooner too.’
    He’d had no answer for that. He’d walked tothe spare room and picked up his bag. She’d followed him to the back door.
    â€˜Don’t go. Not like this. Sit down and talk to