There it is. I knew she was still carrying this around.
I sit forwards. ‘So I’m to blame for Mason keeping secrets from you? Sounds like he was doing it long before New Year’s Eve.’
‘It’s true,’ Raf says to Rina, almost apologetically. ‘And I say this as his mate: in the last year he’s become more and more closed off. I think he’s drinking a lot more than we realise, and there might be more happening at home he hasn’t told us about.’
‘Maybe …’ Rina flicks her hair over her shoulder and delicately scratches the side of her nose.
‘Wait a minute.’ I narrow my eyes. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’
‘No,’ she says, glancing past my shoulder at the next table. She reaches up and brushes a strand of hair away from her cheek, then scratches her nose again.
‘You never were any good at Impostor,’ I say.
Raf looks from my face to Rina’s. ‘You’re right. She always does the face- and hair-touching.’
‘That game we played as kids?’ Rina folds her arms, then quickly unfolds them again. ‘That doesn’t mean anything.’
‘Umm—’ Raf takes a theatrical sip of Coke, ‘—you’ll have to forgive us if we don’t believe the person we just caught catfishing.’
Rina rolls her eyes and I sense her yielding. Only Raf can manage to drop truth bombs in a way that seems amusing rather than cutting.
‘Okay,’ she says, reluctantly sitting up. ‘There is something.’ She peers around the café, then lowers her voice. ‘I saw Mason’s car. Driving around that night.’
I tilt my head. ‘What night?’
‘The night Henry went missing. I couldn’t sleep because of the thunder, so I sat up at my window watching the storm. I love the lightning, you know? I was trying to get some good photos.’
‘I can give you some tips on that,’ Raf offers. I slide him a look: Not now, dude. ‘Right. Sorry. You were saying?’
‘Around midnight, maybe a bit after, I opened the window to let the breeze in. I heard a car coming – the sound of tyres on the wet road.’
‘Coming from which direction?’ I ask. I haven’t been in Rina’s bedroom for years, although I can picture how it overlooks Railway Parade.
‘Umm … the library end.’
‘South,’ Raf and I say together.
‘Yeah, sure. The car drove right past my place and kept going up past the pizzeria, as if Mason was heading home. I thought it was weird because it was so late, and who’d want to be out driving in that storm?’
‘Are you sure it was Mason’s car?’ I ask.
‘It was still raining a bit so I couldn’t see perfectly. But yeah, I’m pretty sure it was.’
‘So weird,’ I say. ‘Mason said he was home all night and Ivy backed that up.’ It explains the look they exchanged on their verandah that morning. Now I know why Mason’s ears were flaming red.
‘I couldn’t get to sleep after that because I was suss Mason was out with another girl,’ Rina continues. ‘I wrote him a bunch of texts and didn’t send any of them. I was really worked up. When I finally decided to try to sleep, I heard tyres outside again. It was the same car, this time going the other way.’
‘What time was this?’ I say, typing this snippet into the Notes app on my phone.
‘I guess it must have been over an hour later. More like an hour and a half.’
‘So about one-thirty? One forty-five?’ Raf asks.
Rina nods. ‘Something like that. I watched the car drive a couple of blocks and turn in at the train station. I thought maybe it was doing a U-turn but it didn’t reappear for ages. Not for like ten or fifteen minutes.’
‘Why? There are no trains at that time of night.’ I scroll to the NSW transport app on my phone and search the local timetable. ‘The next service to Campbelltown isn’t until three-thirty on weekday mornings.’
My head is spinning with this new information. Why was Mason driving around between midnight and two in the morning? Why did he say he was home all night and why did his mother cover for him? Was Mason out searching for Henry?
‘Who else have you told about this?’ I ask Rina.
She shrinks into her seat. ‘No one.’
‘Not even Sergeant Doherty?’
‘I asked Mason and he denied it,’ she says. ‘When his mother backed him up I started to wonder if it really was Mason’s car. Maybe it was some random in a similar model. How could I go to Sergeant Doherty with that?’
‘Plus,’ Raf says, ‘I’m guessing you didn’t exactly want to dob in your boyfriend.’
Rina raises her eyebrows as if to say, Right?
‘Do you think you can get more information from Mason?’ I ask her.
‘Haven’t you heard?’ She withdraws into her seat again, turning her head away. ‘He dumped me a few days ago. We’re not exactly speaking.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I manage, feeling an unexpected pang of concern. Despite our recent tensions and this whole catfishing business, she’s still a childhood friend. ‘I didn’t know that. Are you all right?’
‘Guess I’ll have to be.’
‘Do you think you’ll try to patch things up?’ Raf asks. ‘You have in the past.’
‘Not this time,’ she says. ‘Something’s changed. With him, and also with me. We’re definitely done.’
We don’t hang around for lunch. To my surprise, Rina agrees to catch the train back to The Shallows with us, making small talk until Raf pops his earbuds in and slumps against the window for a doze.
‘Can I ask you a favour?’ Rina says, as graffiti and backyard fences blur past the windows. ‘I know you don’t owe me any.’
‘Okay.’
‘Please let me be the one to explain this whole catfishing thing to Sabeen.’ She eyes the red coat draped across her lap and tugs at a thread along the hem. ‘She’s a good friend and I’d rather she hear it from me. She’ll be mad, but at least I can tell her in my own words.’
‘No time like the present,’ I say, holding up my phone.
Rina nods, resigned. I think we both know she’ll only keep putting it off if she doesn’t do it straightaway. She pulls out her own phone to make the call, then pauses.
‘Can you please hold off telling Sergeant Doherty until I’ve had a chance to talk to my mum about it face to face?’ she says. ‘I know you don’t owe me that either. It would hurt Mum to hear about this from somebody else, especially the police. She’d be so embarrassed.’
‘Of course,’ I say. ‘I don’t want to upset your mum either.’
I try to pretend I’m not listening in as Rina speaks to Sabeen. Every now and then she looks at me as though I’m included anyway, either for approval or moral support. As she explains the circumstances all over again, I open Henry’s Messenger account and scroll through the long chat thread. By the time we reach Campbelltown and have to swap trains, I’m still no closer to understanding what Henry’s intentions were after those final few messages, or where he’s gone.
When I’m finally home again, I feel emotionally strung out. Luisa waves at me from the motel’s front garden as I trudge up the driveway. She’s hunched over the curved flower bed surrounding the fountain. It’s hooked up and running, water trickling from one tier to another.
‘You’ve been busy,’ I tell her. ‘It looks lovely.’ She’s planting yellow and purple pansies in an alternating pattern.
She shades her face with a gloved hand. ‘Once it’s all done we can take some new photos for the website.’
‘I can help with that.’ I glance towards the office. ‘Do you need me to cover the reception desk while you’re out here?’
Luisa taps a hand against her back pocket where the cordless phone is poking out. ‘Phone is covered. It’s quiet. The only guests we have drove up to Wombeyan Caves this morning.’
I don’t see Dad’s ute anywhere.
‘David’s gone to the hardware store,’ she says. ‘He bought the wrong type of mulch.’
It�
��s awkward standing here making light conversation when I know about what her daughter did. But I have an agreement with Rina, so I’m going to honour that. I offer to make Luisa a cup of tea instead, and wander up towards the motel office. I’m so distracted I only notice that something is blocking the office door from the inside as I try to shove it open.
Peering through my own reflection, I spot the faded couch on the other side of the glass. It’s been overturned, cushions flung into various corners of the room.
‘What …?’ I shove against the door with my shoulder, managing to nudge the couch out of the way. There are papers strewn all over the floor, the small side table and magazines knocked to one side. Luisa’s cup of pens has been upended across the computer keyboard, but the computer seems otherwise untouched. The door into our residence is wide open. I can see all the way through to the back door of our unit, which is also ajar.
With a sinking feeling, I realise somebody has burgled us while Luisa’s been outside in the garden.
I check the top drawer of the desk where we keep the cash box. It’s still safely locked. Moving through into our unit, I brace myself for a missing TV or microwave, the cupboards ransacked and drawers emptied. Everything is exactly how I left it that morning.
From what I can tell, nothing has been taken.
It’s only as I’m walking back into the office that I notice a sheet of paper pinned to the door of our unit. It flaps lightly in the breeze blowing through from the back door.
One message. Only three words long.
LEAVE IT ALONE
One day before the storm
Please call me.
Can I come over?
Where are you?
Will you talk to me?
I’m worried.
I miss you.
Are you breaking up with me?
Mason’s phone had been chiming with so many messages from Rina over the last week that he was tempted to switch it off altogether. Instead he kept it on silent, just in case something came through from Tom. He worked long days at Stu’s workshop, came home and crawled into bed. Workshop. Bed. Workshop. Bed. Sometimes food. A shower. Workshop. Bed.
Something had shifted. Mason felt detached, and more alone than ever.
He let his eighteenth birthday slip by without a fuss, choosing to drink his first legal beer alone in a corner of the back bar at the Criterion. He’d followed it up by purchasing his own bottle of whisky for the first time ever, and hiking up to the bush hut with a sleeping bag so he could deaden himself without interruptions.
That night alone in the bush hut solidified a few things in Mason’s mind. He’d never felt a stronger pull to leave The Shallows and start over somewhere new. He’d taken the job with Stu Macleod to give himself options, and so far he hadn’t been brave enough to put any real plan into place. He’d managed to pay off the Subaru in the first seven weeks working for Stu, and since then he’d saved over eighteen hundred dollars. It was the most cash he’d ever seen in his life. Now that he was a full-time apprentice, he hoped to double that amount over the next month.
Mason’s phone chimed with another message. He ignored it, his fingers carefully peeling the blue envelope from the underside of his lower desk drawer. He hadn’t yet opened a bank account because he was too worried the bank might send him something in the post and his mother would find out. He’d considered hiring a PO Box in town until he found out what it would cost: over a hundred bucks a year. When you’d scrimped and saved the way Mason had been forced to, a hundred dollars felt like a thousand.
He hadn’t found his birth certificate yet, or his surname change documentation; he was worried his mother had lost everything. They had to be somewhere in this house, though, because they’d never lived anywhere else. He’d need them for when he was ready to hit the road. He pulled out his wallet and slid two green hundred-dollar notes into the envelope along with the rest. How much money would he feel comfortable with if he took off right now? Five thousand? Was that enough? Mason suspected the day would come soon when it would simply have to be.
As he stuck the envelope of cash back underneath the drawer he heard his bedroom door creak behind him.
‘Are you leaving?’ a voice said.
Mason jerked around to find Henry standing in the hall, peering through the gap in the door. He was wearing that green baseball cap he’d bought with last year’s birthday money. Lucky-7. Mason felt a strange attachment to it, like he’d wrapped and gifted it to Henry himself. It had been difficult to make that twenty dollars happen when they’d suffered through a particularly long and lean few months. It was before Mason had a job, so he’d put a two-dollar coin aside from the grocery shopping every week for a couple of months before exchanging them at the post office for a crisp orange note.
‘Are you leaving?’ Henry said again. He must have seen the money. Mason made a mental note to move it later, just in case.
Henry shoved the door open and stepped into the room. ‘I forgive you for pushing me in the water, okay? Even if you didn’t say sorry.’
‘I am sorry,’ Mason said. He meant it, too. After all that, the apology was so easy to muster.
‘So please don’t leave. Don’t leave me here with her.’
‘Henry—’
‘No! You can’t. I don’t know how to do any of this. I don’t want to.’
Mason grabbed the side of the desk and pulled himself to his feet. ‘I’m eighteen now, and it’s time for me to—’
‘Mason!’ Henry’s voice broke and his eyes welled with tears. ‘Take me with you. I promise I’ll do whatever you want.’
Mason felt something deep inside him crack open. He swallowed hard and stared at the carpet. ‘You have to stay here and finish school.’
He was about to say something else when he was distracted by the squeal of brakes outside. Through his bedroom window, Mason could see that black ute on the driveway again, one of Ivy’s drinking buddies from the pub. She had several of them who came out of their way to pick her up and drop her off. Enablers, Mason thought. He wondered how many drinks she shouted them to show her gratitude for all the car rides, money her family desperately needed at home to fix the hot water heater and buy toilet paper.
‘You can’t leave,’ Henry said, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘I won’t let you.’
Mason sighed. ‘You don’t have a choice.’
Something in Henry’s expression changed. Mason couldn’t read it, but the tears were gone, replaced by steely resolve.
The front door banged open and Ivy’s footsteps staggered a wobbly path down the hallway. She bumped right past Mason’s bedroom without noticing they were there and, to Mason’s relief, made it to her own bedroom and closed the door.
Henry was quiet. It was unsettling. He slipped out of the room without another word, and something about this chilled Mason to the bone. Mason didn’t know how to make Henry understand that living here was eating him alive, and if he stayed any longer things would inevitably come to a head. It felt like an approaching storm on the horizon, crackling desperation like fire through his veins.
Mason had to leave. He could only be pushed so far before he’d explode.
Now
Luisa and I wait in the motel office on Sunday morning, the threatening note sitting on the desk between us. Luisa’s face is downcast and she’s come to work wearing a black dress and grey cardigan, like she’s going to a funeral. I have to wonder if Rina’s spoken to her about the catfishing already because she seems out of sorts, and it’s making me feel even more off-kilter than I already do. I’ve come to rely on Luisa’s warm smiles and colourful blouses as something of a comfort.
Tom came by earlier to drop off a couple of matching table lamps somebody donated to the shop, thinking we could use them in one of the refurbished motel rooms.
‘Feeling guilty about helping Jack Doherty, hmm?’ I teased, and he laughed it off. Our joking quickly subsided when he heard about our break-in.
‘So someone snuck in while Luisa was in the front yard?’ Tom asked. ‘That’s pretty brazen.’
‘Honestly, anybody could have slipped by Luisa while she had her head buried in the garden. She left the office unattended.’
‘In her defence,’ Tom said, ‘it is The Shallows. I bet your dad’s done it a million times himself. This is the last thing anyone would expect to happen.’
‘See, this is the problem, Tom. There are desperate people everywhere. I’m always saying everyone’s far too trusting around here.’
I won’t say this to Luisa, of course. She appears stricken as she glances at the note again.
‘He won’t be long,’ I say, referring to Dad, who’s on the phone in the other room. I suspect it’s my mother on the other end judging by the way his face fell after answering the call. Dad tries to keep their phone conversations short and detached because Mum has a tendency to start criticising the motel, this town and the people in it. Sometimes I think it’s because she misses living here and has to convince herself she’s better off.
‘No,’ Dad says, his voice raised. ‘I won’t let you do that, Mel. We agreed she’s here for three weeks.’
Luisa and I exchange a look. It is my mother. Is she trying to make me go back early? I’m supposed to be here until after Easter weekend, which is still another week away.
Through the doorway that leads into our unit, I can see Dad pacing up and down the hall. He drops his head and stares at the carpet, holding the cordless phone an inch from his ear.
‘I’ll handle it,’ he interrupts loudly. ‘And listen, next time your little spy contacts you, tell him to come directly to me. I’m more than happy to set him straight.’
I widen my eyes at Luisa and she quickly drops her gaze when she hears Dad coming. She opens a desk drawer, pretending to hunt for something so Dad doesn’t think we were eavesdropping. I, on the other hand, stand up as soon as he returns.
‘What’s going on?’ I say.
Dad squeezes my shoulder as he walks past me. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
Deep Water Page 19