‘Oh,’ she says, and her mouth puckers as if she’s worried about being stiffed on the bill.
‘I’m happy to pay,’ I tell her.
‘There’s no charge,’ she says. ‘Least we can do seeing he’s still got to bury his brother.’
‘That’s very kind. I’ll be gone in a few minutes as well.’
She goes to leave, the blouse straining across her back in tight wrinkles, then notices the Mustang and turns back, frowning.
‘That’s Mick Carmody’s car.’ She points a thumb at it.
‘I’m his daughter.’
‘Eliza?’ A generous lopsided smile comes out of nowhere. ‘It’s me, Bridget Walker.’
Bridie Walker. She was in my sister’s class at school. For a while they had been good friends. ‘Can’t believe I didn’t recognise you,’ she says. ‘Must be the suit.’
I look down at the crumpled version of yesterday’s clothes, having left my overnight bag at my father’s house.
‘Hear you’re in the city these days,’ she says. ‘A fancy lawyer. Mick was so proud of you.’
‘I’m not sure about the fancy part,’ I say. ‘Did you know Tess is back as well?’
‘Yeah,’ she says, but there is a hesitation. ‘I saw her at the supermarket. Said we should catch up for a cuppa but I haven’t heard from her.’
Typical Tess, I think. Still, a remnant of family loyalty kicks in. ‘Probably busy,’ I say. ‘She’s been looking after Dad, getting his place in order.’
Bridie shrugs. ‘We fell out years ago. I promised to go to a party with her and didn’t. She never really forgave me for that.’
That sounds like Tess, too.
‘Look, have you got a minute?’ she asks. ‘I was going to mention it to Tess but seeing as you’re here . . . It’s about your dad.’
‘All right.’
‘Come with me, then.’
I pull the door shut behind me and we walk along the gravel driveway, past the other self-contained fibro bungalows. Bridie keeps up a steady stream of conversation. She’s been managing this place for about five years or so, having come back to town after a bad divorce. ‘It’s good,’ she says. ‘Owners are sensible and let me be my own boss. Trade has been steadily building up after the fire. Mind you, we had a cancellation this morning. Apparently the media has dubbed us “Killsale” after Paul Keenan, and now those bones they’ve found up at The Castle.’ She shakes her head.
We have reached the last bungalow, a dense bushland of eucalypts behind it. Bridie pulls out a key.
‘This is the one,’ she says.
My first impression is that this is nicer than Donal’s room but as I step inside my senses become confused. Everything I see belongs to my father. There are copies of Mustang Monthly sitting on the table. Family photos are stuck up on the wall by the bed. A teenage Tess is smiling sweetly, unaware that ten-year-old me is doing bunny ears behind her head. Wedding photos of Tess and Gavin are next to pictures of me graduating from uni. There’s even my favourite picture of Mum. She’s on the beach with Dad, smiling at the camera while he looks at her as if he can’t quite believe how lucky he is. I walk over to the wardrobe and pull it open. His clothes are in here, including a striped jumper I bought for him as a Christmas present.
‘There’s more of his stuff in the drawers,’ Bridie says.
It feels as if he’s just walked out of the room.
‘I still come in once a week for a quick dust and airing out. He paid six months in advance. I didn’t ask him to,’ she says. ‘Just how he wanted to organise it. In arrears now, of course, not that I mind, but I need to know what your family wants to do with it all.’
‘But what is it doing here?’
‘It started with his domestic violence cases. There isn’t a refuge within a hundred kilometres. When I first started managing the place your father came to see me. He wanted somewhere tucked out of the way for the women and children and we suited. Gave him a good rate, because outside summer we need more than just sales reps and truckies. I fed them, organised a room while your Dad would see what they wanted to do, try to convince them to press charges.’
‘But why are Dad’s belongings here?’ I ask again.
Bridie’s face takes on a no-nonsense expression. ‘He would stay to keep an eye on things. Wanted to sleep in his car at the start, but in the end we set up this place for him. In the bad times it was like he lived here. I used to hear the purr of the Mustang and put on some more pasta or extra potatoes. I think Mick was a bit lonely.’
‘What’s happened since Dad’s accident?’
‘I’ve tried talking to Gavin about it but he’s not interested. I thought about mentioning it to Tess. See if she could talk to him. I still take those girls in when I can.’
‘What if there’s trouble?’
‘My eldest is a bit of a tech freak. He’s set up some sort of motion capture thing out the front that’s attached to his computer. Also, Jim Keaveney lives up along the ridge ever since he sold his shop.’
‘Isn’t he getting on?’
‘A bit deaf perhaps but you wouldn’t want to mess with him. He’s still a pretty good shot. I’m not bad either. Put up with shit from my husband for years, so I’m not going to take it from anyone else’s. Anyway,’ she continues, ‘what do you want done with Mick’s belongings? If I had my way, I’d leave them here forever but I need paying customers.’
If this stuff goes back to Dad’s house, chances are Tess will throw it out.
‘Why don’t I pay the rent?’ I ask. ‘I’ll go through his belongings next time I’m back. I’m not sure when that will be, but it should be soon. Amy Liu’s having a baby.’
‘You still friends with Amy?’
I nod.
‘Can’t beat old friends. That’s why I wanted to sort things out with your sister.’
We walk to her office and I pay the next couple of months’ rent and insist on making up the shortfall as well. Bridie is all business and accepts. Her two teenage boys give me sleepy slit-eyed looks over their breakfast and Bridie goes into sergeant-major mode to start them getting ready for school.
The three of them watch as I reverse the Mustang out of the parking spot and head out on the highway. Without even thinking, I turn towards town and the nursing home. It’s as if it is the car choosing the way and not me. Bridie had told me about a side of Dad that I knew nothing about. No doubt Tess rang him every week to check in but my calls were sporadic, conversations running out of puff as our worlds grew increasingly distant. I never knew anything about him helping those women or living in a motel room. Donal said life was short. Bridie told me no regrets. If she got solace from hearing the Mustang’s engine, then perhaps Dad will as well.
Standing in the doorway to my father’s room, I see a care attendant’s backside jiggling as she bends over to adjust something on Dad’s wheelchair. Dad’s bed has been stripped and there’s the smell of urine and something earthier that I’m reluctant to identify.
The attendant, a large woman, works efficiently. She fixes up a button on his shirt and then, humming, grabs a toothbrush and deftly coaxes it into his mouth. She explains everything to my father and her instructions are kind.
I tap lightly on the door, not wanting to startle her and in a split second I realise who she is.
‘Hello,’ I say.
She straightens up, toothbrush and napkin in hand. There’s a plastic name badge saying ‘Cadee’ attached to her light blue collared top.
‘I’m Mick’s daughter, Eliza.’
‘I know who you are,’ she replies.
Dad’s hair belongs to someone else. It’s parted the wrong way and is longer than he wears it but still, it’s been combed and his clothes are clean and correctly buttoned.
There’s a kind of animal quiver to Cadee as if she might bolt if I wasn’t blocking her path. I decide to forgo any polite pretence. ‘You’re Luke’s mum.’
‘I don’t want trouble,’ she says. ‘I need this j
ob.’
I’m not sure what she thinks I’m going to do. Storm out of here and demand the manager sack her or insist that she must never be left alone with my father again. Perhaps other people in the town have already done this.
‘That Paul Keenan was no saint,’ she continues. ‘I don’t care what anyone says.’ It sounds like this is an argument she’s been having with herself.
‘Did you know Paul well?’ I ask.
Her eyes are wary. ‘He was just someone down at the pub but he heard Luke was desperate for extra work. The new building codes have made the farm’s rebuild almost impossible.’
My heart sinks. What sort of work does a recently arrived backpacker have to offer?
She shakes her head. ‘Now they’re talking about some bones as well. People are just blaming him for everything. It isn’t fair.’
‘What about the woman Luke attacked?’
Her chin juts. She becomes more angular with squared shoulders and hard elbows, efficiently stripping the sheets off my father’s bed.
‘That tourist wasn’t hurt. If he’s charged with that, then she should be as well. Started the whole thing, she did, hitting his car and then trying to drive away.’
Another mother blindly defending her child, just as Paul’s mother had defended him.
‘You know my Luke’s a good boy,’ she says.
I look at her in surprise. How am I meant to know that? I haven’t spoken to him in years. ‘She did hit his car,’ I say, ‘but I saw him terrorise her and then attack Paul.’
Cadee pounces on what I’ve said. ‘You’re the eyewitness. You were there.’ It’s an instant accusation. ‘The police keep saying in their press conferences that there was one, but they never say who.’
I’ve made a terrible mistake. I shouldn’t have started talking to her about it.
‘You’ve got it wrong,’ she tells me. ‘Luke would never kill someone.’
‘I know what I saw.’
She appraises me, a complicated look, almost greedy, like she wants to argue but then retreats, saying, ‘I haven’t given you a chance to say hello to your father yet.’
Sitting there, he’s a bystander to what has been going on but I’ve got no idea if he’s understood a word. His breath rattles as if his heart is a dried pea clattering against his ribs. I put my handbag down on the side table and pull out the car keys, one for the boot and doors, the other for the ignition. The keyring is pliable leather with the worn image of a galloping horse still visible. Walking over to Dad I give him a kiss on the cheek. His skin is so papery soft that I feel like if I pressed hard against it, my finger might go right through.
‘Hello, Dad, it’s me again.’
Today he is wearing a polo shirt with a beige cardigan that looks as if it was bought for someone bigger.
I place the keys into his hand and close his fingers around them, hoping he can feel the familiar shape. ‘The Mustang’s in the car park waiting for you.’ I turn to Cadee. ‘We won’t be long.’
I push Dad through the doors to outside and park him next to Mary’s bench. Mary gives me a shifty look, like we’re invading, and snatches her suitcase, hugging it to her. Problems blossom now we are out here. I can’t get him into the car by myself but if I leave him and go to get someone else, could he tip out of his wheelchair?
‘What are you doing with Mick?’ asks Mary, leaning forward to peer at him.
‘He’s come to see his old car.’ We both look at him. His eyes are shut.
‘Maybe he can hear it, then,’ I say.
Mary’s nose wrinkles as if that’s not going to work.
‘Could you hold onto the wheelchair while I turn on the engine?’ I ask. ‘Just so he doesn’t roll away?’
When Mary stands up she is so thin you can see the skeleton under her skin, but she clutches tightly to the frame. Taking the key from my father’s hand, I open the car door and turn the ignition. The starter motor whines nasally before the engine kicks into a deep chesty rumble.
Dad’s head lolls helplessly on his left shoulder, his neck a noodle.
Frustrated, I put my foot on the accelerator so hard it screams and there is the smell of petrol and the start of something burning. Mary takes a hurried step backwards, but she doesn’t let go of the wheelchair.
Dad doesn’t even blink an eye and I try again and again. I want to keep trying until the mechanics seize but eventually I give up and switch it off. All my optimism disappears in a cloud of unleaded petrol plus additives.
‘You finished?’ Mary sticks her head in the window.
I nod, feeling helpless, but manage to say thanks.
‘You could take me for a drive in that car,’ she says.
‘We’d have to check if it was all right, get permission.’
‘Why would they need to know?’ she wheedles. ‘Plenty of people get taken out on day trips.’ There is cunning in her eyes.
‘Where would you want to go?’
‘To sit on my grandson in the park,’ she says, picking up her suitcase. ‘We can go now.’
‘Sit on him?’ My first thought is that I have misheard but then she repeats herself. ‘I thought he was coming to pick you up,’ I say, trying to make sense of it. ‘That’s what you told me last time.’
‘He’s not coming.’ She’s getting cross now. ‘I just say that so people will leave me alone. Pretend you’re daft and you can get away with anything.’
‘What?’
‘It’s like sharing a house with the living dead. That’s why I sit outside – so I can forget I’m stuck in this bloody place.’
I am saved by Laurelle from reception, who starts frantically waving at me from the door.
‘Time to take Dad back inside,’ I tell Mary. ‘Maybe another day?’
She doesn’t answer, just sits back down on the bench.
Laurelle presses the door open for me.
‘You didn’t sign Mick out,’ she says, frowning.
‘You could see us from where you were sitting.’
‘You didn’t sign in either.’ She points to the notice stating that all visitors must sign in. ‘It’s important.’
The look on my face makes it clear that I don’t agree.
‘Ever had to evacuate elderly residents, staff and visitors during a bushfire?’ she asks. ‘I have. I’m really glad Mick has got family visiting him at last, but please follow the rules.’
Her phone rings, and she answers it with a calm, gentle ‘Emerald Coast Homes, Laurelle speaking’, while making fierce impatient jabs with her finger at the visitors’ book.
Chastised, I turn to the right page and sign. Gavin’s careful print catches my eye from last week and I wonder what Laurelle meant by family visiting Dad ‘at last’. Looking at the list of names, Tess’s isn’t there. Perhaps Gavin signed both of them in. I leaf backwards to see if her name is in the week before. It’s not there. Nor the week before that.
Laurelle finishes the phone call.
‘Does everyone have to sign in when they arrive?’ I ask.
‘I get them all,’ Laurelle says, giving me a squint-eyed look like I’m a bad guy trying to make her day. ‘No exceptions.’
‘Has my sister Tess been in lately?’ But the phone is ringing again and her attention is diverted.
‘Mick’s tired,’ she says, before picking up the receiver.
The room is empty when we arrive. Dad’s breathing is thick and drool falls from his lips. I grab my handbag from the side table and hunt around for a tissue, dumping things out to find one crumpled at the bottom. Dave’s envelope upends and the glint of gold spills out. I try to right it but it’s too late – unwinding its coils, it slithers onto the floor in slow motion. It’s a necklace.
I check the envelope and bag to make sure that’s all that was in there. But there is no pendant or anything else. It’s just a plain gold chain. Crouching down next to my Dad’s wheelchair, I put my hand in the zip lock bag and use it as a makeshift glove to scoop it up. It could be evi
dence after all. I lift it to eye level. As the chain drapes and dangles, a memory flutters in my mind but subsides before I can glimpse it properly.
The smell of dirt is mixed with detergent, which must be from Dave’s half-hearted attempt to clean the necklace. Grime still outlines the grooves and one section is completely covered with mud, but the chain itself still glints as it catches the light. At first I think the links have warped, that age has kinked it. But as I keep winding, there is uniformity. Every four links there is a twist, like a simplified strand of DNA, and again I feel a sudden pang of familiarity. Feeling the bumps and ridges against my skin, it bunches and tangles, but I manage to hold one end up, trying to work out the length. The links catch on themselves as they spin around.
At a guess the necklace is mid-length. When worn, it would sit well below the collarbone. But no-one is going to do that because it’s broken, which is perhaps the real reason Dave didn’t give it to his daughter. The other end of the necklace doesn’t finish with a clasp. Instead, there is a c-shaped link where the chain has snapped.
The moment I realise the chain is broken, an image bubbles up in my mind and this time it becomes fixed. It is of another necklace breaking, long ago. A twisted gold chain. I can see the warm contrast of the metal against skin. A flash of school uniforms, mucking around in the classroom waiting for the teacher, leaning back on my chair, balancing it on two legs to tag Amy behind me. Amy, arms flailing, throwing herself sideways, smacking into Grace. A little cry, a clutched throat and there the chain lay in her hands, in two pieces.
In Grace’s hands.
I feel a sudden lurch like you sometimes do the moment before you fall asleep.
‘This is Grace Hedland’s necklace,’ I say aloud to my father in amazement and then, like a button has been pushed, his hand jolts up of its own accord and slaps against the arm of the wheelchair. It’s as if a bird hit the window. A moment of startled movement and then nothing.
I press the buzzer hard and keep my finger down, staring at my father all the time, willing him to do it again. A different care attendant arrives. She’s all teeth and hair. The name badge says ‘Diane’.
‘He moved,’ I tell her. ‘My father moved his hand.’
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