by Kate Genet
Confusion clouded her eyes, finally. The woman was a tough nut to crack. But she had no proof, and everything was in his favour. He had Rose and he was at home.
‘A man said he saw you arguing with Zoe,’ she said, uncertainty making her voice crack.
He shrugged. ‘It wasn’t me.’ Rubbed a hand over his face, making sure it shook as he did it. ‘What am I going to do?’ he asked, feeling suddenly almost as haggard as he wanted to look. ‘My home is destroyed and now you say Zoe is dead?’ He looked around as though he’d find the answers in the lemon tree, on top of the ruined house, or in the neighbour’s yard. ‘Zoe’s dead?’
‘Her car was hit by falling debris,’ Claire said, and she was hugging Rose tight. The child had mercifully stopped screaming.
‘I can hear the sirens,’ Danny said. ‘Are they coming to save her?’ He took a stumbling step to the side again.
Claire shook her head. ‘The sirens went off because of the quake.’ He heard the hesitation in her voice before she continued. ‘Danny, there’s nothing anyone can do for Zoe.’
‘She’s dead?’
She nodded.
‘Was it quick?’
A shadow crossed her face, but she didn’t say anything.
He put his hands over his face. ‘I hope it was quick. Oh Zoe,’ he said and let the words hang there.
When he looked up again, Claire was still staring at him, so he turned and looked at the house again. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said in the voice of confession. ‘Where are we going to stay? What are we going to do? How am I going to make sure Rose is okay?
‘Come and stay with us for a few days,’ Claire said. ‘Until everything gets figured out.’
He stared at her in disbelief. ‘Us?’ he squawked.
‘I'm at my parents. There’s room for both you and Rose. And my parents adore Rose. They will want you to stay.’
He didn’t know about that. He’d spent many an enforced hour visiting the Wilde’s, and he was almost one hundred percent sure Frank Wilde considered him a pansy, and Gracie, well Danny considered her a fruitcake.
‘Um,’ he stalled. ‘A motel would be better. We wouldn’t want to get in your way.’
Claire shook her head, hoisted Rose higher. Unbelievably, the little girl had fallen asleep. Probably the shock. ‘I insist,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be hard enough for this little one, losing her mum. My parents are for all intents and purposes her grandparents. She’ll need them.’ Something that might have been a smile appeared on her face. ‘We’re all family, through Zoe. You need us and believe it or not – we need you too, right now. Mum and Dad are going to be devastated.’
She didn’t include herself, Danny noticed, but he nodded anyway. As far as he could see there wasn’t any way out of this, and it could be useful, for all that.
‘Just for a few days,’ he said.
She nodded. ‘Just for a few days.
He looked back towards the house. ‘I need to go in there. Get us some things.’
25
She’d let him go with just a nod, then turned away before he’d even moved toward the house. She just stood there, nuzzling Rose in her arms.
Well, whatever. This was going to work out to his benefit. Pushing the door open, he stepped inside the house which welcomed him with a cloud of dust and soot hanging in the air.
But there was the matter of his study to deal with. And fast, before Claire decided that, Rose or no Rose, she was coming in to see what the damage was, or what he was up to, or both.
His study was a mess. Not because of the earthquake. That had left this side of the house mostly untouched except for a nasty crack snaking its way up the plaster walls. The photographs hung crooked on their hooks.
No, the mess was manmade. Or woman-made, more precisely. Zoe-made. He shook his head, taking it in.
She hadn’t messed around. Nudging the hatchet on the floor with his toe, he clenched his jaw together and glared at the cupboard. It certainly wasn’t secure anymore. The door had been hacked off. Literally hacked up until it hung from the lock. Zoe had been super pissed, for sure. A niggling sense of unease wormed around inside him. Maybe she hadn’t been lying when she’d said she’d made those phone calls. Then he straightened his shoulders. Zoe was dead, which meant that no matter what she’d said, she wasn’t around to prove any of it. She was just a deluded, vindictive, lying wife. Maybe she’d thought he was cheating, and this was her way of making sure she got custody of Rose.
As long as he got rid of the photos, nobody could prove anything.
A couple strides across the room and he was bending down peering inside. It was empty. Two of the albums he’d kept in there were strewn on the floor, but where was the one he’d made when he was just a teenager, with his photos of Rachel in it? And the other album? A quick check. The album with the photos of Sahara in them. The potentially incriminating ones, then.
But it was the missing photos of Rachel that made his heart burn. They were the most precious of his possessions. More than anything else, he cared about what was in those pages. It was the only thing he’d kept from his youth; in fact, it was the only thing he’d brought over from Australia.
Because it held pictures of Rachel.
His sister. How he had loved Rachel. She’d been so beautiful, so kind, and she’d worshipped him. Loved him more than she’d loved anyone else. It had been a wrench leaving her, but she hadn’t been the same by then. The death of their parents affected her more than he’d expected. And his damned aunt had refused to let him visit.
He came back to the present with a start. Claire was yelling through the door for him to hurry up. She’d felt another damned aftershock. It wasn’t safe.
He hadn’t felt anything. But then he’d been back in Australia. Eighteen again. Talking to Rachel. Stroking her long, fine blonde hair.
Sucking in a breath he yelled back at Claire. What, he didn’t know, but must have been something appropriate, because she didn’t say anything more. She was right though, he did have to hurry.
But where were the fucking photos? Zoe must have done something with them. Hidden them somewhere.
He kicked around the albums on the floor. Opened the other cupboards, but they weren’t there. Zoe had taken them, put them somewhere else. They had to be somewhere in this mess, but he didn’t have time to keep looking. His fists clenched tightly at his sides, nails biting into flesh.
Picking up the other albums he’d kept in the locked cupboard, he tucked them under his arm and left the room. No one was going to come looking in the next day or two, so he’d just come back and deal with the hatchet and the cupboard door – and find where Zoe the bitch had put the photos.
Right now though, he grabbed a suitcase from the wardrobe, ignoring the mess from the earthquake, Zoe’s makeup and perfume bottles spilt onto the floor. She wouldn’t be needing any of it ever again. For a moment he stood in the middle of the bedroom floor and sniffed, wrinkling his nose at the strong scent of something flowery and overbearing. She’d never taken to wearing the one he’d bought her last Christmas. Shrugging, he stuck the albums in the bottom of the suitcase, covering them with clothes he pulled from his drawers, not caring what precisely they were. When it was full, he zipped it up and carried it out into the hallway, putting it by the door before going into Rose’s room.
Her toys had been knocked off the shelves onto the floor. Stepping over them he found her little Disney suitcase and put it on the bed. Laughing under his breath, he folded up one of Rose’s princess dresses and placed it in the case. Zoe couldn’t complain about them anymore. Hell, she couldn’t complain about anything anymore. She would be ringing her hands in the afterlife by now.
He layered little pairs of socks and underwear over the sparkly dress, added pyjamas, outer wear, an extra pair of shoes.
He looked around for her dollies. Found them in her bed, snatched them up and put them in the suitcase too. Zipped it up and carried it into the hallway.
Almost done.
Back into his study and he closed the lid on his laptop, made sure he had the charger, and tucked both into a carry bag. Slung it over his shoulder, picked up his camera bags and did the same. No way he was leaving them here in a damaged house. In fact, he supposed he’d have to come back later in the day and do something about the hole in the roof. Already the living room would be damp from the drizzling rain.
Outside, the sound of sirens still rippled across the city and he gazed up at the dark sky for a moment, feeling like the whole world had shifted on its axis. Ultimately, he predicted, for the better.
‘Where’s your car?’ asked Claire, still cradling Rose.
‘In the shop,’ he said.
‘Damn. I don’t have a car seat for Rose.’ Danny saw her face pale and figured she was thinking about Zoe stuck in her little red car like tuna meat in a can. Well, they wouldn’t be using that car seat again today, that was for sure.
‘We’ll have to make do without one for this trip,’ he said. ‘We don’t have a third. No one’s going to give a shit. I bet we don’t even get stopped.’
Claire turned in the driveway and regarded her own car. Gracie’s rather. Danny would recognise the little green VW beetle anywhere. It was as stupid as its owner.
‘I guess so,’ Claire said on a sigh, then stared down at the suitcases. ‘You don’t have anything more suitable, do you?’
‘What?’
Another sigh that made him want to throttle her. ‘Backpacks or something.’
‘Why?’
She looked at him for a long moment, her face impossible to read.
‘It might be tough going getting home. We might have to walk parts of it.’
He shook his head. ‘Don’t be bloody silly.’
She glared, and he wanted to turn around and tell her to fuck off. But Rose was asleep in her arms, and he had to take the kid somewhere safe.
‘Let’s get going then, shall we?’ She walked down the driveway, leaving Danny to carry everything. ‘It’s going to be a long day.’
She had no idea. He picked up the suitcases and stepped in behind her. For wild moment, he considered letting her take Rose while he made a run for it. Leave the kid with Frank and Gracie and Claire Wilde if they loved her so damned much, and he’d just scoot out of town. In all the fuss and bother of the earthquake no one would even really notice. He could start a new life somewhere else.
Except, damn it all, he wanted his daughter.
He’d have to play along.
For now.
The bags went into the car and he watched Claire slide the sleeping Rose into the back seat, arranging the seatbelt around her middle and buckling it securely.
His thoughts turned to Zoe. How lucky for him there’d been another earthquake. One with fatalities, this time. It would give him some time to find out the new lay of the land.
He laughed silently at the pun and scrunched himself up into the passenger’s seat and stared out the window at his house.
‘I’ll have to come back and put up a tarpaulin over the hole in the roof,’ he said.
‘I guess so,’ was all Claire had to offer, and that was fine. He leaned back and waited for the next chapter to start.
He was better off whichever way he looked at things.
26
Claire supposed, by rights, she should hand over Zoe’s phone to the man sitting in the car next to her, but her fingers didn’t even twitch in the direction of it burning a hole in her pocket.
Maybe if he’d been just a little more upset about Zoe’s death. She winced even as she thought the words. Zoe was dead. It seemed impossible. Glancing at the back seat and the sleeping child, red curls damp on the little forehead, Claire forced herself to breathe slowly and evenly.
And to think clearly.
She wasn’t letting Rose out of her sight.
There were signs of damage in almost every street they turned down. Everywhere, people walked down the footpaths and wandered out onto the roads, their faces stricken, skin, no matter what colour it was naturally, ashen and shocked.
It wasn’t safe to go fast. The road was broken in too many places. She was pretty sure there were aftershocks happening every goddamned minute too and bile rose in her throat at the thought that at any moment there could be another big one rocking the city.
The handheld VHF squawked in her lap.
‘What’s that?’ Danny asked.
‘VHF,’ she said. She didn’t feel like talking to him. Instead, she just picked up the object in question and thumbed the button.
‘Go ahead,’ she said into it.
‘Reckon I can pick you up at Mt Pleasant Yacht Club. ETA 40 minutes.’
Claire didn’t waste words. She had to concentrate on the road. ‘See you there,’ she said, and clicked off.
Turning onto the main road may not have been the best idea. Streams of traffic headed in both directions and they moved slowly with it, inching along, every driver she could see straining forward, peering out of their windscreens, heads swivelling in every direction, pallid shock on each face.
She put a hand to her own cheek. She probably looked the same as everyone else.
Her mind was ticking over, however, and she shifted uncomfortably in her seat, aware too well of Danny’s presence in the car beside her. He gave off a sense of pent-up excitement that made her extremely wary. Something was wrong with the man.
He should be upset that his wife was dead. Instead, Claire wondered if he even remembered that she was.
Danny turned to look at her, as though he’d felt her questioning glance returning to him as she drove.
‘I’ve just realised something,’ he said, and she tensed in her seat, casting her gaze back at the road.
‘What’s that?’
‘The tunnel to Lyttelton will be closed. They closed it after the September quake.’
‘We’re not going that way.’ She’d thought he was going to ask about his wife. It was impossible to keep her own thoughts from sidling back to the broken red car and the matching blood on her friend’s white and broken face. Claire swallowed down the lump in her throat.
‘Jeeze Claire,’ he said. ‘Is it always this difficult to get information from you? You’re being unfair.’
That made her stare at him for a long moment before looking back at the road. They were coming up to Rutherford bridge, and she could feel her insides tense as the line of cars nosed closer.
‘Tell you what,’ she said at last. ‘I’ll answer every question of yours, if you answer mine.’
There was a pause before he answered, and when he spoke, she heard suppressed laughter in his voice. ‘We’re playing some sort of game?’
‘If you like.’ The bridge was still open, if that meant anything. Had anyone had time to come along and decide it should be closed? Perhaps not yet. One by one the cars in front of her slowed to a crawl, inched their way across the tarmac spanning the Heathcote River, the next in line waiting until they were almost across before going. She played follow-the-leader and did the same, glancing down at the water below them as she did. It was higher than it had been just a couple hours before. Then it had streamed placid and content. Now it sloshed and gurgled, riding the riverbanks, overrunning the low-lying grass and shrubs.
‘Fine,’ Danny said. ‘I’ll bite, though I’ve no idea why.’
Claire heard the bump under her tyres that signified she was back on dry, if not stable, land and shrugged at Danny’s remark.
‘How are we getting to Lyttelton?’ he asked. ‘A straightforward one to begin with.’
‘Boat,’ she answered. ‘Why did you lie about being with Zoe?’
If the answer threw him for even a second, only the slightest of pauses showed it.
‘I didn’t lie. I was waiting for her to come home so we could have lunch together.’ The briefest of pauses. ‘We’re going by boat?’
‘Yes.’ The road was buckled in front of her, and she wondered what they�
��d do if they came across another deep tear in the ground. Get out and walk, she supposed.
‘That was an invitation to explain a bit more about the boat,’ Danny said.
‘It’s a boat. It floats, travels by water. You were at the bakery with Zoe. You took Rose out of the car.’
‘Those aren’t questions. Whose boat are we taking?’
‘We’re not taking any boat. It is on its way to pick us up.’ Claire stared straight ahead, hoping Rose was still sleeping in the back seat. ‘Was it hard to walk away knowing your wife was still alive?’
27
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. And your little game is hardly fun, so I think I’ve had enough.’ She felt his eyes on her and heard the little smirk in his voice. He was lying. She knew it. She could feel it deep inside herself. Something had happened between him and Zoe that morning.
‘Look,’ Danny said, shifting in his seat and stretching as though he was relaxed but bored. ‘We both know you don’t like me, so let’s just leave it at that. For whatever reason, you and I never hit it off. It happens. No big deal. I'm only coming along with you for Rose, so for her sake, let’s play nice.’
Claire didn’t bother answering. In this particular case, she decided, that was playing nice. Although she’d never actually got as far as disliking him. She’d just always thought he was a bit of a bore. But he made Zoe happy, so she’d never considered it any big deal.
Picking up the VHF she’d dug out of her mother’s glovebox, she thumbed the switch.
‘Rescue boat Tuatara, this is Claire. Frank, you there?’
She ignored Danny’s squinty-eyed look.
‘Claire,’ came the crackling reply. ‘How’s the progress?’
‘Good this end of things. Almost to rendezvous point.’