Chapter 18
The beach is packed with people shielded under colorful umbrellas, talking lazily in the sun.
Children bob in the shallows, parents hovering beside them.
Teenagers jump over waves, knees lifted high, racing one another into the water.
Groups of surfers lie flat on their boards, floating in the deep, arms dangling at their sides.
I think of Rachel Sutherland, Hannah Striker.
Swimming lazy laps in the water, flat on their backs, chins tilted to the burning sky.
I bet they thought they were safe, too. Hannah’s mum finally got back to me this morning.
She found one of Hannah’s old caps with the diving club logo embroidered on the brim.
Down Under Diving.
The same club Dad belonged to.
I called them before I came here, but the disinterested man who answered had only been working there a year. He’d never heard of Hannah Striker or Michael Hunt.
I inch around a woman lying face down on her towel, shoulders red with sunburn. They closed the beaches for twenty-four hours after Rachel’s attack. But it’s the summer holidays, and kids aren’t back at school yet. They’re hot and bored, and their parents are willing to take the risk.
I’m not going in that water.
I shield my eyes from the sun, scanning the beach.
And I find them.
Colleen is on garbage patrol, dragging her bag across the sand.
Heath stands at the edge of the sentry chair, arms crossed, alert and still, eyes fixed on the water.
He’s not just looking at the ocean, he’s reading it.
His lifesaving shift is over, but he’s still on guard.
Always on guard. Scanning for the split second when everything changes.
Every shift in the tide, every glint on the surface, every call, he’s waiting, watching, acting before it’s too late.
I hate it for him. That fear, that constant watchfulness. We learned it from Dad. Learned to be ready, vigilant, always waiting for the worst to happen.
Heath pivots a little, eyes fixed on the surfers scattered out across the break.
One of them is Trav.
My stomach tightens and I reach instinctively for my car keys. I could leave. I could go home to Jessie and pretend I didn’t see the flash of anger in my brother’s eyes as he looked Trav over. But I don’t. I press forward, head down.
Colleen hovers behind a young couple packing up for the day, wringing out their towels, bending over to loop beach bags over their shoulders. She waits impatiently for them to leave, like a waiter itching to clear a table.
“Find anything good?” I ask her.
She looks up with dull surprise. “Just trying to clean up the mess.” There’s something hopeless about the way she says it. She adjusts her tennis visor with a free hand, yanking it lower, glowering at the sun.
I stand in front of her, blocking it out. “And how’s that going for you?”
“Not great.” She flicks her wrist and dumps the bag on the sand, a can of Sprite tumbling out. “And you?”
We share a smile.
“It’s a funny thing about this town, isn’t it? No matter how much you tidy up, it’ll never be clean.”
“Maybe,” she admits, reaching for the Sprite can. “But I’m going to try just the same.”
We say goodbye and I head to the sentry chair, sand clinging to my ankles.
A toddler waddles past, pink water wings attached to her wrists. Her mother follows behind, patient and smiling.
“Hey, Min.” My brother turns before I even call out, a stormy expression on his face. His jaw’s tight, and there’s that stillness in his shoulders like something’s rubbed him the wrong way.
“What’s wrong?”
He glances at the surfers paddling lazily on the sparkling sea. Since I’ve been home, I’ve only spoken to Trav once. Even then, Heath had called me away. After that, we didn’t bring him up again.
Truth is, we haven’t really talked about Trav since he was sent away as a child. Maybe it’s time we did.
“That Trav out there?” I finally ask, not waiting for an answer. “When did he come back to town?”
His face twitches. “Few years ago. I’ve been keeping an eye on him since then.”
“Has he gotten into any trouble since he came home?”
“No,” he admits.
“And he won’t, either.”
Unless I ask him to.
Heath scans my face. “You sure about that?”
“Yes, I am.”
“I’m not, Minnow.” He closes his eyes, summons a deep breath. Holds it.
Four teen girls sprint past, long hair swishing down their suntanned backs. They charge the water, shrieking.
We’re still dancing around the obvious, but it’s there under the surface. Heavy. Loud.
“I remember…” I begin, faltering for a moment. “I remember the day they told us Trav wouldn’t be coming back to school,” I finally continue. “Nobody knew why.” I pause. “But I did.”
“Police sealed the file,” he says quietly.
“Lucky for him.”
“And you.”
I feel Heath fix his eyes on me, and I wait for him to speak. Wait for him to ask about Amy. He hesitates, the question caught behind his teeth. I take a breath, shallow and tight, as his words come slower than I expected. Careful. “Can I ask you something?”
Everything feels louder, the crash of the waves, the cries of the seagulls, my heartbeat.
“Do you know why Trav…” He pauses, staring at him like he wants to blow his lifeguard whistle. “Why he hurt Amy like that?”
“No.”
He looks at me, eyebrows lowering like he doesn’t believe me but wants to. He might think he needs the truth, but I’m not sure he’s ready to carry it. So I lie again. “I don’t know why. I wasn’t there, Heath.”
A jogger rushes past, steady and focused, headphones on. We watch until his footsteps are swallowed by the tide. I wait, silently hopeful that my brother has nothing else to say.
But he does.
“That journalist.” He clears his throat. “The one that was asking around here last week…”
“What about him?”
“You know him?”
I shrug. “Mighta run into him in Melbourne. Why?”
There it is again. The squaring of his shoulders, the stillness, the tightening of his jaw. “Miss McKenzie…remember her? Your fifth-grade teacher, yours and Trav’s?”
I remember her. I see her paused at the blackboard as the cop comes charging in. The cop’s voice was flat, gruff. We couldn’t hear what he said, but I knew.
There’s been an accident. One of your students.
She scans the empty seat, the one between Trav and me.
It was where Amy Anderson sat, happily sandwiched between us for most of the year.
Until she wasn’t happy at all. A week before the stabbing, she’d asked to be moved to the front row.
As far away from us as she could get. Today that seat was empty, too.
Amy. Is she okay?
Stabbed. Left for dead in the woods.
I see my teacher’s eyelids shut, chalk falling from her fingertips. The cop leans in, voice taut. I need to speak to Travis.
And Minnow.
“Yeah, I remember her.”
“I see her in town every now and then,” Heath says. “She lives ’round the corner. Retired now.”
That’s not quite true. She retired that year.
That month. One lazy afternoon, Trav and I passed a pineapple juice box back and forth, taking small sips to make it last. Amy sat stiffly between us, elbows tucked in, trying to read.
Trav slurped the rest, juice dripping from his chin.
He blew up the paper carton until it was bloated and whistling.
Then he crushed it between his hands, and it exploded like a gunshot.
Amy bolted from her seat, white-faced, sweating.
Miss McKenzie looked up from her yogurt, said nothing.
And a month later, all of us were gone. I don’t remember what month it was. I should.
“What about her?” I finally ask, digging my toes into the sand.
“That journalist went to see her.”
Slowly, I lift my head. “When?”
“Yesterday.”
Yesterday I was poking around Dad’s room until Heath came home. We took Jessie to beach 2, spent the afternoon fishing for mullet.
I fix my eyes on Trav. He’s sitting up on his board, looking at the sky.
“The journo’s been following these shark attacks. He covered Mum’s…death, too. He’s probably looking into Hannah’s attack, trying to get a quote. Miss McKenzie is a long-term resident,” I tell him, tell myself. “It’s good to get quotes from the locals. For the story, I mean.”
Heath’s eyes settle on me, steady, quiet, and too still. “No. He’s not investigating Hannah,” he says. “He’s investigating you.”