Leo was seventy-three, and his hands had the geography of a hard life—rivers of veins, calloused deltas, knuckles like worn stones. He had grown cane for forty years, and for forty years April had been the pivot: the end of the crushing season, the beginning of the burn-off, the time when the earth finally breathed out instead of gasping under the monsoon’s fist.
“I know.”
“Why did you come back?” Leo asked one evening. They sat on the veranda, cicadas sawing the twilight apart. april in australia