Free Outback Sisters by Rachael Johns

was that the truth. Everyday she prayed that her girls would have a good day; that they—Harriet in particular—wouldn’t get into any scrapes.
    It was Grace’s second year travelling to the high school in Geraldton and thankfully, she seemed to have taken to the extra travel and the greater workload without much drama. Bless her heart. Harriet, on the other hand, lived for the drama. Everything felt like a battle with her at the moment—from the second she reluctantly crawled out of bed in the morning to their final, usually turbulent, words at night.
    On Friday night, when the girls had confessed to their online-dating scheme, Simone had felt a mix of emotions. Her first instinct was anger, and then concern for what might have happened—you never knew who they might have met online—and then she’d almost felt closer to Harriet, as if her daughter had finally been thinking about someone besides herself. But by Saturday morning she’d been living with a stranger again. The only time Harriet wanted to speak to her now was to argue about the limits Simone had enforced on her relationship. Quite frankly, she thought she’d been lenient letting Harriet continue seeing Jaxon after the fiasco with the stolen car—not to mention the fire business—but Harriet didn’t see it that way. As far as she was concerned, her mother was hell bent on ruining her life.
    Her confession of that morning still rang loud and clear in Simone’s head. ‘I only signed you up for online dating because I hoped if you got a life you’d butt out of mine. But you’ll probably stuff things up with Logan like you did with Ryan.’
    Usually quick at retorts, Simone hadn’t been able to come up with one this time, so had simply ignored her daughter’s caustic words. Neither of them had spoken to each other since. Not that that was out of the ordinary—Harriet often left for school in a mood but usually by the end of the day she’d forgotten it or moved onto some other drama. By God, it was draining.
    Were she and Frankie such nightmares to their mum during adolescence? Simone didn’t think so and wondered why-oh-why she was being punished like this. Hadn’t she already been through enough crap? Closing the door behind her, her gaze caught on the photo of her and Jason on their wedding day that still sat in pride of place on the hallway table. When they’d first found out she was pregnant, she’d never imagined she’d have to do this tough parenting gig without him. Not a day went by when she didn’t think of him, nor a day where her heart didn’t feel empty with missing him.
    She sighed, kissed her index finger and then touched the tip of it against his face. The irony of the situation was that Harriet’s Jaxon reminded Simone so much of Jason: they were both larrikins with big hearts who sometimes acted before thinking things through. Even their names were similar.
    â€˜Not that you’d be able to see the likeness, would you my love,’ Simone said, smiling bittersweetly down at her husband. ‘Jaxon would never have got within ten feet of Harriet with you around.’ Jason had adored Harriet from the moment she was born and they’d shared a special connection right up until he’d died.
    Simone went into the kitchen and began the arduous task of cleaning up after breakfast. For two girls, they sure could make a mess. Harriet was ‘cleansing’—or so she said—and that meant she blended about a million vegetables each day for breakfast. Meanwhile Grace ate half a box of cereal.
    She was tossing all the leftover vegetable scraps into a plastic tub for the neighbours’ chooks when her phone beeped with a message. The bus would barely have left Bunyip Bay yet, so it couldn’t be the school with bad news.
    Wiping her hands on her jeans, she started rifling through the clutter on the bench and on the