Michaela walked down the gravel drive to the mail box. She squinted at the sun in the pale morning sky and rubbed at the ink around her forearms, a gesture that had become unconscious since the tattoos had healed. It was hot already and only edging into summer. She supposed that would be a good thing, the heat ripening the fruit on the vines that marched in orderly rows in the paddocks behind her.

She flicked through the circulars at the mail box without any real interest; they would go straight into the trash when she got back to the house. She coughed out a little laugh at that. Trash. She was still talking American inside her head. Rubbish. It was rubbish again, and she’d better get used to it.

Flicking a wave at the old geezer riding his pushbike into town like he did every weekday morning, read the paper in the library and enjoy the air conditioning or the heat. Michaela wiped an arm across her forehead and guessed today it would be air conditioning. The old guy lived further down the dirt road in a house even more antiquated than hers. She had at least persuaded her grandmother to insulate the ceiling, even though the rest of the place was still scrim behind the faded wallpaper. One day, she told herself, and the very thought made her tired.

She fished the mail proper out of the box. There was never much. It was the twenty-first century and her phone and power accounts came by email. But she made the trip to the mailbox at the end of the drive regardless.

There was a postcard. She stared at the picture on the front, a picturesque scene of fall leaves somewhere in America. She flipped it over, hands trembling slightly and she cursed under her breath. The words blurred and she stuck the card in the pile of junk mail and turned back to the house, whistling for her grandmother’s old dog to follow.

‘Mack,’ she called. ‘Come on.’

The dog pulled his head out of the ditch and left the scent of rabbit to trail after Michaela down the drive.

The house was cool. Not from fancy air conditioning, but the simple fact of the day being early and the house shady. Mack flung himself in his favourite spot on the cracked red linoleum by the refrigerator and closed his eyes. Michaela ignored him and smacked the mail down on the bench. She wrenched on the tap (faucet, tap, who the hell gave a shit) and splashed some cold water on her face, scrubbing with her hands. She turned the tap off and sniffed, reaching for a tea towel to dry her face.

Pawing through the mail she plucked out the postcard and turned it over in her hands to read the back. ‘Tourist season,’ she read. ‘All the pretty tourists here to see the fall leaves. Sure is a sight worth seeing!!!’

Michaela chewed her lip and re-read the card. Typical Trisha, she thought. Ambiguous as always. Were the fall leaves the sight worth seeing? Or the pretty tourists? Michaela sighed and propped the card against the sugar bowl. She was putting her money on the tourists.

Putting the jug on to boil for coffee, Michaela put fresh water into Mack’s bowl and scratched the sweet spot behind his ears. There was no one else around, so she spoke to the dog.

‘Eh Mack, what we going to do, boy?’ The dog leaned into her hand but otherwise made no reply. Michaela gave him a pat and moved away to make coffee. She took it out onto the porch and sat in her grandmother’s old swing seat. Mack followed and threw himself down in the sun. Michaela looked around and sipped her coffee, still thinking about the postcard. It was eight months since she’d flown out of the States and back home for her grandmother’s last few days.

Trisha hadn’t come with her. A month before the phone call from New Zealand, from the old geezer down the road, as it happened, his voice cracking and loud as he struggled to tell Michaela her grandmother was in the hospital and not expected to last more than a week; a month before this, Trisha had decided she was going to go home to her family and try patching things up there. She was still shaken by what that bastard Gardener had done, trying to murder his mother, and only narrowly stopped from succeeding by the actions of Michaela and Trisha.

They’d made a sure-fire team, all right, her and Trisha, Michaela thought, putting a booted foot on the porch railing and pushing herself on the swing. And she understood Trisha needing to spend some time with her family, of course she did. But it had all fallen apart. She’d had her dissertation to finish, then the call home.

And now. Now there was a house and a dog and an orchard. She sniffed and checked the time, digging a watch out of her jeans pocket. The strap had broken and she hadn’t bothered to replace it. She saw the time and planted both feet on the ground standing up so that the swing bumped against the back of her knees and Mack looked up from where he was lying, ears raised as if to ask what’s the fuss?

‘Meeting with the manager, boss dog,’ Michaela filled him in. ‘And fuck it, I’m going to be late.’

By the time she’d met the manager, a sunburned guy in his forties who seemed to know what he was doing, and who seemed to view Michaela with her tattoos and half-cocked American accent and her English lit degree as vaguely more baffling than the average sighting of the Loch Ness Monster, and they’d taken a tour of the orchard, discussing the upcoming season in detail, Michaela had had enough of the day.

The sun was sinking when she swung open the door to the house and stepped inside. She was knackered, if she did say so herself. She pulled open the door of her grandmother’s ancient refrigerator and fished out a beer. It wasn’t hard, there was only beer and a limp half a lettuce in there. Damn, she’d forgotten to go to the supermarket. Again. She pulled the cap off the bottle and leaned against the bench, drinking half the small bottle in one go. Damn it but she was tired.

The manager was an asshole, she’d decided halfway through the day. Though truthfully, she’d decided this months ago, within half an hour of meeting the guy. But he was, she knew, an asshole who knew how to do the job. She wiped her sleeve across her forehead and sighed. The man was having a bit of trouble believing she knew the first thing about growing kiwifruit. The fact that she’d lived and worked on the damn orchard with her grandmother since she was fourteen years old, was a fact he seemingly couldn’t comprehend.

She put the bottle down on the tiled bench and pushed up the sleeves of her long sleeved tee. The blue lines of her tattoos twined around her wrists. She rested her head in her hands and surveyed Mack gloomily.

‘At least you have something for your dinner, boss dog,’ she told him. She straightened up and shrugged her shoulders. She was too tense. Would get a bloody headache if she didn’t relax. She snorted and finished off the beer. The postcard caught her eye and she picked it up again and re-read the words on the back. She cocked the bottle in a toast.

‘Cheers Trisha. You sure know how to cheer a woman up.’

Another sigh and she tossed the card down. She picked up her keys instead.

‘C’mon Mack. Looks like we’re eating out.’

The phone rang as Michaela was pulling on her jacket. Cursing under her breath, she snagged the portable phone and stuck it under her ear.

‘Yeah,’ she said, expecting it to be Heyward, the manager.

‘Michaela?’ A woman’s voice. ‘Michaela, that you?’

Michaela finished stepping outside and let the door swing shut behind her. The sky was turning a bruised purple as the sun went down amongst storm clouds brewing in the west. She shivered.