Read Online The House On Burra Burra Lane by Jennie Jones - Free Book Online

place, like some loop from the past going round and round, playing the same scene over and over.
    ‘You’ll get used to it, Ethan. Times change, you know that yourself.’
    ‘I didn’t expect the house to be the same.’
    ‘It wasn’t. Not for years. Does she like you?’
    ‘We get on fine.’
    ‘Your mother would have liked her.’
    Ethan’s stomach churned. ‘I imagine she would have.’
    ‘She’s a fine young woman. You’d suit each other.’
    Ethan gripped his parcels.
    ‘You didn’t do anything wrong, son. You can’t live people’s lives for them. Time to get over it.’
    Way too close for comfort. These things hadn’t been articulated for years. Even more frightening than the sick feeling was the need to sit here and talk about the past. Everything he’d blocked with concrete resolve—suddenly a pneumatic drill thumped, trying to bore a place to sit.
    ‘Young Walker’s brought it back to life,’ Grandy said.
    Did he mean the house? Or the past? An immediate anger burned in Ethan’s chest. If he wasn’t careful, the whole damned town would be chinwagging with heavier stuff than the constant complaints about the kids who left. ‘What’s the talk?’ he asked.
    ‘What you’d expect. They haven’t remembered too far back yet.’
    ‘I’m getting too close,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m doing too much for her.’
    ‘She’ll let you know if she thinks so.’
    ‘She doesn’t know anything.’
    ‘Best you tell her then.’
    Ethan stood. ‘There’ll be no need.’ He caught Grandy’s stare: a bullet between the eyes. He swallowed, nodded a goodbye, and turned. He took the steps from the wooden pedestrian walkway down to the road. The talk would be smoke without fire these days. Although a person could choke on the inhalations.
    He swung into the cab and fired the engine, his heartbeat ripping at his chest. Anger . He closed his eyes, fought the swell of turbulence in his mind. It wasn’t Sammy’s fault, flying into his surgery, his world. Shattering his peace. But the reason for his anger was burning a hole in his gut.

Five
    E than didn’t have to pass Sammy’s place to get to the Smyth farm but he’d driven from his surgery, pulled up at the fork on All Seasons Road and taken a right into Burra Burra Lane instead of the more direct route straight ahead. He had no intention of stopping off, but the ute had a mind of its own.
    He sighed. Settled the frustration.
    His emotions should be well below the surface, tidily controlled, only waiting to take a hold of him if he let them. He hadn’t imagined a time when he would allow them to break out, but his worries had surfaced yesterday, talking with Grandy. The old man knew everything. He’d been the one to kick Ethan out of town, for God’s sake.
    There’d been one hell of a blue. A fight the townspeople had still remarked on when he returned to Swallow’s Fall six years ago and opened the practice. Not that he could blame them.
    He still felt his hands on that idiot Wesley Hawkins, who’d been asking for it all year anyway. Whining and whinging to the school teacher about how Ethan had made him late three times in a row by hiding his bicycle. It hadn’t been Ethan, it had been some other loser, but Ethan had been happy to take the flak because he enjoyed the rumble that came with it.
    He winced at the memory. He’d not been shy of a fight but he’d been sixteen, Wes only fourteen. Ethan had grown into his muscles in his early teens, and Wes was probably still some wet twig of a man, wherever he lived now. But still …
    It had been Wes who had warned Grandy because Ethan had stupidly bragged about what he was going to do and then promptly stole Wes’s bike from his hands. First time he’d done it, although he’d boasted about doing it often enough … and he’d got caught.
    Grandy had walked into a much younger Mrs J’s house as though he were striding into a bullpen ready to saddle one up and ride bronco. He hauled Ethan out