I didn't even know why I liked her. She was just there. I was used to her. - Tim Winton

Maybe old Pete-the-Post was right - you never really know anybody, not even those you loved. People have shadows, secrets.

"Sometimes it's a mighty struggle to know what's real and what's just . . . a mirage. You understand?" "Yeah," I said.

Sam followed [his father], loved him, listened to him talk. He believed deeply in luck, the old man, though he was careful never to say the word. He called it the shifty shadow of God. All his life he paid close attention to the movements of that shadow. He taught Sam to see it passing, feel it hovering, because he said it was those shifts that governed a man's life and it always paid to be ahead of the play. If the chill of its shade felt good, you went out to meet it like a droughted farmer goes out, arms wide, to greet the raincloud, but if you got that sick, queer feeling in your belly, you had to stay put and do nothing but breathe and there was a good chance it would pass you by. It was as though luck made choices, that it could think. If you greeted it, it came to you; if you shunned it, it backed away.