Chapter 6
In the morning I go for a run to get a phone signal, past GG’s window, where cardboard covers the broken panes and the ladder is gone.
The garden beds are churned up, and shards of glass in the soil catch the morning light.
A long strip of police tape has become detached from the side of the house and is flapping around like a seagull with a broken wing.
My phone is full of texts from Ali and Libby asking for any updates on GG’s death and reassuring me that the movie was kind of bad so I didn’t miss anything.
I give them the headlines: no updates and still no idea when I’ll be home.
Neither of them is on their phone, apparently, so I hang out for a bit, swishing through my recent photos to delete the bad ones, just in case Libby wakes up or Ali risks a glance at her contraband Android.
By the time I’ve consigned ten hideous selfies to the trash and changed my phone background to a photo of nearby Yallingup Beach (Dad took me our first day here, before things got weird), nobody has replied, so I jog home.
Dad’s not impressed by my morning’s activity like I expected, but rather pissed off that I didn’t tell him where I was going.
He reminds me that a woman has died. The word woman makes GG sound so young, like someone with a job and plans for Saturday night.
I think up some comebacks in the shower, but by the time I’m wrapped in a robe and headed up to my room, I’ve conceded he might have a point.
Upstairs, I find Dylan sitting on my bed, paging through a paperback, and I let out a little yip of surprise, grabbing on to the cords of my bathrobe to make sure it hasn’t swung open.
If you think I’m being paranoid, then let me suggest that you, unlike me, have never answered the door to a delivery guy while wearing only a robe. (No, I don’t want to talk about it.)
“Hi.”
“Hey.” He swings his long legs off the bed and straightens up, raising the book I’ve been reading. “How’s this?”
“Good, but, you know, I’ve read it before. I finally read the Naomi Novik series you were banging on about last time I saw you.”
“And?”
“So good. I kind of hated the end, though.”
“I forgot you hate happy endings.”
“Was that ending even happy?”
Dylan looks around the room. I should probably tidy up just a little bit. My weekend’s worth of clothes appear to have been breeding, and the babies are half-empty teacups.
“Why is your room so much bigger than mine when I’m older and, like, a foot taller?”
“You are not a foot taller.”
“Why do you want to embarrass yourself like this?”
Dylan stands up straight and I shuffle in so our backs are together, keeping an iron grip of terry cloth the whole time. Obviously, I don’t notice how he smells because we are related, but is that…licorice?
“Inches,” I say, “mere inches.”
“Half a foot, then. Still doesn’t explain why I got screwed on the room.”
“Is this why you’re here? To guilt me into swapping? It’s not going to work.”
“I dunno, how long has this been going on?” He points up at the overhead light, which, now that he mentions it, is flickering.
Probably the same mouse that’s been crapping under my bed has gotten into the wiring.
“Maybe I got the better deal? At least Gertie’s ghost isn’t trying to communicate with me in the creepiest way possible. ”
“Way to go dark, Dylan. Just turn on the bedside lamp instead if it’s going to give you nightmares.”
“The lights and these creepy little demons?” He taps the glass that stands between me and the horror figurines, and I wonder if it’s too soon to suggest they get boxed up, along with some of GG’s other things. “I take it all back. Let me keep my cupboard, Uncle Vernon, please.”
“I know, right?”
Dylan is still looking at the figurines. “Do you think they run around at night when you’re sleeping?”
“Shut up. Also: Get out. I need to put on some clothes.”
“Wait.” He reaches out and actually grabs the end of my bathrobe cord, then drops his hand when he realizes what he’s caught. A red blotch appears on his neck. “Can we talk about what’s going on with, you know. Everything.”
“GG.”
“Yeah.” Dylan runs a hand through his hair, and in the old days this would have caused a bundle of curls to tumble into his eyes, but now it just messes up his hair a bit.
A retrograde step, that haircut, even if he’s almost making it work.
Ali will be bummed. (I’m bummed.) “What do you think happened?”
Nobody has asked me this obvious question I’ve been waiting for. Now that it’s here, though, it scares me. I stall.
“What do you mean?”
“Do you think it was a stranger who broke in and attacked Gertie?”
“I guess.”
Dylan doesn’t say anything else, just lets the silence sit there, expanding to squeeze all the air out of the room. I hate it when he does that.
“There are a few things I don’t get,” I say, cracking like a suspect in a cop show who needs to move the plot forward.
“Like what?”
Am I doing this? I guess I’m doing this.
I blame my reading habits. When all you read are crime novels, everyone seems like they could be a murderer.
Or a detective. Dylan and I are still too close together, so I take a step back under the guise of retying my robe and perch on the end of the bed.
Dylan sits back down too, right on top of the old T-shirt I slept in last night. I hold up a finger.
“Why would a burglar come to this house in particular? You can’t see it from the road, and it’s not like farmers keep a lot of cash and valuables lying around, even if this was still a proper farm.
The most valuable stuff on a farm is, like, the land and the equipment, and that’s all gone except for the old tractor in the shed.
GG doesn’t even have any livestock for a cattle rustler to steal. ”
“Does anyone rustle cattle these days? What movies have you been watching?”
I keep going with finger two. “How did they get here without anyone hearing a car—”
“There was a storm that night,” Dylan interrupts, unhelpful with his logic. “The thunder was pretty loud in my room.” I ignore him.
“—or seeing the headlights or anything?” I stick up my thumb, just to keep things fresh.
“Why did they use a ladder to get into GG’s room instead of breaking in downstairs?
” Do I need to mention I’m now sticking a fourth finger up or have you got it?
“Why was there glass on the outside of the window if someone broke in?”
“Was there?”
“I saw some on my run.” I’m not finished. “If they did break in to rob the place, why kill GG at all instead of just running away?”
“Do you thi—”
“Why was some of her medication missing? Who was smoking in the garden the night she was killed?”
“Ruth, I can’t keep up.”
“Isn’t this what you wanted?” I could really do without Dylan looking at me like I’m the psycho here when he ambushed me in my bedroom.
“It is. I just, sorry, I forget what you’re like sometimes.” He reaches across the expanse of the bed like he’s going to pat my arm or something, then changes his mind. “It’s good—this is why I wanted to talk to you.”
I relax into the bed, trying not to think about the bathrobe thing. “What do you think happened, then?”
“Obviously, I don’t know anything.”
“Hence my use of the word think.”
“I agree with you. It’s weird that anyone would break into an old farmhouse, unless maybe they were looking for something specific?”
“Like what?”
“Maybe Gertie had a secret stash of cash or jewelry or, uh, a piece of priceless art?”
Dylan looks like he’s waiting for me to take the piss (and I really do think about making a joke involving the creepy figurines being wildly valuable collector’s items), but I’m mostly pleased he’s taking this seriously.
It makes me feel less weird for not being curled up in the fetal position, like I’m probably supposed to be.
Is it normal for a teenager to be talking about her step-grandmother’s death like it’s a true-crime podcast?
I’ve done a few of those Are You a Psychopath?
online quizzes and they all say I’m okay, but at times I wonder.
“I don’t know if I see GG as an international jewel thief.”
“It wouldn’t have to be international. Australia has diamond mines.”
“Even so.”
“What did she do before she met your grandad?”
I try to put together the bits of GG’s life I know about.
The puzzle is embarrassingly small, the kind of three-piece wooden puzzle you give a two-year-old.
“She worked in agriculture, and she must have had some money because she drove a fancy-looking convertible when she and Grandad started going out. But, I dunno, who would have known about any of that?”
“Maybe she had a secret husband she left for your grandad, who came to seek his revenge?”
“He’s your grandad too,” I remind Dylan. “But, no, her first husband died.”
“A child, then, angry at her mum for pissing away her inheritance on a run-down farmhouse?”
“It was a he, and he died too.”
“Or is that just what he wants you to think?” Dylan taps his head and I roll my eyes like this isn’t fun.
“Also, did she ever spend any money on this place?” I eyeball a long crack in the wall. “I feel like we’re getting off topic.”
“Has your dad said anything to you about any of this?”
“Not really.”
“I thought your mum would have scheduled a Zoom counseling session to Talk It Out by now.”
“I don’t know if Dad has even told her yet. She’s in the middle of nowhere in Tasmania on a hike with Brian.” Brian is Mum’s new husband, who is dull but otherwise fine. “What’s your mum said?”
“She says it’s going to get messy.”
“What does that mean?”
“That it’s complicated, I guess.”
“Those were her exact words: ‘This is going to get messy’?”
“Something like that.”
“Do you think she knows something?”
Dylan looks directly at me, decoding my question with the ease of someone who has known me for too long. “I’m pretty sure she didn’t bash Gertie over the head with her typewriter, if that’s what you mean.”
“Wow.”
“You asked.”
I consider it. Aunty Bec doesn’t seem like a psychopathic killer, but in books it’s always the last person you’d suspect.
Although, technically, the last person I’d suspect is myself, so by this logic I guess I did it.
(This is not a confession, and while I’m at it, the fact that I’m reading The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, a mystery in which, famously, the narrator is the murderer—sorry for the spoiler—is not a clue or anything, so just calm down, although, also, good on you for noticing.)
“Did you see anything on the night GG died?” I ask, thinking of the smoker in the garden, Dad’s empty bed, and the conversation I overheard in GG’s room.
“Not anything weird.” Dylan shifts uncomfortably on the bed, then pulls my sleep T-shirt out from under one thigh and chucks it at me. “How long do you think we’re going to be here?”
“Like, here in the house?”
“Yeah.”
“A couple more days, I guess.”
Dylan makes a noise like his footy team has just lost in the dying minutes of the grand final.
“Why do you care so much? At least we get to miss school.”
“There’s nothing to do here, that’s all.”
“Like you have things to do in Perth.”
“I have things to do.”
“Yeah, right.” I look more closely at Dylan. “What is it? What’s so important you’re not stoked to get an extra-long weekend?”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make lucky guesses like you’re a psychic at a town fair.”
“What fairs have you been going to that have psychics at them?”
“Look, I know you’re going to roll your eyes, but it’s the school ball on Friday.”
“And you’re going?” Dylan and I aren’t as close as we were, but I know him well enough to be confident that wearing a suit and dancing to music that doesn’t involve someone screaming directly into a microphone about their PERSONAL PAIN is not his idea of a fun night.
He looks shifty. “Lisa wants to go.”
“Oh.” Lisa is Dylan’s girlfriend. I’ve never met her—he doesn’t bring her to family stuff—but I’ve seen her on Instagram, with her bad hair extensions. “Do you want to go?”
“Sure.” He’s about as believable as an actual psychic.
“Are you guys…okay?” This is fifty percent me being caring and fifty percent nosiness, because I’ve had my suspicions for a while about Dylan’s girlfriend (and this is not about my historic crush, if that’s what you’re thinking).
I may not know Lisa, but, like I say, I know her social media.
Until recently, her content has been faux artsy stuff: pictures of trash in the lake, videos of her and her friends mucking around, heavily filtered photos of her and Dylan squinting into the sun.
The past few months, though, there has been a growing number of increasingly thirsty selfies, Dylan hasn’t shown up in forever, and the comments have been… interesting.
“We’re fine. I just want to know when we’re going to get out of here.” Dylan’s voice is flat. He does not care for this line of inquiry, and I let it go.
“You can get out of here—here being my bedroom—right now so I can get dressed.”
Dylan looks like he wants to say a thing, but he swallows it and stands up. “Have fun with your creepy dolls.”
“They’re figurines.”
“They’re going to watch you get dressed.”
He’s halfway to the door when we both hear a car engine. Nick? The police? The murderer come to turn himself or herself in?
“It’s probably just Shippy,” Dylan says.
“Did he go out?”
“Yeah, Mum’s been freaking out.”
But it’s not Shippy.