Page 36 of Third Time’s a Charm

I cough and choke on the dust filling the car, but manage to wheeze, “I’d say that truck kicked up a stone.” He side-eyes me for answering a clearly rhetorical question. “Hey, I’m in shock,” I grumble.

We check the road is clear before climbing out of the car, spilling glass as we do. I retreat to the shade of a big gum tree a safe distance from the thundering trucks and Jasper follows, jabbing his hand through his hair.

“I’ll call a tow truck,” he growls, pulling out his phone. His good mood of moments ago now vanished.

I realise I’m still clutching the bag of lollies. “Sherbie?”

He digs around in the bag, scowling, before pulling out a Red Ripper, peeling off the wrapper and dialling. Fair enough. This is definitely a Red Ripper kind of situation.

“What do you mean the tow truck isn’t available today?”

“Yeah, well, Trev—that’s the towie—Trev’s wife went into labour two weeks early,” I hear the tinny voice at the other end shout. “He’s up at Mildura. She’s seven centimetres, he says, so hopefully she’ll get the job done today. Anyway. The towie he arranged to cover him isn’t answering. You’ll have to head back through Malleup to Bullibingal and we’ll sort it out when Trev gets back. Take it easy, though. It’s not good to drive without a windscreen. The wallopers catch you, you’re toast.”

Jasper looks at me as though he’s listening to a foreign language.

“What the actual fuck?” he says as he hangs up, having got the address for the repairer in Bullibingal.

It’s an indicator of how stressed he is because I think this is the first time I’ve heard him drop the f-bomb.

“Looks like we’re having an unplanned overnight in Bullibingal instead of a strip show at the border,” I say.

This time Jasper jams his hand in the bag of lollies without being invited.

We manage to brush most of the glass out before we get back in the car. We also find the culprit.

Sitting not-so-innocently on the back seat, having sailed between us, is half a brick. The fact that this could have ended far worse isn’t lost on either of us.

“Don’t throw that away.” I grab it as Jasper is about to hoick it into the bush. “That’s gotta be a good luck brick.”

Jasper snorts. “If you call getting stranded in the middle of nowhere lucky.” No surprise he’s seeing the glass as half empty. The mulish expression on his face reminds me of his fifteen-year-old self.

“I call it not hitting either of us lucky.” I bounce the bit of brick in one hand as Jasper gives me the side eye. I know what he thinks of my superstitiousness. “It must have come off the back of that truck.”

“Well, it’s all yours.” His tone is all snark, accompanied by an eye roll as he tries to brush red dirt off his seat.

All the lovely leather upholstery is now glowing red in the early afternoon sun. We open the windows in the hope the breeze coming through the space where the windscreen was might blow out at least some of the dirt, but in reality, it just brings more in with it.

It should only be a twenty-five-minute drive to Bullibingal, but without a windscreen, Jasper takes it slow, and it’s nearly forty-five before we arrive at the smash repairer. Although as we drive back through Malleup we do get a friendly, unconcerned wave from Wally, who is sitting on the bench outside the general store smoking.

“Yeah, you didn’t tell me it was a Beamer,” Buddy, the guy at the repair shop, says with a rueful shake of his head when we finally arrive. “Might have to give Trev a call, see if he can pick up a new windscreen for this in Mildura before he heads back.”

Jasper bites down on his plump lower lip, presumably to stop his response from boiling over, based on the look in his stormy blue eyes.

“That would be wonderful. Thank you so much.” I leap into the breach. We don’t need Jasper going all lord of the manor on this guy. It’ll have the reverse effect to the one he wants.

“How’d this happen anyway?” Buddy wonders.

I reach into the back seat and show him the brick, eliciting a whistle.

“Struth. You were bloody lucky you didn’t get brained by that,” he exclaims.

“Yes, we were,” I respond sweetly, with a side eye for Jasper. “Now, since we’ll be here overnight, could you recommend somewhere to stay?”

Buddy scratches his head with fingers blackened by ingrained grease and engine oil and sucks a breath in through a gap in his teeth so big that it might be just a gap, or it could be a missing tooth.

“Well, there’s the motel, down that away. Ya woulda come past it on yer way in.” He waves his hand in the general direction of where we came from.

“Or?” Jasper appears underwhelmed by that idea, since we did, indeed, pass a small motel with a broken neon sign and a weedy car park on our way in.