‘I know.’
‘Are you going somewhere?’
‘I haven’t decided.’
‘Have you had another intruder?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘What about your shop?’
‘What about it?’
‘You’ve got your opening tomorrow. The ads are in. People have been invited. And don’t forget, you’ve got all your cash tied up in that stock.’
Mina shrugged.
All the edgy energy she’d displayed when he first arrived had vanished. She went about her tasks like someone on an assembly line. Just as she had three months ago. Maybe he should call the psychologist, though that hadn’t turned out so well last time. When the bloke’s questions finally penetrated the fog of her grief she’d been mutinous, and when he suggested she book into a facility for a few weeks, she’d practically tossed him out on his backside.
‘I was an idiot to think I could have any kind of a life here,’ she muttered. ‘As long as I stay here, I’ll never step out of Jacko’s shadow.’
Now he understood. Jacko was a raw nerve and Gibson, for whatever reason, had jabbed at it hard enough to sever her loyalty.
‘We’ll schedule another opening,’ he said. ‘A big one. A real launch party.’
‘What’s the point?’ She raked the hair from her damp forehead. Her fingertips left smudges of newsprint on her skin. The bruise on her temple looked worse than it had yesterday. ‘I’m so sick of being angry. Sick of striving to prove I’m not him. Sick of failing.’
‘You only fail if you don’t try.’
The look she gave him would’ve welded his mouth shut if he hadn’t spent twenty years in politics.
‘I don’t mean to be smug,’ he said.
‘But you were.’
‘Yes. Sorry. A hazard of dealing with the demi-gods of council.’
He leaned across the table and grasped her fingers. The envelope in his breast pocket rasped against the silk of his shirt. He’d come here intending to give her the letter so that she could put an end to her ridiculous quest. Now he wasn’t so sure it was such a brilliant idea.
‘I’ve been trying to rise above what he did for longer than I knew him.’ Her wide eyes shimmered. ‘Did you realise that?’
Had it really been more than twelve years since Jacko left them? Some days it seemed a bad dream, like he’d wake up and his best mate would be there, calling him to go for a surf, laughing at his inability to master a piece of fibreglass on the rolling sea. Sometimes the loss of Jacko ached like a severed limb.
‘Mina, I want to see you succeed, be happy, have a family.’
She snorted and pulled her hands away.
‘Jacko was my best mate,’ he said. ‘When he—Well, ever since, you’ve been a great consolation to me. I hope I’ve been some solace to you.’
‘Of course.’ Her furrowed brow told him how much she meant it. ‘But I have to get away.’
‘Would it change things if you knew the truth about your dad?’
Her gaze grew wary. ‘Truth?’
She deserved to know, but the edginess he’d thought gone wasn’t far below the surface and lately her behaviour had been so strange. ‘Tell me what you remember about that last day.’
Mina held his gaze for a moment then folded her arms and leaned on the table. Rain pattered on the roof as she summarised that night: the barbeque, the people milling in the kitchen and around the keg, the shocked silence when they realised Jacko had gone. There was a softness in her face he hadn’t seen in years. To her, Jacko Everton the embezzler and Jacko her dad were two very different people. She might hate the embezzler, but she still loved the man who’d hoisted her on his shoulders and told tales over cups of tea on Sundays.
‘When we found out he’d gone off with Bebe,’ she said, ‘I couldn’t believe it. Not my dad. He was too in love with Mum. I thought it must have been my fault.’
‘Your fault?’
‘Because I’d let Pete Davison kiss me. Dad lost it when he found us in my room.’
‘Honey, he only did that to make sure you never did it again. He laughed about it when he told me.’
She nodded as if unsurprised. Over the years she’d probably worked that out for herself. It probably wasn’t the only insight she’d had.
‘Do you believe he ran off with Bebe?’ he asked.
She sighed. ‘I don’t know. Mum was always so sure he hadn’t, that something must have happened to him. Yet the town was adamant.’ A scowl marred her forehead. ‘Of course, now I understand that gossip rules this town. Gossip spread by that witch Caro Davison.’
‘It’s not all gossip.’
She stared at him, her eyes hard.
He pulled the envelope from his pocket. ‘I should have given this to you before now.’
Mina looked at the white rectangle for what seemed like forever, then she snatched it from his fingers and tore the letter free. Her eyes danced across the page. Her frown deepened. When she got to the end she read it through again.
‘I see,’ she said.
How could she not be upset? How could she not realise what this meant?
She folded the letter, put it back in the envelope and ran her hand over the smooth rectangle. ‘This isn’t the original envelope.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’ Her gaze was like a stranger’s.
‘I threw it away before I realised it was from him.’
‘When did you get it?’
The question was inevitable. He wasn’t proud of himself. He cleared his throat, ready to face the reckoning he knew was coming. His vocal cords seemed stuck together. He cleared his throat again.
‘It came about a year after he left.’
Her jaw went rigid. She dug her fingers into the hem of her tank top.
This was how she’d been after Alyssa’s funeral, her jaw stiff, dry eyes gazing into the middle distance. It had been worse at the wake. Former friends and neighbours had filed past, offering condolences and memories of her mother’s talent, sweetness and gentle nature. Mina had remained marble hard. Not one word of thanks, or acknowledgment of their hugs. She’d just gripped her cotton hanky and stared straight ahead, a grim set to her mouth. By the time the last mourner scurried away, that hanky was in tatters.
She’d started packing again. He tried to still her busy hands, but she pulled away and went to stand near the louvered windows that offered a rain-blurred view of the stone shed where Alyssa had once worked her bronze.
‘I have to feed Spirit.’ She stared at the darkening yard. ‘He’ll be hungry.’
The bloody dog. She’d disappeared behind the safety of a pretend dog thirteen years ago, and she was doing it now.
‘Mina, we have to talk about this.’
She turned from the window. In the overhead light, her face was all shadows and planes. Rain trickled like tears down the glass panes.
‘How could you keep that a secret?’ she said. ‘You knew how much Mum hoped for his return.’
‘Hope kept her going.’
‘Hope killed her!’ She slammed her hand on the benchtop.
‘No, Mina. Listen to me.’
‘The other night, when I told you why I wanted to find him—why I needed to find him—you said nothing. Nothing!’
‘I thought that was best.’
‘I’m the one who had to deal with it. I’m the one who stayed awake every night for months, waiting to hear his key in the lock. I’m the one who made up all sorts of fantasies about his adventures. I convinced myself that he’d gone to find a cure for Mum’s disease. Don’t you remember that?’
‘Of course I do.’ He thought of all the nights he’d sat at their kitchen table letting her fantasise while her mother cleaned other people’s homes. Alyssa had been too proud to accept his money—by then he’d had plenty, thanks to good luck on the stock market—so the best he could offer was free child care and surreptitious groceries.
A troop of honeyeaters braved
the rain and cut the silence with their sunset chatter. Mina turned and staggered to the table like someone with a stomachache. She dropped into a chair and put her head in her hands. ‘Oh, my God. What have I done?’
‘Mina, talk to me.’ His knee popped as he knelt beside her. ‘How can I make it right?’
She kept her hands over her face and shook her head.
‘Honey, please.’
He’d been an idiot to think giving her the letter would resolve anything.
She lifted her head, her face pink and creased. ‘You have to go.’
‘Don’t shut me out. I—’
‘Just go. Leave me!’
She lurched from the chair and slammed out the back door, running through the rain and calling for the non-existent dog.
Chapter 36
GWEN WOKE TO THE doorbell. Ronny was flat on his back, his snoring almost drowned by the sound of rain on her tin roof. In the evening light that fell across her bed, she watched the rise and fall of his solid chest and couldn’t resist tracing the ring of wiry hair around his red nipples. He grunted and turned away. The weight of his body on the mattress rolled her toward his back. She chuckled softly. Nothing like a well-sated man in your bed. Made a girl feel good to be alive.
The doorbell rang again, followed by a gentle knocking. She’d know that tentative tap anywhere. Mina always used it when she came by. She pushed herself from the crumpled bed and pulled on her robe. With any luck Ronny would be comatose for a while longer and Mina would never have to know. Not that Gwen was ashamed. Like anyone, she deserved a bit of loving. And Ronny was as good as single what with his wife away in Italy; the initial two weeks had become two months then six. It was heading on for two years now. Not even Ronny believed she was coming back.
She opened the front door to find Mina drenched, rain dripping off the plait that did little to tame the tangles in her long hair. Her face tore at Gwen’s heart.
‘Come on in, love. Tell me what’s wrong.’
Poor kid. This Jacko stuff just wouldn’t leave her be.
Mina thrust a sheet of crumpled paper at her, babbling about Forbes and the truth and not knowing what to believe. Gwen ushered her to the kitchen. A cuppa would do them both good. Mina sat at the table, her eyes huge, her gaze unable to settle.
‘This letter,’ Mina said. ‘Forbes had it all the time. Well, no, not all the time. One year later. He said he got it a year afterwards. I don’t know how he could have kept it from me, from Mum.’
Gwen pried the paper from Mina’s grip and read it as the kettle rattled to the boil.
‘Tell me it’s a lie.’ Mina could hardly sit still. ‘You said you didn’t believe he left with Bebe. He wouldn’t have walked away from us just to start another family. It has to be a lie.’
Gwen poured the boiling water over the teabags. Her hands shook. Holy cow! The rumours had been true all along. The only question was how Caro Davidson could have got it so right.
‘It can’t be true, can it, Gwen?’
‘I stand by what I said, Mina.’ She put the mugs on the table. ‘I never believed there was anything between your father and that Brenda Bronson.’
‘Why would he write such a letter? Why would he send it to Forbes and not to Mum?’
Gwen sat and wound the tail of the teabag around her mug handle. How could she answer that? Most men would be too gutless to face the wife. Natural enough that he’d ask a friend to do his dirty work. Trouble was, that didn’t sound like the Jacko she’d known. And if it was, and he was that gutless, why write the letter at all?
Mina clutched at her fingers, fiddled with the teabag, took a sip of tea and put the mug back down to stare out of the kitchen window. It was too dark to see anything, but there was nothing much out there except an old gum tree that threatened to come down with the next storm.
‘He once told me he loved Mum too much,’ Mina said.
‘Too much? How can you love someone too much?’
‘I asked him. He said it was when you knew you’d do anything for them even when it was wrong.’
Well, that made a lot of sense. He’d loved Alyssa. Wanted to help her. Stole the money so he could. Yet that didn’t sit right with this letter thing.
‘Another family,’ Mina said. ‘He didn’t just leave us. He didn’t want us. We were a burden. He said he loved us, but he left us with sickness and near poverty. Left us to deal with what he did, to live in a town that hated us, so that he could start a new life, with a new family.’ She drew a shaky breath. ‘I could kill him for what he did to her.’
Gwen patted her hand. Best to let the kid get it all off her chest. But fancy Forbes bloody Monroe knowing this all along. He’d always had a thing for Alyssa. Surely he could have told them and helped them move on. Married Alyssa. They could have been a family. As a Monroe, one of the founding families, no one would have dared lay blame on any of them. Alyssa could have had proper care, and Mina could have had a life of privilege, the type of education she deserved.
Sometimes that Forbes made her mad enough to spit. Still, she was realist enough to know that for many years Forbes had kowtowed to his father, and there was no way that mean bastard would have welcomed the Evertons to his family tree.
‘What I don’t understand,’ Gwen said, ‘is why he’d show you this now.’
‘He thinks I’m foolish looking for dad. He wanted me to stop.’ Tears welled in her eyes. ‘Now I know why.’
Gwen handed her a tissue. ‘Come on, love. You’ve done enough crying over this man.’
The kid nodded, sniffed and blew her nose. ‘It was just the shock. After everything else.’
Everything else could be a lot of things—the gorgeous Sydney bloke, Forbes, neglecting her business—but it wasn’t hard to guess what worried the kid most.
‘You don’t believe your dad’s really back in town, do you?’
Mina looked at her, and Gwen could see her weighing something up. She didn’t fool herself this time that the kid would confide in her. Somewhere along the way she’d lost her trust.
‘If he’d escaped Failie to start a new life,’ Mina said, ‘why does his name suddenly seem to be on everyone’s lips?’
‘Because of your mum. No one was interested until the MS sent her—’ she saw Mina’s face and thought better of it ‘—before she started saying she saw him.’
‘Mum’s delusion might have started them off, but what about Linc? What about Carlson? They both seemed so sure Dad was within their reach. And how did Carlson know about that line he always used: “I just love it when a plan comes together”?’
Carlson? Linc? What did they have to do with Jacko? Carlson was a thug, sure enough, and probably thought everyone was the same, but surely the Sydney bloke hadn’t bought into the small town gossip and put Jacko behind all the robberies? Everyone knew Jacko was no more than the local bogeyman.
‘It can’t be true,’ Mina muttered. ‘It’s just a coincidence that Bernie Johnstone says it. If he says it. And Bernie doesn’t look anything like Dad. His face is too heavy, his hair too brown and straight. Dad’s hair was always wild and sun-bleached.’
Gwen touched one of Mina’s hands. She hadn’t seen the kid babbling like this for years. She didn’t want to see her go off the rails again. Though Forbes had said as much, she’d dismissed him; for all his pretence at being easy going, the man was a born worrier.
‘Mina, you have to slow down and tell me what you mean.’
‘Dad used to say that, didn’t he? About loving it when a plan came together.’
Gwen smiled at the memory, and would have laughed aloud had Mina not been staring at her, looking shattered. She lost her smile and nodded. ‘Yes, he did.’
‘Well, Carlson knows he used to say it. But how could he? Unless they knew each other. Unless they know each other.’
Mina looked away, her hands fisted. The letter sat between them. Except for the fresh crumples, it was as pristine as the day it was written. Gwen picked it up once mo
re.
What if Alyssa hadn’t been delusional after all?
‘Whatever the truth is about Dad, that letter doesn’t explain how his watch suddenly turned up in a pawnbroker’s not far from here.’
Watch? What was she on about? ‘What do you mean, love? Why don’t—’
Gwen stopped talking, shaken by the sight of Ronny standing in her kitchen doorway, wearing her summer dressing-gown and scratching his head.
‘Get us some water, would you, Gwenny? I’ve got a mouth like the bottom of a bird cage.’
At the sound of his voice, Mina turned. She leapt to her feet then looked at Gwen with shock.
‘Him? You know he’s been trying to push me out of my home.’
‘Mina, it’s not—’
‘You’re right. It’s none of my business.’ She snatched up the letter and turned on Ronny. ‘You better not be trying to get to me through Gwen. Because if you are…’
Mina shook her head and hurried toward the front door. Ronny watched her go, then smirked at Gwen.
‘Well?’ Gwen cocked an eyebrow. ‘Are you?’
Chapter 37
DISTANT BELLS CALLED the pious to church, but it was the morning sun that woke her. Mina stretched, hit her elbow on the car window and her knee on the steering wheel, and squinted against the light rising behind the gabled mansion across the road. For most of the night, she had seethed at the decadent glow of lights from the showroom-perfect home. When she finally slept, phrases from the letter, in that close, untidy cursive, drifted through her dreams like spectres.
Too hard … not what I planned … I’ll always love them, but love isn’t enough.
Love isn’t enough. He’d really thought that. Her dad. He’d let her think he was devastated about her mum’s decline, let her comfort him with clichés, which was all her twelve-year-old self could draw upon. Yet all the time he was talking about how much he loved her mum, he was thinking love isn’t enough.
An elderly neighbour attempting to sweep her damp driveway looked at her and shook her head. In this neighbourhood, driveways boasted BMWs, Audis and Porsche SUVs, not an eyesore like her beat up Datsun, but if the old girl hadn’t called the cops yet, she probably wasn’t going to. It didn’t matter now. Once she’d done what she had to, she and Spirit would be off, somewhere far away, where the past couldn’t touch them.
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