Sunlit Shadow Dance by Graham Wilson Read Free Book Online

side of Mark to protect her children and also to protect her
own sanity which had started to come apart at the seams as it all
unfolded. In one of their nights of loving she had told him she was
but seconds away from ending it all when he had arrived in
court.
    This thought
had chilled him to the bone then, and it scared him even more now
that he had seen her and her children again. He thought this new
apparent demeanour of calm vacancy was not real. It was like that
thin layer of ice which forms on frozen water in an Alice Springs
winter dawn, but where one knock shatters it into fragments which
never reform.
    It was not her
fault that she had ended up in that impossible situation but the
thought that it had almost driven her to take her own life and, but
for an almost miraculous intervention she would have succeeded, was
horrific to him. He did not think anyone else knew just how close
it had come, she may have told Anne. But fate, or God, or something
had intervened to keep her alive then. If it had intervened, yet
again, to bring her to safety in this place he would allow nothing
to threaten that.
    And yet her
vanishing had torn a hole through the lives of a whole lot of other
people, they all had a raw vein of grief running through them too.
It was particularly her family and Anne, but others who knew her
too were also in that place, particularly Alan and Sandy who had a
great sense of guilt for their own role in bringing her to this. So
they deserved some light to come from this, if light there was.
    His initial
inclination, as her saw her face fade from view, was to just find a
way to come back here to work, day after day, month after month. As
he saw her time after time he would slowly befriend her and then he
would win her confidence, maybe even win her heart anew.
    He needed so
much to have her back in his life and the thought of trying to woo
her and win her, when she knew him not, was hugely appealing. He
felt he had been given a chance to start all over again with her,
as if they were each discovering the other for the first time. In
this vision she was for him alone to know and find.
    But now, as
these thoughts rolled around, he realized that it was too unfair to
deny others the knowledge he held if it could ease their own pain.
Still, balanced against that, and even more important, was the
imperative of protecting her from the hostile outside world which
had almost destroyed her once before. Even if that meant he could
see her no more, he would choose that so as not let something bad
like that happen again. In the end he just did not know what to
do.
    As these
thoughts kept circling around and around inside his head he
realized he was approaching Normanton where he had to fuel up for
his next leg. He decided to would ring Buck and seek his wise
counsel; he was the best friend he had left. He should be at home
today at lunch time, it was Sunday after all. So, once he had
fuelled up, he pulled out his mobile phone. It had reception at the
airport.
    Julie, Buck’s
wife, picked up on the third ring. He heard her holler for Buck to
come to the phone after exchanging a few pleasantries. At first
Buck was his usual blunt self, “Why are you ringing me on a Sunday
at lunch, just when I have gone for a siesta, barely shut my eyes,
can’t it wait till you see me next week?”
    Vic gave him
back, “Now you are turning into a pussy, a big fat pussycat who
needs a midday sleep in the sun. Some boss you!”
    Then it all
came bubbling out in a rush. “Buck, I think I have found her,
Susan, up at a blackfella place on Cape York. It looks like her, it
sounds like her, but she does not know who I am and I feel like I
am just imagining it. But it fits; she had two kids the right age,
named David and Anne. She has taken the name Jane Bennet. I could
have sworn it was her until I saw the blank look in her eyes and
now I really don’t know.”
    Buck said,
“Whoa there, slow down, too much information all at once. Start
again