Beneath the Surface

by Tara Marlow

  “Oh! Yes, hello. I am. He has? May I ask what for? Okay. Ah, no, not that I’m aware of. Yes, yes, that’s fine. I’ll be at Lowell’s. Yes, thank you. Bye.”

  She sat back against the couch, tossing the phone aside like it was a scorching hot potato.

  “They’ll be here in twenty minutes. Guess I’m going to be late for school again.”

  “Call that teacher who helped you,” suggested Lowell. “Let her know the situation. Maybe she’ll cover for you. I’ll drop you off at school afterwards. My classes don’t start until one and I was going to study until then. Did they say how long it’ll take? The questions they want to ask?”

  “No. They didn’t. I’m so sorry, Lowell.” He waved her off.

  * * *

  Grace sat on the couch with a pillow in her lap, her feet tucked under her. The detective sat next to her and opened her notepad. The woman, about fifty, wore a no-nonsense dark grey suit with a very stark white shirt. Very detective-like, if television was anything to go on. The detective came alone this time, a relief to Grace. She hated the police. Just seeing someone in uniform made her nervous. But just because she didn’t wear the uniform didn’t mean the detective could be trusted.

  Lowell excused himself and retreated to the kitchen to make more coffee. He knew her too well. She could use another cup, maybe another five, just to get through this.

  “So, Grace, let’s start with what I know. Is that okay?” Grace nodded. The woman smiled at her. Grace couldn’t tell if it was genuine. Probably not, just practiced. Grace stiffened.

  “Your father was arrested two nights ago on possession charges, aggravated assault and attempted robbery.”

  The only thing in that sentence that surprised Grace was the attempted piece. He must have been high if he couldn’t pull off the robbery.

  “Where?” Grace asked, her voice barely loud enough for her own ears.

  “Pardon?” the detective looked up at her in confusion.

  “Where was he arrested? Your business card… it said Victoria Police.”

  “Oh. He was arrested here, in the western suburbs. Penrith, I think,” said the detective, referring to her notes.

  “Then why are you asking me questions?” The question was double-barrelled. She wasn’t connected to her father anymore. She made sure not to leave a trace of him, so how had they found her? And why were the Victoria police questioning her if he was arrested in Sydney? It made little sense.

  “Well, that’s why I’m here to talk to you. I have a friend in the district where he was arrested. She knows I’ve been working on a cold case from about twelve years ago, down in Melbourne. When your father was arrested, they found no record for him. My friend found that interesting, especially when she noticed his rather distinctive tattoo, one that fit with the profile of the missing man in the case I’m working.”

  Grace knew exactly what tattoo she was talking about. The detective was right. The black crow on his shoulder was very distinctive. When Grace remained silent, the detective continued.

  “The cold case I’m working on involves a man and his daughter who went missing twelve years ago.” Okay, she had her attention now. “No one has seen or heard from them since. At first, it was believed they were murdered. The mother is dead. That we know for sure. The man I’m looking for has a long police record, and he did not go by the name of John Thompson. Fake IDs are not hard to come by for the man I’m looking for. The little girl’s name was Grace. These details seem a little too coincidental, so I came to Sydney to follow up on what my friend found.”

  Lowell came in and handed coffees to Grace and to the detective. Grace knew he heard every word. The kitchen wasn’t that far away.

  “Do you know anything about this Grace?” the detective asked, then thanked Lowell for the coffee.

  “No, I don’t. My father has never been to jail before. I mean, he’s not perfect, but he’s not a criminal.” Lowell coughed, then Grace saw him reposition himself awkwardly out of the corner of her eye. It was enough to catch the detective’s attention. Grace uncrossed her legs and put the pillow to the floor. It was time to move the detective on.

  “And you don’t think it’s odd they have the same tattoo?” The detective placed her coffee on the side table.

  “Well, yes. I do. But maybe it was done at the same tattoo place? Maybe they had a picture of it and thought it looked cool? I don’t know…”

  “There were a few other odd things about the disappearance. We found a red suitcase by the front door of the house, like someone was planning to leave. We also found a mobile phone in the woman’s closet. Numbers had been punched in, but no calls were made.”

  Grace went cold. Exactly like her nightmare. She remained silent. But this time, she couldn’t speak if she tried. Everything was a little too real. And she still didn’t know who, or what, they were running from. But the suitcase. The phone. Her mother…

  “Well, it would be nice to get some answers before I head back to Melbourne. Your father will be released on bail in the next few days if no other evidence turns up. Considering he doesn’t have a record, that is.”

  20

  For the next hour, Grace paced the apartment. Should she run? Her father was locked up. But for how long? She didn’t want to change her address to Lowell’s, but the school was making sure everyone’s address was correct for the H.S.C. exam requirements. Ugh. If the detectives found her, her father would too, once he got out.

  But the detective knew, just as she did, they couldn’t hold her father without Grace’s help. What had her father done? Something wasn’t right. She never asked what he’d been arrested for, not really. The detective’s answer was kind of vague. Probably on purpose. Should she have asked about the tattoo the detective referenced? Her silence probably gave the impression she knew about it. Shit. Of course she knew. As the detective said, it was distinctive. Did it mean something else? Why would the detective know about it?

  Grace bit her fingernails, stripping the nail from the bed like she was stripping corn from the cob. If she ran, where would she go? Did she need to run? Who, or what, would she be running from? Her father told her they were running from ‘bad people’. Probably more bullshit. She didn’t know who to trust anymore. Maybe Lowell was in on it? Or Daniel? Maybe one of them was part of whatever it was her father was caught up in? Snitches worked for the police. Maybe that’s how they found him? No. God, no. What was she was thinking? She was being stupid. Paranoid.

  “Grace?” Lowell’s voice startled her out of her panic. She was shaking all over. The part that made things real for her were the suitcase and the phone. It was too much like her dream.

  “Come on, sit. I’ll make you breakfast.” She shook her head. “You need to eat.”

  No time. She needed to…

  “Grace…” Lowell came toward her. She backed up, suddenly fearful of everyone, everything.

  “Geezus. What did she say that has you so scared?” She shook her head. She zipped around him and walked into the bedroom, got into the bed, and pulled the covers up around her. Lowell followed her into the room and sat on the other side.

  “Jelly, talk to me. I’m on your side, remember?” She shook her head. But her gut told her he was right. He’d always been there. But after the years of running, of always looking over their shoulder, she just didn’t know what was true. And the red suitcase and the phone the detective mentioned…

  “Jelly…”

  “The suitcase. The phone. I keep dreaming about them.”

  “From the cold case?” She nodded, tears building.

  “Maybe you read about it somewhere? Maybe it stayed in your head?”

  “No. It’s the nightmares I keep having. Running. Thorns. Blood. Hiding. Moving. My dad. Sometimes I see my mum in them too. But the red suitcase has been in every nightmare over the last six months. Sometimes open on the bed. But lately, by the front door. One of the last ones had blood coming out of the suitcase. And the phone? That’s recent. I keep dre
aming of being in the back of a closet with a phone in my hand, not being able to remember what number my mum told me to dial.” She was always young in that part of the nightmare, she realised. Very young. Like, five. Twelve years the detective said.

  Lowell was quiet, and when she glanced at him, his face was pale with pure shock. He said nothing for a long while.

  “I should have told you. I’m so sorry,” she said, tears trickling silently down her cheeks.

  “So, what are you saying? That what the detective says is true? You’ve been on the run with your dad all these years?”

  “Yes,” she confided, letting that sink in. Then she added the thing that was concerning her more. “But I don’t know why.”

  * * *

  Lowell headed to the kitchen. She heard sounds of the toaster, the kettle. Her mind was going a million miles an hour, like her memories were on a newsreel. They whizzed through, going from one moment to the next. She tried to piece things together, but it was all too confusing. She needed to slow things down. Lowell came back into the bedroom with two cups and a plate piled high with jam-smothered toast. He handed her the steaming hot mugs.

  “It’s tea. Not coffee. You don’t need any more today.” She smirked, said thanks. He was trying to wean her off the stuff. He sat down on the bed opposite her, setting the plate of hot toast between them, then reached over to take a cup from her.

  “My mother’s name was Zoe, but that’s all I know,” Grace said. “Dad never talked about her, except in fits of rage. But it’s only been recently. I have no photos of her, only memories, and even those memories are kind of sketchy. Dad destroyed the photos of my mother in a drunken stupor one night. I think I was about six but it’s one thing I vividly remember.” The mug burned her fingers, so she placed it on the bedside table, avoiding Lowell’s gaze. She grabbed a pillow from the other side of the bed and wrapped her arms around it.

  “We were living out of the car. Camping, kind of. Dad sat there, staring into the fire, and then suddenly, he got up, went to the car, and pulled something from the wheel well. Then he sat there and, one by one, threw her photos on the fire. I tried to stop him, but he was too strong and he pushed me to the ground. I remember because it was muddy. The wet grass soaked through my pants while I sat there and watched the images of my mother burn in the fire. He muttered one word, over and over, so softly, like he was in a trance. Fence. Fence. I still think that’s weird.” Maybe, she realised now, he was saying evidence? She shook her head. No, that would be…

  “I never understood the level of his hatred toward her. I remember him hitting her, the same as he hit me. But I only remember snippets of that time. But, when it was just me and her? We were happy.” She could feel the tears well again and wiped them away.

  “I think we were five or six when we began to move around. Mum wasn’t with us. He told me she’d died of cancer when I finally asked a few years later. He was scary, so I never asked before that. I think we stayed in Melbourne awhile, but we moved into a different house every few months. Dad told me it was because he’d been fired, had quit, the job didn’t fit. Most days, I didn’t even go to school. I was looked after by someone, usually the wife of a friend, but I was always reading. Even then. I think I was about thirteen when he started hitting me. I guess I started to backtalk, you know, forming my own opinions?” She knew she was rambling now, but she had to get this out. She still avoided Lowell's eyes. He stayed silent, but she could hear him sipping his tea.

  “One night, Dad announced we were leaving Melbourne. After that, we began looking over our shoulders, hiding more. Camping in the bush. I was sixteen, nearly seventeen, when we eventually moved into the apartment in North Ryde. He said it was easier to hide in a city, but you still had to blend in. I was just glad we’d stayed in one place by then. You know the rest from there.”

  She was quiet for a few minutes. She picked up her tea. It was cool now. She took a big gulp and coughed when the liquid went down the wrong way. Lowell got her a glass of water.

  “The thing I can’t figure out… he told me he got in with a dangerous crowd. That’s why we were running. He never said who was after us. But he was super nervous around police. I figured that was because of this group he was mixed up with.”

  “You told me about the campervan on the ferry. Do you think that was part of it?”

  “I don’t know. At the time, I believed it was a game. Or that he couldn’t afford my ticket. But I have been thinking about it since I told you about it. Now I wonder if he was trying to hide me, so they wouldn’t see a man and a daughter? I remember we didn’t stop in Melbourne. We drove right through to the east coast. We didn’t even stop for a bathroom, which I desperately needed after hiding all night. I ended up wetting my pants.” She hated to admit that part. It was hard enough admitting her actual story to Lowell. But she trusted him. He wasn’t part of whatever it was her father was caught up in. The look on his face when she told him about her nightmares confirmed that much.

  “And your hair. The colour.”

  “Yeah, he told me it was too much like my mother when it was blonde, and it made him sad. Which makes little sense, given his anger toward her. But I’ve been wondering about that too. I wonder now if it’s coloured because…” she didn’t even want to finish that thought.

  “You really would look fabulous as a blonde, you know? Shorter hair and blonde. Killer look.” Grace winced.

  “Sorry. I guess the blood part of your nightmares is still a question. And why run?” She nodded. She didn’t know why, and it was bothering her now. “Don’t worry Jelly. We’ll figure it out.”

  “Before or after the detective does? If she hasn’t already figured it out by now.”

  “What was the tattoo she was talking about? You’ve never mentioned a tattoo before.”

  “It’s a black crow on his shoulder.” She tapped her left shoulder blade. “It’s big. Ominous. The detective was right. The tattoo is definitely unique.”

  “What does it mean? Most people have a tattoo because they relate to it somehow or it holds some meaning.” Grace glanced down at the semi-colon tattoo on his wrist and nodded.

  “Dad told me, years ago, that he got it when he was young, because he loved crows. They were mysterious, he told me, just like we were.”

  “Do you think it means something else?”

  “I don’t know.” Did it? She wondered about that.

  “Okay, so what about the no criminal record thing?” Lowell crossed his legs on the bed. “I’m sorry for coughing right when she said that. It wasn’t intentional. But I find it odd that he doesn’t have a record, as violent as he is and into drugs as much as you say. That just doesn’t fit. He would have a DUI or something at least.”

  “He’s gotten a speeding ticket before. We were north of Brisbane. And I know he was arrested for a DUI when we lived down in Gippsland, in Victoria. But he was using a different name then.”

  “What is his name? What’s yours? Is it Grace?”

  “His name has always been John. I’ve always been Grace. My mother even called me that before she died, so I think that’s real. I don’t know what our last name is anymore.”

  “Do you know how your mother died? Do you remember?”

  “Cancer. That’s what my father said. It would explain why I remember always being at the hospital with her. I remember that much. But I was young when she died.”

  “Do you believe that? That it was cancer?” he pushed. She paused for quite a while, then shrugged.

  “I don’t know what to believe anymore,” she sighed.

  21

  Detective O’Neal called the following morning and asked Grace if she’d remembered anything more. While Grace remembered a lot more, there was nothing she was willing to share with the detective. She didn’t know why she was protecting her father now, but she knew there had to be a reason he took her with him when they ran. That was the piece she couldn’t figure out.

  She left for school, sling
ing her backpack easily over her shoulders. It had been a while since she’d felt this good physically. Emotionally, she was still a mess. Jumping on to the train, she smiled at the elderly woman sitting in the disabled seat and took the seat behind her. The latest news about her father kept her on edge. She watched for odd behaviour. Her instincts were strong, something she’d honed over the years. She knew someone was going to pick-pocket before it happened, sensed when an older man was about to hit on a young girl. She longed to stick her headphones in, gaze at her phone and shut the world out like other teens. But she’d never been given that luxury.

  When Grace arrived at school, she walked straight into Miss O’Donnell’s classroom.

  “Good morning, Miss. Did you get my email yesterday?” she asked, whispering to the teacher at the front of the room as the classroom settled. Once she knew she wasn’t going into school yesterday, she let the school know. Lowell’s suggestion to reach out to the teacher was a good idea.

  “I did, Grace. It’s okay. It’s an excused absence.” Grace hadn’t told the teacher why she was absent, just that something came up. She only hoped the detective hadn’t come to her school too.

  “Thank you, Miss,” she said and turned to walk to her seat.

  “Everything okay?” the teacher asked before she got too far. Grace turned, smiled.

  “Yes. Fine. Thank you.”

  * * *

  She spent the day mulling over the information the detective shared and comparing it with what she knew, trying to piece things together. She fluctuated between anxious and angry, distracted, and unfocused. Whatever her dad was mixed up in, it was his fault they were on the run. His fault she had this thing looming over her. His fault she was struggling to move on.