Chapter 23
It was almost dark. Penny drove past the string of run-down cottages, past the sagging fences and For Sale signs, and parked in the street outside her uncle’s home. By the light of a street lamp it looked more run down than ever. Fibro-cement walls begging for paint. Rusted roof. The unkempt lawns sprouting yellow clumps of dandelions. Scarlet geraniums, escapees from their beds, strangled straggly azaleas, once the pride of the garden. Ray’s battered ute slumped in the carport. She sat awhile, determined to stop crying before going inside.
Penny had only left Ray a few hours ago and had not expected to be back so soon. He’d seemed fragile and depressed when she left him, not like her uncle at all. Not like her rock. For that’s what he’d been all of her life. Ever since a drun
