Chapter 19
“What?” Chris half yells and I wince, pulling the phone away from my ear. The line is awful, loud and crackly as traffic whooshes by.
“Are you in town?”
“Out driving,” he says flatly. I picture him, arm hanging out the window of his hubcap-less Audi, smoking moodily. Pop music drifts through the phone as I wait for Chris to tell me where he is.
He doesn’t.
“I kept wondering why you changed your name,” he finally says, and the radio dims like he’s reached over to turn it all the way down. “Now I know.”
I get slowly to my feet. “Come talk to me.”
“…I don’t think so.”
Silence again. I pluck my keys from the kitchen bench. “I’m going to drive to your Airbnb. I’ll wait outside until you let me in.”
Breathing. A short blast of a car horn.
I lean against the bench. It digs uncomfortably into the small of my back. “We’ll talk, okay?”
“About what?”
Whatever it is you’ve found out about me.
“You tell me, Chris.”
“Okay,” he says, and I think he’s going to end the call, but a moment later the noise completely clears. It sounds like he’s pulled over to the side of the road, wound the windows up, shut the engine off.
“You know what I want to talk about, Melanie? The woods on Soldiers’ Road.”
I close my eyes. “I told you everything I know about Donny.”
“I’m not talking about Donny.” He snorts. “I want to talk about the other thing that happened there.”
I’ve been waiting for it, but my spine stiffens when he says,
“I want to talk about Amy Anderson.”
—
I drive down a winding lane the color of toast, past a community book library, crammed with paperbacks.
A teenage girl with weedy hair pulls it open, plucks a book out, inspects it before giving me a short, perfunctory wave.
I wave back, attempt a smile. It’s a family street: Bicycles lean against porches, clotheslines droop with school uniforms and sheets with dinosaurs on them.
A panting St. Bernard lumbers past on a lead so long, it drags on the ground.
Three tweens trail behind it, giving me the same distracted wave.
The driveway of Chris’s Airbnb is on a slope. I pull in, the nose of my car pointing at the afternoon sun. I’m sweating, jittery. The cicadas don’t help. They’re screaming in the landscaped bushes like they hate the whole world, and they really want you to know it.
I raise my fist to knock at his door, then reach for the handle instead, twisting it. It opens without a noise.
It’s cold in here. An air conditioner blasts my face as I step past the empty study and into the open-plan kitchen and living room. Oak flooring, stone benchtops, signed jerseys lining the brick walls. Two reclining chairs are aimed at a TV screen the size of my car. Empty.
“Chris?”
I step past a poker table, a stack of green chips balanced on the back of an unopened deck of cards. I reach for a chip, rub the ribbed edge over my thumb. I stuff it into my pocket, and I don’t know why.
“Here,” he mutters. “The bedroom.”
I peek around the corner of the master bedroom, and there he is, flat on his back on the king bed.
It’s odd to see him in shorts and a T-shirt.
His brick hair is damp and dripping, his arms and legs smooth and milky.
He’s sulky and sipping on a Corona, three-quarters full, wedge of lime choked in its neck.
He catches me staring at it, lifts it from his lips, voice sardonic, baiting. “Want one?” He yanks open the bar fridge next to the bed. It hisses out icy air, and I notice the six-pack is five full.
“I don’t drink.”
He jerks the fridge shut, and the redwood doors of the wardrobe rattle softly. I hover in the doorway, staring at the shirts and slacks piled stiffly at the foot of the bed. I turn my face away, hiding a smile. Even when he loses control, he doesn’t.
“I’m driving to Bethanga tomorrow morning, eight-ish,” I say. “I’ll be back in the late afternoon. What time are you going?”
He studies me silently. “I’m getting there earlier.” He takes a pull of the Corona, lime wedge nudging his bottom lip. “I take it we’re still not going together?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Why not, Minnow?”
It’s the first time he’s ever called me by my real name. It’s so quiet, I can’t even hear the cicadas. I wish I could. Wish I could throw my head back, howling, and join their chorus.
Chris runs his palm through his damp hair then sits up, legs splayed out like breadsticks.
His T-shirt is white cotton, sleeveless, revealing splotchy freckles on the tops of his arms. He’s gym-thin, lean.
Narrow in the chest. The boys at home would say he “needs a good feed.” They’d grab him up in their stodgy hands, stuff him full of fatty meats, fried chips, and yeasty beer until his chest and waist bloated like theirs.
I can’t imagine Chris growing up in Kangaroo Bay. Can’t imagine him with a beefy dad or yanking open a fish stomach like a packet of chips. Silky guts slide out, and Chris stumbles away, pale and appalled.
“I spoke to your fifth-grade teacher, Miss McKenzie.” He pauses before adding in a low voice, “She remembers you.”
“Why were you talking to her about me?”
Why were you talking to her at all?
He picks at the Corona label, peeling it off in slow, wet strips. “She told me about the girl in your grade…the girl who sat next to you that year.” He looks up, eyes cloudy like an ancient fish. “Amy Anderson?”
I stuff my fists in my pockets, wait.
“Something bad happened to her.” Another slow, soggy tear. “And if you don’t mind me saying…something bad seems to happen to a lot of people in your life, Minnow.”
I shift in the doorway, staring blindly at the ceiling. “If you spoke with Miss McKenzie,” I begin, “then you know it wasn’t me who stabbed Amy.”
“No,” he agrees. “But you were questioned about it.”
“Amy lived.” My gaze snaps to his. “She admitted it was Trav who did it.”
“Yeah.” He pauses. “But that wasn’t the first time someone tried to kill the poor girl, was it?”
“Yes, it was.”
He studies me with piercing scrutiny. “Then why did she beg your teacher to move seats? Why did she beg to get away from you?”
“We had a falling-out. Ten-year-old girls argue.”
“But most ten-year-old girls don’t try to drown each other. Do they?”
Silence.
“That’s what Amy told your teacher.” He half grimaces, like he’s got a stomach cramp. “And that’s why she asked to be moved away from you. Even stranger,” he continues, “that creek you tried to drown her in is on Soldiers’ Road. The same place you took me to.”
He scoots forward. “The place Donny Granger was killed.” After a pause, he continues, muttering, “Allegedly. And where your mother just happened to be found.”
I shake my head, looking at the pile of shirts on the bed, then letting my gaze drift up to his taut face. “Yes, Chris,” I begin, “I’ve been meaning to tell you…”
I slink to the bed, drop to my knees, crawling across the navy cover.
I cross my legs, eyelids fluttering shut as I whisper, “When I was ten years old, I killed Donny Granger. I dragged him out to the woods and slit his throat. Later, for the hell of it, I killed my mother. Then just for something new and different, I tried to drown Amy. Two years later, I also somehow managed to murder my father.” My eyes snap open.
“You know, my drunk, violent, paranoid father.” I gesture to my five-foot-four frame. “I overpowered them all, you see.”
He gives me a withering look that says, All right, all right. I get it.
“For the record,” I say, “my father could still be alive.”
“Heath could have killed him,” Chris protests.
I shake my head. “He didn’t.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because the night my father went missing, Heath was at home with me,” I tell him truthfully. “You don’t forget where you were the night your dad went missing.”
“Heath could have snuck out.”
“Maybe. But the word is that Terry Hargrave got to Dad first.”
“The guy who owns the pub?” He frowns, putting the pieces together. “…So he was the one questioned over your dad’s disappearance?”
“He showed up on our doorstep a week before Dad disappeared, shoved him through the screen door.”
“Why?”
“The police had been questioning Dad’s mates, seeing if they thought he had anything to do with Mum’s disappearance…I think Terry started to believe he did.”
“And this Terry,” he says, “he knew your dad…got physical with your mum?”
“He hit her, yes. Everyone knew. Nobody did anything about it.”
For the first time, he falters. His professionalism cracks, and for a moment, the man beneath it shows.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Min,” he says softly, looking away.
“DV is pretty common ’round these areas.” I shrug before adding, “You wouldn’t understand.”
I don’t know why I said that last part. Why I sneered it. But there’s a piece of me that needs him to know, we’re not the same. We never will be. That some wounds don’t heal, they just harden.
Us. Them.
Me. Chris.
He stares at the wedge of lime, studying it. “So Amy was lying? About what you did to her?” He hesitates. “What you tried to do?”
My shoulders drop. I lean back on both elbows, sighing, thinking about things I haven’t thought of in years.
I tilt my chin to the ceiling, speaking to it.
“The town kids used to meet up at the creek in the woods after school. It was safer than…” I shrug.
“…than home, I guess. We’d pelt each other with creek pebbles, get someone in a headlock, hold ’em under, that sort of thing.
Amy was…well, she didn’t live here, you know what I mean? She was different from us.”
We were bruised and grimy, shifty and slack-eyed.
Amy was sparkly nail polish and striped swimsuits with matching caps.
She looked ridiculously out of place in that piss-colored creek, waddling in like a baby duck.
I didn’t want her there, in our territory, my territory, but she was oblivious.
I didn’t want her sitting next to me at school, either.
But there she was, chatty and painfully nice, stealing glances at Trav when he wasn’t looking.
“We played rough,” I admit, remembering. “I played rough. That’s just how it was. How we were raised. Maybe I went too far one day…” My voice trails off. “Maybe it scared her. I didn’t mean to.”
I lift myself up on my elbows. Chris rubs the back of his neck, beer forgotten in his lap, still half full.
I reach for the bottle, the heel of my palm grazing his thigh.
He freezes, tight-lipped, as I shift the bottle to my knee.
Without thinking, I stick my finger down the neck, poking at the lime wedge.
I pluck it out, chomp into its tangy flesh, and it reminds me of something. Someone.
Trav.
We’re passing the pineapple juice box between us, taking turns, each sip slower than the last. It’s citrusy bright, tastes like summer afternoons and lazy violence.
I spit the lime wedge into my palm. My skin’s hot, my mouth burns. When I look up, Chris is watching. His eyes drop to my hand, the half-chewed lime glistening in my open palm.
He grimaces, pretends to shudder. “Need a bin for that?”
I close my fist slowly. Juice slips through the cracks in my knuckles, runs warm down my wrist. I let the silence stretch. Then I open my palm again, pulp glistening, fingers wet. “Got something for you,” I say, softer now.
“That’s disgusting.”
I half close my eyes, smiling. I’m not here anymore. I’m motionless and silent at the creek, staring at the boy kneeling in the amber water. He reaches up wordlessly, offering me something. I take it, quickly, hungrily. Starving for something only he can give me.
“I need to go,” I mumble. “Leavin’ in the morning.”
We don’t look at each other, and I think his interrogation is finally over. But it’s not.
“Wait.”
He lifts his head, and says, “Tell me about the fire.”