Chapter 14
Chris lights a cigarette and only inhales once. He holds it loosely between his index and middle fingers, and I lean back in the passenger seat, watching it burn all the way down to the filter.
“When we get to Hannah’s mum’s place, I’ll introduce us.” He taps the butt with his index finger, and ash flies out the window.
I stare down at my phone at Hannah Striker’s photo. She’s knee-deep in the ocean in a purple wet suit, pale-eyed, fists on her hips, long wet hair falling over her shoulder.
He pauses, gives me a sidelong look. “Maybe I’ll tell her you’re my assistant.”
“Piss off.”
“My vulgar assistant.”
I drain the last of my coffee and wedge it into his cupholder; he stares at it bug-eyed. I pluck it out again, dump it into the waste bin neatly tucked behind my seat. He visibly relaxes.
I offered to take my car. He recoiled at the clumps of sand pooled into the grooves, the dog hair sticking to the headrests, and backed away, pretending to shudder. “We’ll take mine.”
His car smells of ash and pine, the seats pillowy and cool. Polished rosewood lines the door panels and the dashboard, framing a touch-screen display. The caramel seats are fully reclinable, the roof lining soft and suede.
I hate it. All of it.
I wish we’d taken my car. Wish I was tucked into its snug front seat, smelling Jessie’s hair and cheese-smeared burger wrappers. Not lost in this casual opulence, giving Chris shit about the massaging seats to hide how uncomfortable I feel. How out of place. How unworthy.
“We should have just called her instead.”
He shakes his head. “Whenever you can, don’t call. Meet them face-to-face. Let them see you.” He takes a quick puff. “You’re empathetic, you’re interested, and you want to hear their story.”
Then he says something that leaves me sad and silent. “We’re all just one person away from having no one to talk to.”
“Gotta be honest.” I rub my neck. “If you showed up on my doorstep, I’d slam your fingers in the door.”
“May I remind you that you’re the one who showed up on my doorstep?”
I ignore this and he reaches across my knees for the glove box. When I flinch, he draws his hand back, black Maserati watch winking in the sun. He flicks the cigarette out the window, clamps both hands on the walnut wheel.
“Sorry,” he says, aghast. “I was reaching for the notepad.”
The silence that follows is so awkward, it’s painful.
For him.
He grips the wheel tight enough that his left knuckle goes pale. I look out my window, seeing nothing, hiding a smile, debating on whether to make the silence sting even more. This is what I want to tell Chris:
I could count on one hand the number of times Oliver and I had sex.
I imagine him side-eyeing me, hesitant and silent, until I make it even worse.
See…I wanted him to do things he wasn’t comfortable with. That most boys aren’t comfortable with.
I know this because I’ve asked.
“I made a list on my notes app,” I tell him instead. “And there’s only one question I really wanna know…”
He nods, grateful, loosening his grip. “Why was her daughter swimming in Kangaroo Bay, alone, in the dead of winter? A town three hours from hers. And is there any connection between Hannah and your mum?”
“No,” I say, turning to face him. “There’s something else…something far more important to ask.”
“What?”
“What do sea monsters eat?”
His body deflates. “Oh, it’s time for your awful puns, is it? Good to know.” He nods. “I’ll throw myself into oncoming traffic.”
“Fish and ships.”
He sighs. “How many hours until we arrive?”
I glance at Google Maps. “Two.”
I place my phone face down on my lap. “Wanna play I-spy?”
“No.”
“I spy with my little eye. Something beginning with P.”
“It’s not ‘phone,’ is it?” he asks testily.
“How’d you know?”
He exhales loudly. “I shouldn’t have given you caffeine.”
“I spy with my little eye…”
“For heaven’s sake, Melanie—”
“Something beginning with P.”
“If it’s ‘phone’ again, I’m going to slam this car into a tree,” he says, before adding, “ ‘Passenger seat.’ ”
“No.”
“ ‘Pedal’?”
“Nope.”
He leans back, frowning.
“Okay, I lied. It was ‘phone.’ ”
He laughs and I feel like I’ve won something. Satisfied, I rest my elbow on the windowsill. “Chris?”
He gives me a wary look. “Yes?”
“If you wanna hear another fish joke—” I pause for effect. “—just let Minnow.”
He sighs, reaches across for the door handle, pretends to open it. “Get the hell out.”
—
Her name is Kat, and her house is sad as hell.
Single-story, crammed into a block so small, its roof nudges the neighbors’.
Two concrete pelican statues stand sadly at the front doors like forgotten sentries.
One is missing half its beak, the other mottled with mold.
Their eyes are beady black and desperately sad.
“Ready?” Chris asks, popping a marble-like mint into his mouth before offering one to me.
I shake my head. He smooths his brick-colored hair with the flat of his palm.
He’s clean-shaven, skin rubbed raw, and despite this three-hour drive to Bendigo, his work shirt looks like it was ironed five minutes ago.
When he raises his fist to knock, he rustles like a bag of chips.
I glance down at my navy jeans and the black cotton sleeves loose around my wrists, the angler fish tattoo just peeking through.
I pull the cuff down, try to stuff it under, but it makes things worse.
Now all you can see are fanglike teeth. Not a good look when you’re interviewing the grieving relative of a shark mauling victim.
I blow-dried my hair before I left. When I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, Minnow stared back. I flicked the light off, feeling like a big part of me that had been stolen had finally been returned.
The woman who opens the door has thinly plucked eyebrows and a cardigan that smells like wet cat food. She’s mid-seventies with a vacant look on her face, and she holds the screen door open with her shoulder. “Yes?”
Chris inches in front of me. “Hi there, I’m Chris Cooper from the Daily.” She stares blankly, and he adds, “The newspaper. We’re working on a story about Hannah,” he continues calmly. “Are you—”
“Has there been an update?”
I’m wiping the heel of my sneaker on her welcome mat when I realize what an odd question that is.
How could there be an update? Hannah was mauled to death twenty-five years ago. They found chunks of her flesh, her torn wet suit with a tooth stuck in it. Great white shark. Big one, too. Case closed.
Has there been an update?
She glances over her shoulder. “The house is a mess,” she mumbles, shuffling sideways to let us in. I thank her, stepping over the welcome mat. Dogs Welcome, People Tolerated, paw prints where the O’s should be.
I like her already.
“I need one of those.” I gesture to the mat, and she gives me a distracted smile, flattening herself against the foyer wall to let Chris in.
It’s dark in here. It also smells. Chris pales at the dishes piled up in the sink and benches, slides his hands into his pockets, rustling as he does it.
We step around four dog bowls overflowing with kibble and what looks like vomity water.
A slate-gray cat chews silently, ignoring us.
Dishcloths hang limply from a clothes drying rack in the corner.
Perched atop is a long-haired white cat with magnificent green eyes.
It flicks its tail as Chris hurries past.
I nod at it. “What’s its name?”
She gives it an absent glance, shrugs. “Doesn’t have one.”
We vanish down a dark hallway, as if swallowed by a Nothingland.
I know houses like this. All Nothinglands are the same.
Soulless. Silent. Maddeningly so. Where cats don’t have names and pelican statues are left to rot in the sun.
Where the grieved sit limply on their sagging couches, waiting for nothing.
I lived here, too, after my mum left. Died.
A sting of sympathy pierces my rib cage.
An elderly Jack Russell snores on an L-shaped couch in the lounge room. Crossword magazines are dumped on the coffee table next to half-empty mugs bubbling with blue mold.
But it’s the knickknacks I can’t stop staring at.
There’s a shitload of them. Hundreds even, lining the windowsills, crammed into two display cabinets.
They don’t look like collectibles. They look like the kind that cost fifty cents at the op shop.
And yet, someone has taken great care to display them.
Kat catches me staring. “Hannah’s,” she mumbles, picking up a royal-blue robin and cradling it gently in her palm. “Never could stand them meself.”
I nod at the windowsill where a pelican sits, mouth open wide like he’s waiting for a fish to be thrown in. “Reminds me of the ones at the door.”
The soulless ones guarding their Nothingland.
She walks stiffly to the rocking chair under the window, groaning when she sits down. “She always had a thing for pelicans.”
Chris picks up a porcelain cat with a chipped ear. “She was living with you at the time of the attack?”
“Yeah, I used to tell Hannah that as soon as her back was turned, they were all going in the bin.” She shakes her head, half smile on her lips. “She went outta her way to pick the ugliest ones,” she says more to herself. “Think she felt bad for ’em.”
I nod at the sagging couch. “Do you mind?”
Chris trips over a pair of kicked-off slippers and the dog bolts awake, staring blankly at him like it’s never seen a visitor before.
“You like dogs?” Kat asks.
I sit down, holding out the back of my hand to the dog, who blinks at me. “Love them. I have a goldie at home. Jessie.”
Chris hovers at the display cabinet while the dog whale-eyes him. “Does he bite?”
“Yeah,” she says, unconcerned. “Heard there was another attack in Kangaroo Bay. Have they identified the victim yet?”
“No.”
She stares out a grimy blind, sucking her teeth. “Their poor family.”
Has there been an update?
I pull out my phone. “Can you tell us about Hannah?”