road that was closer to one lane than two. There had been little room to manoeuvre, but even so, she had never been able to accept the verdict.
She had been an experienced enough driver, but most of her driving had been done on city roads, and in her own small sedan—not Robert Galbraith’s large automatic. At the time she had been feeling her way with the unfamiliar car and the road, which had recently had a new load of gravel spread on it. She had always believed that if either Robert or Susan had been behind the wheel, they would have managed the car and the slippery conditions better and so survived the crash. She wouldn’t have lost her mother and Robert—who had been the closest thing to a father she had ever known—and her much younger half-brother, David, wouldn’t have lost both his parents.
To compound her guilt, she knew that if Robert Galbraith and her mother were still alive, Galbraith Station wouldn’t be in such a shaky financial position.
With the help of a hired hand, Bill Harris, and Aunt Ellen, who had moved out of her townhouse in Mason and into Galbraith, Dani had quit her physiotherapist’s job and taken over the running of the farm while she sorted out the financial tangle of Robert Galbraith’s affairs.
Despite an outward appearance of wealth, neither Susan nor Robert had had a lot of money to spare, nor had ever imagined dying before their time—certainly not in a car accident on one of Jackson’s Ridge’s sleepiest country roads. They’d had insurance but only enough to cover the short-term debt owing on the property. Although it had been in the Galbraith family for generations, it had become heavily mortgaged through Robert’s various business ventures.
The investment structure, which had been solid while Robert was alive, had collapsed like a house of cards when he died. A kiwifruit orchard he’d had shares in had proved successful, but fluctuations in the market had eaten away the slim profits, and without Robert at the helm, the operation had eventually been sold at a small loss. The largest loss had occurred in the most lucrative of Robert’s enterprises and his pet project: his horse breaking and training business.
A renowned horse breaker, Robert had had a lengthy client list and had commanded high fees. The business, which had started out on a shoestring budget, had expanded rapidly. To cope with the demand, Susan had begun working full-time with the horses, and a large amount of investment capital had been sunk into building a set of stables and a covered training facility. While Robert had been alive the income had been steady and substantial, more than enough to cover the mortgage, but, within days of his death, the horses had been removed and the income had dried up.
The final nail in the coffin was an ostrich contract Robert had bought into just before he’d died—a deal which required the purchase of a bird a year for a further period of five years at an exorbitant fixed price. So far the venture had failed to make anything but a loss. The ostrich industry had folded, and prices for the birds and the products had plummeted, leaving investors with a financial lemon that continued to squeeze them dry. The contracts were cleverly executed and legally binding, creating a financial drag that tied investors into paying for birds that were more use in a zoo than on a farm. For years Dani and the group of investors had waited for the syndicate that had set up the farm to fold, so freeing them, but against the odds the ostrich facility continued.
The easy option would have been to sell off a parcel of land to cover the debts, but over the past few years Robert Galbraith had already sold off the maximum amount of land allowed under the local authority rules to help fund the costs of the new businesses—the farm could no longer be subdivided. Any debts now had to be met out of farm capital.
During Dani’s first interview with the bank, the possibility of bankruptcy and a mortgagee sale had been suggested, but she had refused to give in to that option. Her reaction had been knee-jerk and fierce. In his will, Robert Galbraith had entrusted her not only with David’s care, but with Galbraith Station, which had been left jointly to both her and David. If Robert and Susan had still been alive, Galbraith Station would have prospered not only in a business sense but as the warm hub of their family.
The fact that they had died and she had had a part in it haunted her. For years—a shadowy carryover from childhood—she had quietly kept a watch on Susan, Robert and David. The vigilance had been habitual and ingrained. Sometimes Susan had chided her about being overprotective, but she’d accepted the way Dani felt: they were her family, and doubly precious to her because of the past.
But no amount of checking on the people around her family or personally ensuring their safety had helped in the few seconds it had taken for Susan and Robert’s lives to end. As hard as she’d tried, she’d been powerless to save them, but she was determined to help David—and to save Galbraith.
Pushing to her feet, Dani walked out into the dusty area in front of the barn and stared at the clear blue sky. The shadows were lengthening and the air had cooled slightly, but it was still unseasonably hot.
Brown hills, the texture of the grass like velvet with the low angle of the sun, rolled into the hazy distance. Diminished as the property was, it was still substantial enough to provide a good income—provided there was rain.
The drought couldn’t have happened at a worse time. The slow death of Galbraith Station was excruciating. Sometimes she felt as if the place was sucking every last iota of strength and endurance from her.
Directly after the funeral, when the will had been read, she’d been surprised to discover shares in the station had been left to her, but once the financial situation was sorted out she would hand them over to David. He’d need every resource at his disposal to keep the property, let alone farm it, and once he’d completed his agricultural diploma, she meant to see that he got his chance.
Methodically, she checked the tractor’s diesel tank and refilled it ready for the morning. With fingers that were annoyingly clumsy, she reversed the pouring spout on the diesel container, screwed on the lid, and stored it in the corner of the shed. Picking up a rag, she wiped her hands, nose automatically wrinkling at the strong smell of the diesel.
Blankly, she stared at her hands. Her fingers were long, the shape of her hands elegant. As hard as she’d tried she could never get comfortable with the acrid smells, or with what the oil and diesel did to her skin and nails. Every now and then she rebelled and put on a coat of nail polish, only to go through the anger/denial thing when the next day the colour gradually chipped, peeled or dissolved away. Lately, she’d stopped bothering. Like her life, her beauty regime was pared down to the basics.
Absently, she strolled back to the house, taking a circuitous route through the vegetable garden. On the way she stopped to pick a lettuce, sprigs of basil and several ripe tomatoes for dinner—the habit of never walking anywhere without a purpose ingrained.
A practical task or not, for long moments she simply soaked in the pleasure of the garden, her arms filled with salad vegetables, eyes half-closed as she listened to the sound of the wind sifting through the trees and the melodic whistle of tui birds.
A faint click, as if a door had just been softly closed, jerked her head around.
Frowning, she studied the corrugated iron back of the barn, which provided a wind-shelter for the garden. The main doors, which were around the other side, were open, and usually stayed open unless the weather was wet.
On Galbraith Station theft had never been a problem; it was too isolated for casual thievery and, in any case, Jackson’s Ridge was hardly a breeding ground for criminals. The town itself was small and sleepy—a coastal hideaway that attracted a few regular holidaymakers each summer and little else. Added to that Galbraith Station was a good twenty-minute drive out of town on a dusty dirt road. Apart from the occasional boatload of picnickers who landed on the beach below the house, Dani was lucky to see a stranger. Consequently,
