–She says you’re sick and that she’s worried you’ll hurt the baby.

–Me!

Laughing and his hard eyes dancing. He got out of the truck, quickly, and I followed him. The grass cracked under my feet. The river was loud and I couldn’t hear what he said as he walked away from me.

–Samson!

He turned and his eyes were pink at their corners.

–Anything happens to that baby it’s Olivia. Soon as it’s out of her she’s liable to eat it with a spoon.

–Why would she say all this? Is she that bad a person?

–Says I’m sick. She’s the sick one.

–Sick like how?

He looked in the river. Spat.

–You’ve seen inside her.

–All I saw was a baby.

Shifting his belt. Wanting to take it off; the hot metal chafing him.

–Sick like how, Samson?

–She’s just not right.

And now he was taking off his clothes and walking into the river he’d spat in.

–You can’t be specific?

–’S hard. She’s been this way a long time.

–Since when?

–Since we were young.

–Before you were orphaned?

–No.

–After, then.

He looked up, into the trees. The water waist-deep. I stayed where I was though the long grass was itching me.

–So what happened?

He was clenching his cheeks like he wanted his gums to start bleeding.

–After our parents died we moved in with Auntie, but we were always cooped up and alone. And she’d never had kids, didn’t know what to do with us. We’d a half-deck of cards we used to play with.

–And … Olivia turned at some stage?

–When I was ten and she was thirteen.

I chewed on my cheek, said

–Girls mature faster.

Girl Cures, with their secrets and their sideways glances.

–Indeed they do.

–Could you have told your aunt?

–Auntie was already old. No match for Olivia.

He was up to his chest. Kept splashing his face to cover his tears.

–When she moved in with Harry I thought it was all done with. But then they couldn’t get along.

I looked to the reeds and saw his vest snagged there. It had caught at an angle that made it look like a wisp of smoke, thin and pale.

–Once she made me sit outside all night and there was ice ’tween my toes in the morning.

I came in the front door, itching and irritable with the feel of the hot day sticking to me. The whole walk home a phantom Olivia was strutting beside me, singing and shaking out her hair.

Inside the hall I took one step, then another. Moved hushed as I could as I made for the stairs. Still, he heard me; said my name and told me to come into the kitchen. He was sitting at the table and his chest was glowing. Full of heat. His shirt uneven across his shoulders with a look of fur bristling.

–We need to redirect some roots. They’re coming too close to the house.

I looked out the window, to the tall silent trees.

–And what? They’re gonna come up through the floor?

He was holding a mug and kept looking inside it, thinking he’d magic it full of coffee again.

–No. But they’ll grow criss and cross. Make it harder to put Cures in The Ground.

Garden work was the last thing I felt like, but I couldn’t say no. Not when I’d been away from the house all day. Not when anything at all might give him cause to talk about Samson.

How Samson stopped me doing my share.

How Samson made me lazy, how Samson made me slow.

We went out back and the dry crackle in the air felt stronger there than it had at the river.

If I put The Ground in my mouth it’d be spicy, rich.

We walked toward the end of the garden, straight over the grass as the weather had baked shut the dangerous soil.

The trees seemed to give off their own separate heat. The closer we came to them the more it felt like a hand on the back of my neck. The hedged growth around them, brittle and thick with briar. A few more weeks and roses would start to grow there.

–Here.

Father parting the growth, making not quite enough space for me to pass through.

–Go through and tell me where you see the roots are risen.

I looked at the thickety branches, the tangle of stem.

–Go through there, I said.

–Yes, he said, not catching my tone. Go through here and see where the roots are risen.

–And then what?

–And then what do you think? We’ll sing to them. I’ll pass you the song.

Which meant he’d sing it to me, chord by chord, and I’d keep on repeating him until the work was done. I pulled my dress up around my waist and took a sideways step. A thin branch swung back and scraped my knee.

–Be a little swift, Ada.

I’d a pain in my jaw and realised it was my teeth, grinding. I thought of Samson’s hard cheeks, his child body hurting with cold.

Another step, another scrape, another step. A thorn in my left heel.

I wanted to wipe a cloth over my face and lie down in the cool of my room.

–Can you see anything?

–Not yet.

Being careful not to snap. Careful not to bicker. Nothing about me unusual, nothing calling for conversation or attention. Inside of the hedge now and squatting down to part it a little further, ready to call back to him that I could see no troublesome growth, only brittle ground.