He was at the gate. Bugger. He was grinning. ‘You ready?’
‘You don’t need me. Just put on your big boy pants and go by yourself.’
‘But you know what sort of questions we need to ask. And you’ll know how to answer any questions they have.’
‘You’re not joining Mensa.’
The smile grew wider. ‘That’s next on my to-do list. This’ll be good practice.’
Behind him, a sudden howling sound. Daniel Hardman and Logan Masters and their favourite moronic party trick. Elias turned around to look. Turned back, confused. ‘What’s that?’
‘Dingo sounds. As in, “a dingo’s got my baby”. Or, in the case of yours truly, my sister.’
Elias’ eyes widened. ‘Seriously?’
I gave him a tight, sarcastic smile.
‘That’s so…wrong.’ He looked back at the pair, who had stopped making the sounds so they could laugh harder. ‘I’m going to talk to them.’
I grabbed at his arm. ‘No, it’s fine. Just ignore it.’
‘They shouldn’t be doing that,’ Elias protested.
‘No, but they’re idiots. I’ve heard worse. Let’s just say I’ve developed a thick skin dealing with that sort of crap for nine years.’
‘Worse? Like what?’
I shrugged. ‘Like when people openly accuse me of killing my sister.’ I kept it casual.
‘No way.’
‘Yes way.’ It was weirdly satisfying to see the look on his face. A sort of naive, horrified admiration.
He was shaking his head. ‘That’s crazy.’
We’d spent long enough on the topic. ‘Anyway, that’s not why you’re here. You need to visit Aurora and Benjamin Greenfield. See what they say.’
He nodded with renewed enthusiasm. ‘You’re right. Let’s go see them.’ He took off, expecting me to follow.
I wondered if he and Jazmin practised that move together. I stood and watched him head off up the hill without looking back. I couldn’t shake the paranoia that I’d made a mistake and sent him to the wrong place. What if the nice-looking old couple were serial killers?
‘Hey,’ I called out. And found that I’d taken a few loping steps after him without even noticing. He stopped, and I caught up to him. ‘I need to be home by four.’
‘Totally fine.’
I chewed my lower lip, trying to work out how to tell him it was going to cost him double without it making me sound like a prostitute. I gave up. ‘Fine. As long as it’s quick. And nobody is allowed to hug me.’ I’d seen these sorts of family reunions in movies. I hate hugging.
He grinned. ‘Awesome. I knew you’d want to come.’ He gestured. ‘I’m parked over there.’
My eyes followed his pointing arm across the road. There was only one vehicle parked across the street—a pink and white icecream truck. ‘Behind the Mr Whippy van?’
He laughed. I cringed. Bloody nightmare.
Up close, it obviously wasn’t being used to sell icecreams anymore. The letters CAUTION CHILDREN were still visible enough, but the rest of the signage had been peeled off or painted over, and just the string of party lights along the top remained. A glance in the back as I climbed in revealed a stripped-back interior. Damn. I’d been hoping I would at least get a waffle cone out of it.
I glanced at the door, still tempted to bail.
‘I couldn’t believe how quickly you tracked them down.’ He nodded across at me as he turned the key in the ignition. ‘It was genius.’
I don’t get called genius very often. Most kids in the bottom classes don’t. I get called inattentive, distracted, apathetic. So the compliment was a pretty effective ego boost. Not that I let him see that, of course.
I pulled my seatbelt on. ‘All right. Let’s go.’
He pulled up the route and handed me his phone to navigate. It was a nearly half-hour drive with the forty-k’s-an-hour school zones factored in. No way was I getting home on time. I bit my lip and then wished the thought away. I’d deal with Mum later. I was committed now.
I turned a bit in my seat so I could study him as he drove. He was in ripped and faded blue jeans—I had a feeling they’d come from the shop that way—straight leg cut, and he had the cuffs rolled up a little above his ankle. Canvas shoes and a white V-neck T-shirt that gaped at the front. Apparently he didn’t have chest hair. The sleeves of the T-shirt were folded up, revealing a tattoo of a dragon on his upper arm.
A dragon tattoo? Really? At least it wasn’t Japanese symbols. Oh, wait, there they were. Intricately interwoven in the flames breathed out by the dragon. I felt my eyes roll almost of their own accord.
‘Why do all non-conformists non-conform in the exact same way?’ I asked bluntly.
He looked across at me, like he hadn’t heard what I’d said. ‘What?’
I opened my mouth to repeat my question, then shut it again. Be nice, Lindsay. Stuff like that is why nobody likes you. ‘What’s the plan?’ I asked instead. ‘Do they know we’re coming?’
‘No. I figured we’d just rock up. I mean, if we cold-called them they might think it’s some kind of joke. This way they can see we’re for real. And I’ve got my birth certificate to show them.’
It made sense. He’d obviously thought it through that far. I considered it for a moment. ‘It’s going to be a surprise for them.’
‘Yeah. But a good one. Right?’
‘They’re old. What if it’s too much of a surprise for them?’
‘You mean, like, what if one of them has a heart attack?’
‘Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know.’ It sounded dumb now he’d said it out loud.
He chewed his lower lip. ‘I don’t think that would happen. Would it?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know any old people.’
‘They’re not that old, are they?’
‘They’d be in their sixties. That’s pretty old. People have heart attacks younger than that.’
He thought about it. ‘Maybe we don’t tell them straight away. Maybe we prepare them first. Somehow.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know. You’ll think of something.’
I blinked. Started to remind him that I’m a freaking amateur, but then remembered he was paying me for my time. It probably wasn’t such a good idea.
‘We’ll play it by ear,’ I said, which seemed to be exactly the right sort of meaningless thing to say.
The house was old, in orange brick with a tin-roofed carport to one side. The driveway was one of those concrete ones where they spray texture over the top to look like pavers, but in most places it had worn away and just looked like the old concrete that it was. There was a neatly mowed front lawn and a few scattered trees, and along the perimeter was a long garden bed dotted with rose bushes, edged with a single line of orange house bricks. The water meter was shielded by half a tyre, painted white. It looked exactly like a grandparent sort of house.
Elias pulled over. Put the van into park, turned off the engine and sat there jiggling the keys in his hand. I offered him his phone and he took it. And then he took a selfie.
I stared at him. ‘What are you doing?’
He looked genuinely confused by my question. ‘This is a historic occasion. I’m documenting.’
‘It’s a photo of you in your car. How is that historic?’
‘You’re right. Wiggle over, I’ll take one of both of us.’
‘No. No, no, no.’ I couldn’t get any clearer than that, but I spelled it out just in case, emphasising every word: ‘I don’t do selfies.’
‘You’re no fun,’ he pouted.
Got it in one.
He sighed. Then before I could stop him he held the phone up, pointed it in my direction and snapped a photo.
It’s not just that I don’t do selfies. I don’t do photos, full stop. I can’t explain how much I hate the process. The sound of a shutter-click makes me feel physically ill.
A wave of prickly heat washed over me. ‘Did you just take a photo of me?’
<
br /> ‘Don’t worry, you look hot. In an angry sort of way. Very supermodel.’
He shoved the phone into his back pocket and grabbed his man bag from the back seat.
‘You need to delete that.’
‘You look fine, seriously.’ He was busy looking in the man bag, not paying any actual attention to me.
He pulled out the folder and hugged it against his chest. ‘This is crazy.’
‘You need to delete that picture,’ I said again. I honestly would have grabbed the phone and deleted it myself except I couldn’t figure out how to get it without ending up in his crotch.
He didn’t hear me. ‘My life is going to be different from this moment.’
I looked at him and realised his eyes were shining a little. He was getting teary. We weren’t even inside yet. What if he cried in there? I was already unsure how they would respond to him. He had the same heavy-rimmed glasses and hairdo from yesterday, and between them and the tattoo…
‘You better not cry in there,’ I told him, in the toughen-up-princess voice I use on Evie. She’s your typical whingey, sooky four-year-old girl, though. ‘If you start crying like a girl, the deal’s off. And I swear, I am this close to hitting you in the nuts.’
My words had the desired effect. Elias laughed. A few tears slipped down his cheeks and he brushed them away with a sheepish smile. ‘Sorry.’
‘Okay.’ I unbuckled my seatbelt and reached for my doorhandle, wanting to just get it over with. ‘Let’s go.’
8
It turned out we didn’t need to worry about giving anyone a heart attack. Aurora Greenfield opened the door to us and her face lit up in a smile of pure joy.
She looked exactly like she did in the photo, with the addition of a dirty apron that sagged at the front, the pockets full of who knows what. She wiped her hands on it and reached out to grab Elias, clasping a hand on either side of his face and drawing him close in to kiss both cheeks. I stood back and blinked, wondering if this had been some bizarre scam all along.
‘My goodness, what are you doing here? You’re Joseph’s boy, aren’t you? I haven’t seen you since you were…what, eight? Nine? You came over for a swim and a bee stung you on your willy. Anyway, come in, I’ll make you coffee. Do you drink coffee or is that not a trendy thing to do anymore?’
We were shuffled in through the front door and down a hallway before either of us could form a coherent response. The hallway opened up into a surprisingly airy modern kitchen, renovated at some point. The far wall was all floor-to-ceiling glass doors and windows leading out onto a deck, with a glass-fenced swimming pool beyond that. Aurora bustled over to a coffee machine and got to work.
Elias found his voice. ‘I’m not Joseph’s boy. At least, I don’t think I am.’ He glanced over at me, like he wasn’t sure what to say. I just shrugged. I wasn’t loving suddenly being in the house of what was apparently a crazy lady.
Aurora stopped. Looked over at Elias. Took off her glasses. ‘My goodness. You look just like him. The spitting image of my father at your age.’ Polished her glasses on a spare bit of apron and put them back on. ‘Well, now I’m confused. Who are you, then?’
For the first time since I’d met him, Elias was lost for words. I stepped in.
‘This is Elias. We think he might be related to you. He found out that he was given up for adoption as a baby and—’
I didn’t get to finish. We were interrupted by thundering footsteps and Benjamin Greenfield appeared from a corridor on our left, shouting.
‘Rory!’ he bellowed. ‘You were supposed to be holding the damned torch for me, woman. How am I supposed to fix the blasted sink if I can’t see what I’m doing?’
It was Santa from the photos. Same bushy white beard and scowl and an even bigger gut. He stopped and looked at us over the top of his glasses. ‘Who’s this? Is this Joseph’s boy?’ He had a strong Scottish accent, which I wasn’t expecting. His voice was gruff and impatient, like we’d interrupted.
‘Oh, right. The torch.’ She glanced to the left, then looked down at her apron and fished a torch out of the front pocket. She gestured to us. ‘Come this way. You can keep talking while I do this.’ And she shepherded us down the corridor, into a small room on the right. A laundry, packed to the ceiling. Not exactly untidy, just full. Cupboards and boxes and piles of stuff. Neatly folded clothes and linen, things hanging on racks and hooks, filling every available space. Exactly like our house.
Benjamin went to the sink in the corner and knelt down. The door to the cupboard underneath was open and buckets and mop heads and cleaning supplies were piled up behind him.
‘Sorry about the mess,’ Aurora buzzed. She flipped the torch on and pointed it. Shook it up and down. ‘Oh, it’s not working again. What do I have to do? I had to do something before…’
‘Push the damned switch all the way, woman,’ Benjamin growled.
Aurora fiddled with it some more and then suddenly a beam shot out. She pointed it into the open cupboard.
‘Lower!’ Benjamin yelled without turning around. ‘It doesn’t help if you shine it at the back of my head, does it?’
We waited while she fussed around trying to get the angle right, and Benjamin got to work, mumbling as he went. After a minute or so Aurora seemed to remember we were there. ‘Sorry.’ She turned to face us. ‘You were in the middle of saying something before.’
‘Torch, woman!’ Benjamin growled.
‘Sorry, Benji.’ She fumbled with the torch.
I shot a glance at Elias. He looked a bit overwhelmed. Because of the news he had to break or the reality of the family he now belonged to? Either way, he looked like he was only a few more Aurora moments away from running for the hills.
I stepped in. ‘Do you have a daughter named Sephora?’
Benjamin was listening from inside the cupboard. ‘What’s she done now?’ he growled, not pulling his head out. Based on the sound of it he had a wrench that he was hitting with a hammer. The hammering got a bit louder.
‘Elias was given up for adoption as a baby,’ I said quickly, feeling like we desperately needed to speed things up. ‘His mother’s name on his birth certificate was Sephora Greenfield. We think he’s your grandson.’
And that was when Santa whacked his head on the underside of the laundry sink, and dropped the f-bomb.
9
It took a few minutes before we could go into details. Benjamin spent most of those with an icepack pressed against his head as he paced up and down the house, swearing impressively. I hadn’t even heard half the words before.
In the meantime, Elias had managed to pull out a copy of his birth certificate. Aurora sat on a little step stool in the laundry, holding it on her lap.
‘She never told us. We had a big blow-up. Must have been a year or so before this.’ She waved the paper at us. ‘Not the first, but a big one. She took off, swearing she’d never talk to us again.’ She looked up at Elias, then stood, touching his face. ‘Very handsome. You get that from my side of the family, you know. You really do look just like my father.’
I wasn’t sure whether Elias was happy with how things were happening or not. He was smiling as she was talking, but he seemed impatient, too. Like he was grateful to have found grandparents, quirky as they might be, but it was his mum he was actually looking for.
‘Where is she now?’ he asked. It was the first thing he’d said pretty much since we’d arrived. I wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t been here. His voice was tremulous, like he was both hopeful and terrified at the same time.
Aurora stroked his cheeks again. Smiled and then sighed. ‘Oh, darling, I haven’t got a clue.’
We ended up letting her make us coffee. It seemed like Elias needed some. He looked defeated. He slouched in his chair at the kitchen table, his T-shirt hanging off him, making him look like he was all skin and bones. Even his hair seemed to have deflated a bit. Benjamin had quietened down and disappeared back into the laundry.
‘Did y
ou file a missing persons report?’
‘No. I didn’t really see it that way. She was already living out of home and every time she came over here we argued about something. We had the big blow-up and she said she’d never talk to us again, and so she didn’t. I assumed she’d come back when she was ready. She might, still.’
She could be dead, I thought, but I decided I better not say it.
We sat still for a long minute. My mind was racing. We couldn’t use her family to find her. She didn’t have a social media presence, at least under a name we knew. So how else could you track a person down? How did they do it on TV?
‘Did she have a job?’
Aurora brightened at the question, as if finally it was something she could answer. ‘She had lots of jobs. She chopped and changed a few times. Last time we heard she was working as a pharmacy assistant. Did a dispensary course—you know, so she could dispense prescriptions and help manage stock, that sort of thing. Before that she’d started a hairdressing course at TAFE, except she dropped out because she didn’t enjoy it as much as she thought. Oh, and before that she’d done some work with a road construction company. You know, holding up the slow and stop signs.’
I was getting a very distinct impression of Sephora Greenfield. I glanced at Elias, wondering what he thought of what we were hearing. Would he even still want to find his mother?
‘So you don’t know where she might be working now,’ I summarised. She could be doing anything, anywhere. I thought back to the White Pages listing. ‘What about siblings? Does she have brothers and sisters? Would any of them know where she went?’
‘There’s David. We only had two. I don’t think he would know anything, though. They never really got along. He was very serious about everything.’
‘Could we maybe talk to him anyway?’
Benjamin came stomping back into the kitchen, holding a handful of plumbing bits and pieces. ‘David won’t know,’ he announced brusquely. He didn’t seem especially angry anymore. Maybe it was just his normal body language.
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