Chapter 14
“Did Kim say anything?” Falk watched Naomi across the table. “Once you had her back on the path?”
A light breeze swept through, rustling the vines below the veranda. The sun came out from behind a cloud and Naomi slipped her sunglasses on again. It made it hard to read her expression, but her mouth was a firm line as she shook her head.
“She was past the slurring stage even, so no. I walked her home. Helped her get into her bedroom without her parents realizing the state she was in.” She drained her water glass.
“I went around to see her the next morning, though, to check if she was okay. Ask her what had gone on. God, she was so hungover. She did remember some parts, like arriving at the party, Charlie being a dickhead and her being upset about it, but after that—” Naomi’s eyes flickered behind her dark glasses.
“Not much. Not deciding to leave, or who she left with—if anyone. Not me finding her, not getting home.”
“A lot of blank space there,” Raco said, frowning into the light.
“Yeah. I told her how I’d found her, what it looked like, but honestly, she seemed embarrassed as much as anything,” Naomi said.
“I know it sounds stupid, sitting here as adults, but back then…” She shrugged.
“Kim didn’t want Charlie or anyone at school finding out.
And what can I tell you? I was a teenager myself and I thought no real harm had been done.
” Naomi gave a dry, humorless laugh. Underneath, Falk sensed rather than heard that faint false note again.
“So I did what she asked. Never brought it up again, never told anyone.”
Falk nodded slowly. “Until when? Last year?”
“Yep.” The word was clipped and Naomi’s face was set.
“After Kim abandoned her newborn in a public place and walked off alone to take her own life a hundred meters from where it had happened. So at that point—yes, big pat on the back for me for finally stepping up. I told Sergeant Dwyer, because I thought—I still think—it was relevant to her state of mind.”
They were all quiet for a moment.
“It’s not a cop-out to say things were different back then, Naomi,” Raco said.
“We were all young. And the three of us can sit here now thinking the word assault and considering consent issues under the influence because we’re both police and you’re a GP and it’s twenty-five years on.
But that’s not always how it was. And definitely not when it came to teenage girls drinking at a party. ”
“I know. I do. And I believed Kim at the time when she said she was okay. But, Jesus—” Naomi took off her glasses and ran a distracted hand through her hair. “It’s just so bloody sad. I wish I’d done things differently, that’s all.”
“Did Kim ever tell anyone else?” Falk asked.
Raco and Naomi exchanged a glance and shook their heads.
“I don’t think so,” Raco said. “The first I heard of it was in the week after she disappeared, when Dwyer asked me if I could tell him anything. It was news to Charlie and Shane as well, I know. Even Rohan, I’m pretty sure?” he said, and Naomi nodded.
“Yeah, she hadn’t told him, either.”
“Are you surprised she didn’t tell anyone?” Falk could tell Naomi had asked herself the same question, probably a few times. Still, she thought about it again now.
“Not really. I mean, she never mentioned it again to me, so I could imagine she didn’t talk about it to anyone else. It was almost like it had never happened until—”
Naomi stopped as Rita put her head out of the door. “Sorry to interrupt, Father Connor’s car’s pulled up.”
“Okay, thanks.” Raco finished his water and made to stand.
“So that’s why you cataloged the party photos?” Falk asked him, pushing back his own chair. “Working out who was there?”
Raco nodded. “It’s impossible, though. There were kids there who aren’t in the pictures, people I never knew and don’t remember.
And where Naomi found Kim, it wasn’t far from that main reservoir track”—Naomi was nodding in confirmation—“so anyone could have come along there. Someone from the festival. Dog walker. Late-night jogger. You’d never know. ”
From inside the house, they heard the front door close.
“That’s him.” Raco immediately straightened and hurried inside. Falk watched him go and suppressed a smile. Father Connor was in the building. Naomi caught his eye. She also looked a little amused, and the tightness in her face relaxed.
“Come on.” She stepped around the table, slipping her honed body through the gap between the chairs. “We’ll get through this together.” She linked her arm through Falk’s. “Do you have kids, Aaron?”
“No,” he said. “You?”
“Three.”
“Really?”
“They’re with my ex-husband for the school holidays.” She peered up at him from beneath her eyelashes. “You sound surprised.”
“Oh. No.” He was. Definitely.
“Sometimes people are,” she said with the kind of confidence unique to a woman who knew she looked spectacular in leggings, and Falk had to smile back.
A round, white-haired man who exuded the welcoming warmth of a freshly boiled kettle was already settled and waiting for them in the kitchen.
He was slipping cookies from a plate on the table to Eva, who was cramming them into her mouth with gusto while Rita made coffee.
Henry was dozing, so Raco passed him to Falk and then hovered, getting in everyone’s way.
Falk pulled up a chair next to Naomi, ready to engage in his first real conversation with a representative of the church since—when?
He tried to think. Organizing his father’s funeral, possibly.
Before that, he couldn’t remember. Falk had never been religious, but after a while he had to admit there was something innately soothing about sitting here in his friend’s sunny kitchen, drinking good coffee and holding his sleeping godson-to-be while listening to this affable man talk about how a child was a blessing and it took a village.
Afterward, Naomi asked a couple of questions that Falk suspected were more out of courtesy than confusion, and which Father Connor was delighted to answer.
He finished by pumping their hands and congratulating them on their roles so enthusiastically that it was almost as though Falk and Naomi were the proud new parents themselves.
As he rose to leave, Falk felt almost disappointed. He could have sat there longer.
“Well,” Naomi said, when she and Falk were alone again. She leaned back in her kitchen chair and smiled at him. Raco had taken Henry back, and the soft murmur of him and Rita saying goodbye to the priest floated along the hallway. “I think between us we’ll manage. What do you reckon?”
“I think so,” Falk said, although possibly believing it for the first time.
“So. No kids of your own.” Naomi was still looking at him. She raised an eyebrow. “How about girlfriends? Got one of those?”
“Nope.”
“Oh my goodness. More than one, Aaron?”
He laughed. “No. Fewer.”
“I see. Just curious.” Naomi flashed him a teasing smile. She wasn’t interested herself, he felt sure, but was watching him with the private satisfaction of a woman who’d received the right answer.
“Does—” he started, then stopped as Rita reappeared. Her face was a little worried. “Everything okay?”
“Oh. Yes, thanks.” Rita let Falk top up her coffee mug, but her face didn’t change.
“You sure?” He glanced at Raco, who also seemed flat.
“It’s just…” Rita swallowed a mouthful of hot coffee and grimaced. “Is this whole thing ridiculously insensitive?”
“What thing?” Naomi blinked. “The christening?”
“Father Connor mentioned Kim in passing as he left.” Raco’s voice was a little subdued. “Saying he was glad we’d rearranged after last year.”
“But so many people are going to make that connection,” Rita said. “Remembering why we canceled. The fact it’s the anniversary. All of it.”
Naomi reached across the table. “I realize people are always claiming to know what someone would have wanted after they’re gone, but honestly, Rita? Kim would’ve supported you in this.”
“Yeah. I mostly feel that, too.” Rita’s mouth tightened. “But then I can’t stop thinking about last year. That I should have made more of an effort at the festival. I mean, Kim had a six-week-old baby, for God’s sake, I know how hard—”
“Come on.” Raco put his palm on her back. “Don’t.”
“I know, but I keep coming back to that moment early on, at the toilet block. I had the chance to catch her then and I still didn’t bother.” Rita looked to Falk for support. “You remember?”
“Yeah, Rita, I do, but—” It was clear from her guilt that they recalled the incident differently.
They hadn’t been at the festival long, and the opening-night crowd was continuing to grow as twilight drew in. Falk had been standing with Rita, watching Raco and Eva on the carousel, when Rita had leaned into the stroller, sniffed, and said, “We need a toilet stop.”
To Falk, who was draining his beer, that hadn’t sounded like a bad idea, either. “I’ll come with you.”
Rita had waved to Raco, released the stroller brake, and she and Falk had wandered over together. The toilets were housed in an ugly gray cinder block structure that at least looked clean and well maintained.
“Oh my God, look at that queue,” Rita had said as they approached, and Falk followed her gaze to the line snaking out of the women’s side and around the corner. The entry to the men’s side beckoned, wide open and empty, and Rita rolled her eyes.
“You go ahead,” she’d said to Falk. “If I’m not out before the festival closes, tell my husband to send supplies and—”
“Rita, hey. How are you?”
Rita had turned at the voice. “Rohan! Hi there, how nice to see you.”
The man waiting outside the toilet block was jiggling a stroller with his foot, and in each hand held an ice cream, one almost eaten, the other melting fast. He’d seemed a little stressed but had smiled as they’d gone over.