The jagged red line severed his face, running through his left eye and out over his cheekbone finishing somewhere under his chin. She itched to touch it yet she feared she’d hurt him or he’d shy away. To look in the mirror every day and know how close he’d come to death, to have a permanent reminder of such terror filled her with awe. There were so many questions she wanted to ask. For a moment though it was enough to sit next to him, feel his warmth and know he’d come home. He tilted his head to one side and grinned, sparking the single dimple in his right cheek. ‘Well?’ he asked. ‘I can’t believe you are here,’ she whispered, emotion stealing her voice. ‘I thought…we…Pa and I thought you were dead.’ She reached out and squeezed his arm to prove he sat there next to her, not a figment of her imagination. She barely shed a tear when Father George had buried her Pa. Now the tears burned in her throat as she remembered the old man sitting every day on the verandah, staring down the dusty road leading to Sydney.
