by Kylie Kaden
When a stool scraped along the hardwood floor, he looked up to see Blake across the corner bar. The same bar at which they’d shared a hundred beers. He knew he was supposed to feel gratitude, but he couldn’t muster even a wave. ‘Mr Fix-It, here to save the day, huh?’ Unfortunately, his habit of talking straight only worsened after a few beers.
Blake sighed, rested his beer on the sticky bar. ‘That’s the way you want to play this?’
Will scoffed. ‘What, you thought we’d go back to banter? Pretend we’re mates – have we ever been?’
‘You’re drunk.’ Blake’s jaw squared and he looked at his feet. ‘I think I should take you home.’ He went to lend his hand for support but Will pushed him away. He sat back down.
Now, a scrum of eclectic locals clumped together near the karaoke machine and erupted in raucous laughter. He could just imagine what was to unfold – they were already passing around the hat, planning to plant a tree for Adler and run a candlelight vigil in his honour. Why not have an impromptu wake for their favourite teacher?
Blake tapped the bar with his thumb. ‘You’ve never asked why I didn’t just call it in.’
Will already knew: Abbi was as much family to Blake as she was to him. ‘I know why.’
‘You think you do,’ Blake said before mumbling, ‘you always think you do.’
‘You two have each other’s backs. I get it. Good luck to you both.’ Will went to sip his beer before realising he’d finished. He’d had enough, but it seemed no amount of alcohol could cure his anger at himself. He pictured Trevor’s face, reddening as he spoke, as he smashed it against the peg board. Why didn’t I just stop there? Walk away?
Blake shook his head. ‘You don’t get what it’s like to be raised in a dozen houses, beaten senseless at boys’ homes and then finally find somewhere you feel safe. To have one person you can trust after you’d given up. She just – she’s part of me. That’s unconditional. Doesn’t change the fact that I know what she did was wrong.’
Oh, that’s right, you still think she did this, you stupid prick.
Blake went on. ‘What was I supposed to do? Ruin her life? It would ruin mine.’ He shook his head, flared his nostrils, but he was a lamb, trying to be a wolf. ‘So, if you do anything stupid, thinking it will ease your conscience, make things right – it won’t. It’ll just put us all in the shit. Abbi wouldn’t cope with what she’d have to face. Court. Prison.’
All on my behalf. Will’s lips parted before his bottom jaw closed. He couldn’t believe Blake still thought Abbi was the culprit. He’d just accepted that his five-foot-nothing wife had overpowered a fit man, bludgeoned him to death. It took everything he had to not speak the truth, set Blake straight, spoil her ridiculous farce. Will opened his mouth, but his lips didn’t make a sound.
Was Will now as bad as her – lying by omission? Was this the line in the sand – the moment he would resign from the philosophy of total honesty that he’d subscribed to his whole life? He couldn’t tell Blake he was being conned, not here, not now, but he had to say something.
‘The attractive thing about the truth, Blake, is you don’t need to generate any bullshit around it to make it stick. The evidence will exist as a natural consequence of it being true. The lies only stack up if new lies are created to support them. The new lies compound the problem because there’s no natural evidence to support the new lies either. But now, it seems, you want me to become that – a new layer of bullshit to stack on top of the shit-pile you’re already drowning in.’
Blake looked confused, angry, but then said, ‘We’re not asking you to lie – just to shut the fuck up. Stop thinking of it as lying. They’re just words, Will. They don’t change what’s happened.’
Will frowned. ‘Just words? The ability to use words is what separates us from the apes – they’re what makes us human.’ He laughed at the sloppy philosophy spilling forth from his drunken lips.
Blake thumped his pot on the bar. ‘You think this is funny? What about Abbi?’
Will suppressed a smile. ‘You’re scared of her.’ He shook his head. ‘You’ve got to grow a pair, Blake. That’s your problem. You’re forever trying to please the women in your life – your pot-head mum, your selfish girlfriend, not to mention my wife having you by the short and curlies. The only reason those women manipulate you so easily is because you don’t think for yourself. You’ve been their puppet for so long you have no idea what you really want. It’s pathetic.’
Blake narrowed his brow. ‘Pathetic? For caring about someone? For putting them first? Don’t sit there and pretend you wouldn’t have covered her arse just as quickly as I did. That your life didn’t get thrown to shit when she got pregnant, made you leave your life of adventure and settle for a small-town girl with a terminally ill mum.’
‘I don’t regret any of that.’
‘Not even now? After what she did?’ Blake scanned the emptying tavern. Even the bartender had gone out back. ‘Have you thought for a second where your perfect little family would be now if I’d done my job that night?’ He was whispering, all conspiratorial. ‘A confession, a motive, blood on her hands, and all over that plank? It’s done, Will. Nothing can change that, and we both know the world’s a better place without him in it.’
Will hesitated, glassy eyed. ‘He didn’t deserve what he got. Even after what he did. A man is dead.’ He slapped his hand on the bar. ‘I can’t live with it. I can’t trust her again. I can’t even look at her. This can’t go on.’ He shook his head. He knew he was talking in riddles, and it pained him not to be honest with Blake. He knew he would have to be, eventually. But not yet.
‘Will, if you come clean, the whole thing will blow up like you wouldn’t believe. The media alone will make you wish you were the one who died.’ Blake’s eyes were wide.
‘I could send Eadie to my parents. She’d be safe while we got this cleared up.’
‘Cleared up? It’s not a fucking traffic offence.’ His voice was pleading now. ‘Can’t you see it? Eadie on the front page as the innocent victim – the headline: Beachside Vigilante Murder.’ Blake shook his head. ‘Look, I’ll beg if I have to. I know you’re a straight shooter, that we’re asking you to turn away from everything you stand for, but we can beat this if we stick together, stay calm. There’s too much to unravel. We’re on the homeward stretch now. Look on the bright side, Eadie won’t have to see the animal again. That’s something. And, Jesus, Will, hasn’t justice already been served? Shouldn’t the good guys get to win now and then?’
Will’s brow furrowed, aghast at Blake’s words. ‘There are no winners here, Blake. We’re all fucking losers.’
* * *
They say the truth should set you free, but for Abbi, all it did was give her the feeling the walls were shrinking around her. The dynamic in their home had taken on a strange fractured quality – familiar yet jarringly wrong. The lampshade, the photo frames, the bamboo bowl of trinkets – each item sat in the same place as before, yet their home was unrecognisable now. Everything had turned terrible and unfamiliar and cold. Even Eadie seemed a little quiet and withdrawn, or had she always been, and Abbi had failed to recognise the signs, too busy keeping her parents out of jail? And the biggest change to be found was within her husband.
Abbi remembered the day Will had squeezed his long legs beneath the corner booth at the bar, an overgrown goatee, a mayhem of mousey hair straggly on his shoulders. Abbi was horrible with money, rubbish at being on time, but one thing she did well was judge someone’s character. She’d quickly concluded, by his manner, his friends, the way he spoke to her, that Will was free with his words, generous with his time, and at peace with the person he was.
He looked different now: sitting on the edge of their bed in a crisply ironed shirt, staring blankly, one sock on, the other balled in his hand. She knew what he was thinking. He’d been pretending to be human since that night. That night she’d told him the truth. She had watched his spirit shrivel like an apple core rotting in the s
un. There was nothing left, and she couldn’t help but feel responsible for it.
Abbi didn’t need words. The second her husband turned to face her, she knew the sky had fallen. He’d never looked that way before, slumped shoulders, vacant eyed. He couldn’t pretend another second.
She understood Will’s need to come to terms with what he did. He was an introvert. He needed to process things alone. What scared her most was what he would do next, and what that might mean for their family.
Who would have imagined marrying an honest man could be such a liability?
Some might consider her husband a little funny looking – she knew that. Abbi didn’t marry him for his face. His confidence in his own worth, his own decency, was his scaffolding. Without it, he caved in. He just sat there, sock in hand, eyes boring holes into their bedroom wall. It wasn’t just his uncharacteristic stillness that made her realise things were different now. His bag was packed, his intentions were clear. He was leaving her.
Abbi closed her eyes. ‘Where will you go?’
He startled, shocked that she knew, but the reaction quickly faded. Relief, perhaps, that there was no need to say the words. The pragmatic husband she knew took over. ‘Not sure. I’ve told work I’ve got rotavirus. Might buy me a week off. Maybe I’ll go see Dad for a few days. Sort my head out.’
Days. A spark of hope smouldered inside. He wasn’t talking divorce papers and long-term lease. Or heading straight to the police.
‘I’ll still pick up Eadie Thursday afternoon, get her to swimming.’ His voice was like a funeral.
Abbi steadied herself. ‘You don’t need to. I can get her. I like it.’
Will smiled. A real one this time. ‘So do I.’
Abbi smiled at the hilarity of the situation; ruminations about a dead guy, a too-noble husband, a potential murder charge, melding through the day-to-day banalities of domestic life. I’ll do the dishes if you dump the corpse.
He placed the second sock over his giant foot, put on both shoes in quick succession.
Abbi gasped, took his hand, her heart pumping. ‘Please stay.’ Her words sounded threadbare, the way her life felt. She knew her pleas were useless – Will never wavered when he’d made up his mind – but she wouldn’t forgive herself if she didn’t try to persuade him.
His eyes glazed over. They both knew there was no point rehashing what they’d already analysed to death. Facts were facts. There was no undoing what he’d done, no unknowing what he now knew.
‘I just need to reconcile this. Figure it out. See if I can live with it.’
A shot of adrenalin stabbed her. ‘If?’ Oh Jesus, was he going to end up as another lost soul in the cemetery of the sea?
‘How,’ Will corrected.
She wanted to keep him here, under her watchful eye. ‘I just don’t see why you have to go. Why we can’t work this out together.’ She sat on the bed next to him, cradled his face in one hand, and looked into those kind eyes. He turned away. ‘It’s just me, Will. Why can’t you look at me?’
He was silent, as if choosing his words from an elaborate menu a thousand pages thick. ‘Because you know the truth.’
She stroked his face. ‘And I don’t care.’
He covered her hand, and rested it on her lap. ‘But I do.’
Will lumbered over to his bag, and she held her breath. He stumbled back, past the wing chair he’d once re–covered for her birthday, past the print of them arm in arm in Haiti. She made a pact that if he stopped on the way to the door to kiss her goodbye it would all be okay. Abbi played the same game as a girl, testing her mother’s love, and she never failed her.
Yet like a ghost, he walked on by.
* * *
Blake had just finished questioning a thug he’d picked up on a possession charge when his radio hissed. It was Penny. ‘Newell. Guess what a tourist just found with his fishy finder.’
‘His what?’
‘You know,’ Ho said, ‘those machines that tell you what’s below the boat.’
‘A depth sounder?’ Blake clarified. He forgave her ignorance. She wasn’t from around here.
‘Anyway, he found a car – went off the cliff down off Pott’s beach. Sunk good and proper. It’s a 1990 Patrol, and guess what, Newell, it’s registered to Trevor Adler. The divers are on their way from the big smoke, and I’ve lined up Jimmy from the wrecker’s yard with his crane. Reckons once the divers give the all clear he’ll have it up within the hour.’
‘Fuck me.’ Blake inhaled. ‘Okay. I’ll meet you there.’
His mind raced. Images of that night flashed in his head – knowing the car’s presence would make Trevor’s absence more suspicious, he’d driven the Patrol out of town, cut the lights and roared up to the cliff’s edge. No one even lived near that forsaken place. He’d been careful, wiping his prints off all points of contact inside before pushing it over the edge. He’d heard the splash. Windows down, it tipped, then submerged, swallowed by the deep channel within minutes. He froze.
Handprints.
The tailgate. It had rolled away so quickly.
Blake let out a few expletives, cradled his head in his hand. His nostrils flared like a bull. The chance of getting a latent print off a wet surface after being submerged was next to zero. DNA was just as unlikely. But he couldn’t have one more thing go wrong. Oil and water didn’t mix, and he had been sweating like a pig that night, which made for great prints. He’d have to offer the scene crew a hand cataloguing the vehicle. At least then, in the unlikely event that they lifted anything useable, he could explain why his fingerprints were all over it.
Chapter 23
37 DAYS AFTER THE MOON FESTIVAL
Molly delivered the regulars before pulling out a list of orders at the bottom of the crate to get the address of the last delivery. ‘Constance Adler, 52 Spinifex.’ Fantastic. Molly should have known some health worker would have put her on the Meals On Wheels list when the pensioner returned home.
Molly’s heart fluttered at the thought of going into that house. Dealing with a grief-stricken mother. She looked blankly at the road ahead, a sour taste in her mouth. She felt like chucking the meal in the bin, but then imagined the old bat, skeletal, starved to death in her bed because of her. It was her last delivery before Mabel could sign off on her hours. She could see the end in sight. She turned the car towards her end of town.
The VW coughed as it crested the ridge, the lake curving away; peaceful and statue still except for the trout slapping the surface. The Beetle struggled up the steep incline to the cul-de-sac overlooking the point, passing the Adler house, the Adams house and the playground – once just a rusty swing and a metal slide on patchy grass, it was now a colourful, child-safe fort decked out with shade sales, padded flooring and no sharp corners, as if that was enough to protect kids these days.
Molly pulled over to where she’d parked to babysit Eadie, in the shade of a giant pine. It was misleading, this scenic town. Like nothing bad could happen in such an idyllic place. But she knew that it could, and it had.
She groaned, grabbed the meal, walked up the drive and knocked on the door.
A nurse with kind eyes greeted her and shepherded Molly inside to where Connie Adler sat motionless on a recliner. ‘It’s okay, I don’t want to interrupt. I know it must be a hard time for her with her son.’
‘Not sure how much she processes, hon,’ the nurse said, gesturing for her to sit. ‘She might respond to a different face. I’ll get her tray.’
Molly sat, fingering her necklace, overthinking every movement, unaware of how to be. Tin clanged on tiles in the kitchen, startling her. Connie’s lip twitched and Molly wondered if it did that all day, and what it meant. Was she grieving for her son, or was she completely disoriented? Molly had come to realise underneath those world-weary faces, that old people were the same as her, only they knew more of the answers. Connie moved her head. Molly feared she was having a fit, but then she did it again, an intentional gesture, beckoning her closer.
Dizzy, and with flushed face, Molly ran out of the house, slamming the screen door behind her.
* * *
The next afternoon, Hannah sat at the kitchen bench that doubled as Molly’s study. Textbooks were stacked between the fruit bowl and kettle, biro squiggles stained the tabletop. ‘So, Mol, Mabel caught me at the post office today.’
Molly’s eyes widened.
‘She said she knows your court order is finished but was hoping you could do an extra delivery shift.’ Hannah’s eyebrows were high and accusing.
Molly glared at her. ‘Don’t tell Dad. It would crush him.’
So, it is true. Hannah thought she’d feel angry at her, like a parent of a child caught shoplifting, but instead she felt her pain. ‘Only if you tell me what’s going on.’
Molly slammed her folder shut. ‘It was bullshit. I got stuck with a group of kids who were trashing a car a while back. They did the runner, and I got caught. That’s it.’
Hannah’s heart sank. Molly was such a smart kid with a big heart. How did she find herself in that situation? A rush of protectiveness overcame her, an instinct to do whatever it took to help the young girl get through this hiccup. ‘Somehow I think there’s more to that story. You can tell me, you know.’ Hannah put her arm around Molly, but felt her stiffen.
‘Is this a trick? You’re not mad?’ Molly started tearing up, crying about how she couldn’t go to Connie Adler’s house again. Not since she’d heard about Trevor. That it was all too much. ‘Can’t you do it? I mean, you started that bloody fundraiser for him, surely you can visit his mother.’
Her eyebrows rose. Molly was right. This was an opportunity to step up, be the support she should have been. It felt good, to be useful. To ease her pain. Isn’t this why she came home? She was also a little curious.