‘They were looking overseas for a while…China and Vietnam.’
‘Why did they stop?’ I asked. ‘Aside from realising they might end up with another weirdo like you.’
He smirked at me and then shrugged. ‘They just decided we were okay as is, just the three of us.’
‘You’re not missing out on anything,’ I assured him. ‘Siblings are overrated.’
‘Even Frankie?’
Why’d he have to go and say that?
‘Conversation over.’ I plucked the stick out of his hand and took off ahead of him, stabbing the ground as I went.
And then, round the next bend, there was the manager’s cabin. A single-storey house with a signboard out front. Sagging verandas and overgrown climbers almost enveloped the whole place. Beside it, an open grassy stretch with a picnic table and barbeque, the whole thing ringed by a rough-hewn timber fence. In one corner a large pen with chickens and another with geese, which started up a racket as we got closer.
I stopped and waited for Elias and Vogue to catch up. They had ended up walking side by side, and Vogue was chatting away quite happily. We had an odd little dynamic going, I thought. The only things Vogue and I had in common were that we hated each other, and, for some reason, Elias liked us. Elias seemed to like everybody, though.
‘Just so you know,’ I warned Elias, ‘if you start to cry, I’m gone.’
He gave me a tight smile. ‘No promises.’
We took him nearly to the front door. A few steps short, I stopped. Grabbed Vogue’s arm to hold her back as well.
Elias reached the door, squared his shoulders and knocked. And waited.
After a few seconds I realised I was holding my breath. I blew it out and gave myself a quick ‘loosen up’ shake. From the feeling in my stomach, I might have been almost as nervous as Elias.
‘Maybe she’s not back yet,’ I said.
‘Knock again,’ Vogue told him.
‘Shhhh!’ Elias and I both turned on her.
She rolled her eyes. ‘Either they didn’t hear you, or there’s nobody home.’ She stepped forward and banged loudly on the door. We all stood silently, straining to hear any response.
‘Oh,’ Elias said finally. A small sound like a puff of air.
He looked so crestfallen. I felt like somebody should give him a hug or something. Not me. But somebody.
I noticed a small notepad and pen hanging on strings by the door. Not home? Leave a note, said a little sign above it written in slanted capitals on weather-stained lined paper.
‘Want to leave a note?’
Elias shook his head. ‘Nah. Let’s come back later.’
It was a quiet walk back to the cabin. I don’t think I’d ever seen him so subdued. He had no rational reason to feel rejected—she was probably in and out all day, managing the place—but I knew that was how he felt.
I looked at my watch: past four. We didn’t have a lot of daylight left. We were much higher here, and once the sun was gone you could feel the chill creep in. My stupid habit of wearing my hoodie all summer was paying off—I was going to be much warmer than Vogue in her silly little doll’s outfit.
There was a stack of logs under a little shelter a hundred metres or so from our cabin. Elias and Vogue had picked up some firelighters at the shops, one of many items Sephora had suggested.
‘We should get the fire going before it gets any colder,’ I announced, pointing to the wood pile.
Elias nodded. I turned to Vogue. ‘You go find some kindling.’
‘What’s kindling?’
I gritted my teeth. She’s just a kid. It was fast becoming my mantra. Pretend you’re dealing with Josey.
‘Little dried-out sticks,’ I said as calmly as I could.
‘Oh. Why didn’t you just say that?’
I pointed up the hill. There was plenty of dry leaf litter in the undergrowth up there.
I turned around to see Elias halfway up to the cabin with an enormous log.
‘Hang on!’ I chased after him. No way would that fit in the little wood-burning stove.
‘You’ve never been camping, have you?’ I reached out and took the log from his arms, lugged it back to the wood pile and dumped it on the chopping block. The axe there didn’t seem very sharp, but I was hoping it was sharp enough. I was also hoping I wouldn’t somehow make an idiot of myself and chop my own foot off.
I nudged the log closer to the centre of the chopping block with my foot, steadied myself, aimed the axe, and swung. It missed the centre of the log, shaving off a bit at the side, mostly bark. I adjusted my aim and swung again: right on the sweet spot. The log split down the middle and the two pieces tumbled to the ground.
‘Ohmigod.’ Elias was watching. ‘You are officially my hero.’
I feigned hurt as I held the split wood out to him. ‘I thought I was already.’
He grinned widely, the happiest I’d seen him since we’d left the manager’s cabin. I waved him off. ‘I’ll cut, you carry. Go.’
Within ten minutes we had a fair pile of wood split and stacked beside the stove. I went back outside and found Vogue halfway up the hill, carrying the wicker kindling basket from inside the cabin. She had nearly filled it with a neat selection of dry sticks and twigs. Not so dumb after all, the thought ran fleetingly through my head. I wasn’t really surprised, though. You could tell Vogue wasn’t dumb. She just pretended to be, for some unfathomable reason.
I watched her for a moment before she realised I was there. When she looked up and saw it was me a scowl dropped into place. ‘Can I stop yet?’ she whined.
I nodded. ‘Want a hand with the basket?’
‘You can carry it. You’re all lesbo muscles, right?’
I let that one slide and hefted up the basket. It was tightly packed and quite heavy. I was about to ask her how she’d been managing to move it herself, when I saw the drag marks in the sandy ground, tracking her movements back and forth. Yeah, not dumb at all.
I put it down again. ‘It’s a two-person job. Come on.’
It was awkward to carry but we managed. I’d got warmed up enough splitting the wood that I didn’t feel much like sitting in front of a fire, but I knew we’d need it soon enough. The temperature was still dropping.
I set the fire—firelighters, paper, kindling—and chose a few of the smaller pieces of wood to start with on top. The firelighters caught quickly. I closed the stove door most of the way, leaving it slightly ajar for airflow. When I finally turned around I found both Elias and Vogue watching me with the same awed look Elias had given me before.
‘What? Any idiot can start a fire with firelighters; it’s not like I’m rubbing two sticks together.’
Making a note to come back and close the door in a few minutes when the fire was properly established, I stood and glanced around. The light was fading fast outside. Inside the cabin we hadn’t turned any lights on yet and it was getting dim.
‘You guys have a dinner plan?’
Elias’ face lit up. ‘Oh yeah, baby.’
34
Elias took bloody forever to cook dinner, faffing around with hand-squeezed lemon juice and a teriyaki sauce made from scratch and so on, while an unusually compliant Vogue prepped for him. At home, Mum’s meals were driven by the two unbreakable laws of the Evans household: efficiency and economy.
There was none of that here. And I honestly couldn’t remember eating food that tasted so good. Every single thing on the plate had flavour. Even the beans were frigging awesome. Not to mention, they were cooked. Is it ridiculous how secretly excited I got to be served vegetables that were cooked, not raw because that’s all anybody else at the table would eat?
They’d bought and cooked way too much food, of course. I kept eating till I was stuffed, while Elias and Vogue kept up a parallel food conversation. Mostly I was too busy eating, but I didn’t have much to contribute, either. They had both travelled a lot with their parents. They talked about meals they’d had in foreign cities like they wer
e the Plaza food court.
‘San Fran—there’s a soup place in the Mission—’
‘Ohmigod, I love the soup place.’
For a few moments, I let myself daydream about the life I could have had if my parents had chosen to fill the void after Frankie’s disappearance by travelling the world. How different my life could have been. Yeah, I’m sure there would have been downsides to being an only child long-term.
But the upsides? No endless family money worries. No overcrowded house with squabbling siblings. Instead, normal things: freedom to eat the same types of food and wear the same types of clothes as everyone else, not the budget version. The ability to go places and try things that Cost Money. Stuff that everyone else—or at least, everyone else I was currently stuck in a small cabin with—seemed to take for granted.
I roused myself from my depressing daydreams and stood from the table to clear my plate. ‘You guys cooked, I’ll do the washing-up.’
I’d never admit it to Mum, but I don’t mind washing dishes. There’s a certain rhythm to it that is kind of calming and predictable; worst case scenario is you’ll get something stuck on that needs a good scrub. But in the end, everything will be clean. The job will be done. It can be completely engrossing but it doesn’t require you to think. In our house it’s the closest thing to down time I’m going to get.
I had everything done except the last pots and pans when Elias wandered into the kitchen and bumped lightly against me as I stood at the sink. It seemed to be his new method of silent greeting.
‘You’re taking forever. Why didn’t you just chuck it all in the dishwasher?’
‘Good idea.’
He’d been in the kitchen for over an hour preparing dinner. He’d foraged in every cupboard and every drawer for the zillions of utensils he needed. How had it escaped his attention that there was no dishwasher?
I lifted up the frypan he’d used for the salmon. ‘Wanna put this in for me?’
He took the pan, obliging as always, and turned to his left, where the oven was. Discovering that wasn’t a dishwasher, he scanned the rest of the kitchen. ‘Oh. Right. Weird.’
‘This place is on solar power,’ I reminded him. ‘Have to use it sparingly.’
‘How’d you know that?’
There were notices about conserving electricity next to every switch in the place. ‘I pay attention,’ I reminded him. ‘That’s why you hired me, remember?’
He looked at me seriously. ‘I do have pretty awesome judgment.’
‘Ha. Right.’ I took the frypan back and started scrubbing at it.
‘You want some hot chocolate?’
‘How can you still be hungry? We just had an eleventybillion-course meal.’
‘I’ve always got room for hot chocolate.’ He called over his shoulder to Vogue. ‘You want a hot chocolate?’
‘Totally.’
For someone that short and skinny, she sure could eat. As I finished the last few pans I watched Elias out of the corner of my eye. He worked like he owned the kitchen, his movements smooth and unhurried. Watching him, I felt a surge of irrational envy; he made everything seem so easy.
I wiped my hands and went to get some wood for the pile while Elias brought out the hot chocolate, marshmallows bobbing in the top. He and Vogue had taken the pair of armchairs by the fire and they started to chat about where in the world they’d had the most awesome cocoa. Trying to tune them out, I pulled a worn Lee Child novel off the shelf and sat cross-legged on the bed I’d claimed. I got about ten pages in before the yawns defeated me. I’d had a vague plan to take a shower—hot water, for the first time in days—but all I wanted to do was sleep. The shower could wait till morning.
I did a final lap of the room, checking both the doors were locked and putting a last log on the fire, and then I drew back the covers and crawled into bed. It was dark enough in my corner. By the fire, Elias and Vogue were still talking, and I figured there was a good chance they wouldn’t even notice.
35
Like most dreams, it didn’t have a beginning. Or maybe it did, and that part of the memory was gone by the time I woke up. Either way, it was the ending that haunted me. It had me waking up with a racing heart, sweaty and tangled in the sheets, a panicked sob catching in my throat.
It was dark in the cabin. The fire had died right down, just glowing embers, and someone had switched off the kitchen light. No moonlight came through the kitchen window. Still struggling to catch my breath, I wiped away the tears that had chilled on my face. I was shivering, sweat clammy on my skin as I hugged the quilt around me and waited for my pounding heart to settle. I felt like I’d been dumped by a wave, tumbled around under the water till I didn’t know which way was up.
God, I hated the bush. I’d forgotten how dark it got at night, how unnerving all the scraping and rustling sounds could be. Unbidden, Frankie’s voice came back to me from my dream, calling out to me from the dark bush, and I had to fight the panic welling up in me. I cursed Elias quietly for bringing me to the bush, and cursed myself for coming. My eyes were still smarting and I brushed the tears away on the back of my hand. The last thing I needed was to for Vogue to see me cry.
My heart rate finally slowed. My eyes adjusted. I looked around the room. Vogue was tucked into the other bed, curls splayed on the pillow. Asleep, she looked no older than Josey.
I wrapped the quilt around me and slipped out of bed. Took a few minutes to build the fire up again. The door to the master bedroom was open—I was a little surprised that Elias hadn’t shut it—and then I realised something. The door to the veranda was closed, but no longer bolted shut.
I found him sitting on the bench seat out there, wrapped up in his own quilt, gazing outwards.
‘Don’t you sleep?’
He smiled at me, then gestured. ‘Look at all the stars.’
They were impressive, of course. Away from the lights of the city, the sky looked like someone had smashed a crystal vase on a slate floor.
I cleared my throat, hoping I sounded normal. ‘Why aren’t you getting your beauty sleep like Vogue?’
‘Too nervous about tomorrow. Meeting Sephora.’ He raised an eyebrow, scrutinising me. I turned away instinctively, but too late.
‘Are you okay?’ His voice was filled with concern.
‘I’m fine.’
‘You look like you’ve been crying.’
‘Shut up.’
‘Jeez, Linds, I’m just trying to be a friend.’
‘Since when are we friends?’ I demanded, turning back to face him.
Annoyance surged in to displace the panic and I embraced it without hesitation. ‘You’re paying me. This is a job. We’re not friends.’
I might as well have slapped him. I felt bad, but it was too late. I ploughed forward, no idea what I was doing but feeling like the worst thing I could do was stop and let him get a word in.
‘I get that you’re a nice guy, you like everyone, blah blah blah. You don’t have to like me. You don’t have to be nice to me.’
He threw the quilt off and got to his feet. It was the second time in—what, just over a day?—that I’d gone off at him. I guess he’d reached his limit.
‘You know,’ he snarled at me, angry and frustrated, ‘I’ve tried, and tried, and tried to see your good side. I thought that if I was just nice enough to you, you’d get past this… this shit of yours and be a decent person. Because, frankly, you’re not a nice person. Jaz was right. You’re a bitch. You’re a bitch and you do it on purpose. And I’m an idiot to keep trying to fix you.’
His sudden frustration was a punch in the gut. I’d never heard him speak like that before, to me or anybody else. He looked—looked and sounded—crushed. Angry. Disappointed. In me.
I tried to swallow down the stupid lump that formed in my throat, tried to will back the hot tears. I pushed my lips together.
But there was still a tremor in my voice as I spoke. ‘I never asked you to fix me.’
‘Oh, shut up.
’ He held his hand up. Stop. ‘When I met you, I’ll admit I saw you as some sort of tragic heroine. Romantic, even. But the fact is you’re just bitter. Yeah, you’re screwed up—you were always going to be screwed up because it was an awful thing that happened. But you’re the one who’s choosing to be bitter about it and use it as an excuse to treat everyone like shit.’
I couldn’t form a coherent argument. His words fell like blows and I just took them.
A slightly hysterical laugh. ‘I was so naive. Jaz called you the Finder, and I really saw you that way. And yeah, you’ve found Sephora, but…your whole pathetic secret is that you don’t want to be the Finder at all. You spend all your time and energy on finding things that you don’t give a shit about so you don’t have to face the truth in your own life.’
‘My sister? I look for her every day,’ I protested. ‘You don’t—’
‘How?’ he shot back. ‘Tell me how, Lindsay. Tell me exactly what you’re doing to find your sister. Tell me about the hours you’ve spent poring over records of police searches, about the searches you’ve done out in the bush, and the missing persons reports you’ve sent around the world. Tell me what you’ve done.’
By that point, I was biting down on the inside of my lower lip so hard I could taste the blood, hot and metallic in my mouth.
‘What’s your point?’ I demanded. My voice was low and rough, the words forced out. I felt shocked by the explosive anger towards me. Elias, the one person who had been kind to me. And I’d pushed him and pushed him to this.
A breeze was coming up the rocky hillside. It blew my hair around my face. Reaching a hand up, I discovered my cheeks were wet with tears, my tangled hair stuck to them. I brushed my hair away roughly, then wiped my cheeks dry with the quilt.
Elias seemed to have run out of things to say. He looked at me, the signs of anger fading, until there was just a resigned look on his face. He didn’t apologise for his words.
I shivered, pulling the quilt tighter around me.
We should both go inside and go to bed, I thought, and get up tomorrow and do what we came here to do. Why were we even having this conversation? What did it matter?
The Finder Page 21