Absent for years and then he shoes up and wants to pretend he was never gone anywhere. Catch up, he says, get back to how things used to be.

Used to be, I told him, we,d wake up at dawn and start working. Then the drought came and the animals starved and died and then Pa snapped his back falling down from the hayloft. And then Ma just about folded in on herself until she was just this little thing that the wind could have picked up and taken away, and then one day it did.

But you wouldn't know, Mr. bright lights big city. The homestead with it open skies, crisp horizon, hard work, earthy smells, this was never good enough for you. You need the flash of neon light seen through a bottle. Needed girls is little dresses and dark make-up to smile. You left to crawl along concrete, you left them all alone.

My reflection sneered at me, spat on the ground.