Chapter 35
My front yard smells like the daffodils my brother planted to honor our mother. My backyard smells like blood.
Sometimes I smell the flowers.
Sometimes the blood.
Sometimes both.
This morning, in my father’s bedroom, the air is thick with the scent of flowers.
The room is empty. Colleen came over with her big rubbish bags, holding them open while I dumped in everything that belonged to my father. She gave me space when I needed it, letting me take my time with each object, an emotional anchor.
Before she left, she paused at the front door and asked if she could visit more often. I said I’d like that very much.
“I think Trav wants to drop by, too,” she said carefully.
I don’t tell her that he already does. That my windows are crowded with his love letters.
That we meet in the Wicked Woods for a hot collision of teeth and flesh that leaves my brain fizzing.
I don’t tell her that he is patient and indulgent while I am sick with need.
And I don’t show her the teeth bracelet he made for me.
Molars and incisors and canines all polished to a smooth shine.
I love it.
I bring my phone up to my face, re-reading the most viewed news article of the day, published this morning.
The outlaw ocean: Murder, illegal shark fishing, abalone poaching, and a thirty-year missing person case, solved
Kangaroo Bay: A Lawless Frontier
Trident Magazine
April 7, 2024
Jessie comes bounding in, football crammed in her mouth. I smile, slinging my arm around her, tucking my chin atop her head. I stare up at the windowsill where a trophy is set alight by sunlight.
Heath Greenwood
Surf Lifesaver of the Year
Maybe he’s a villain in someone else’s story. But he’ll never be in mine.
Jess drops the chewed football in my lap, and I think of the fish postcard that arrived last week, and the two lines scribbled on the back:
I love you so much.
No trout about it!
Last month, I went back to Newcastle. Heath and I fished side by side on the back beaches as Jonah stood between us, clutching his rod with both hands, barely able to keep it steady.
His line lurched, and my nephew instinctively pulled back, his movements jerky but determined.
Heath coached him through it, and I cheered him on as he reeled the fish to shore. His first.
It meant a lot that I was there to watch it.
Actually, it meant everything.
There is no mention of my brother in this article. There never will be. They raided Terry’s place and seized eleven thousand abalone, at an estimated street value of $250,000.
Terry Hargrave pleaded guilty to fourteen charges of possessing, receiving, and consigning abalone and three charges of illegally hunting great white sharks. He received a lifetime fishing ban Australia-wide and was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. He’ll probably be out in two.
Soon enough, he’ll be back, sitting at the bar of the Roo Bay pub, a hero to Heath and Trav because Terry took all the blame and never dobbed them in. I forgive him now for that. Whatever debt I felt he owed us has been paid. For good.
Heath’s talking about coming home. Jonah starts school next year. Heath wants him fishing our beaches, diving off the pier with his mates, and learning how to skipper the Deep Sea. Tara’s coming around to the idea.
I told him that as long as the shark fishing business is over for good, I’d like that. I’d like to be here to watch it all. Next week, I have an interview with the Pine Bay newspaper. I wish I could tell Chris.
I carry the heaviness of his loss with me.
Sometimes it’s a constant ache, a sadness that shows up without warning.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s all real. After Chris’s death, the town faced a media flood.
For weeks after, reporters parked outside the petrol station, snapping photos, standing breathlessly on the shore, gesturing sadly to the water.
The town became a sort of morbid landmark.
The locals did what they always do. Closed ranks.
Stopped talking. They wanted their silence back.
Their town back. But with the VFA tightening its grip on the coastline, some of the blood men vanished overnight, forced to abandon their abalone trade before the law caught up.
One of the men who left was Steven Newton, Luke’s dad.
The reporters camped outside his house every morning, shouted his name when he stepped outside.
Shouted things like “How does it feel, having a killer for a son?”
He stopped opening the door after the first week. The phone rang and he never answered. It was fantastic. He’d spent his life lurking in the shadows, and now he was exposed and couldn’t bear it. One night, he simply left. He hasn’t come back.
It’s a quieter town now, but the silence isn’t as heavy these days. It’s lighter. The shadows have shifted.
At the Geelong cemetery is Chris Cooper’s grave. There’s no body in it. I can’t bring myself to visit him there. I like to speak to him on the shore, instead.
Yesterday I sat on the sand, wordless and listening to the wind. I finally told him about the article I was writing, and as I was leaving, I swear I heard his voice in the echo of a seagull: Make sure to use the spellchecker.
He’s home.
And so is Donny Granger.
They found his body in the Wicked Woods, not far from Mum’s. Dad is considered the suspect in his death. There’s a warrant out for his arrest, but of course they won’t find him. Dad drowned the night I took his knife. Only I know that.
Donny’s mother released a statement: “We are deeply saddened and relieved to finally know what happened to our son. We ask for privacy so we can finally and fully grieve his loss.”
Tomorrow I’m going to the shore again to speak to Chris. I’ll read out the first few lines of my article and hope he likes it:
I want to acknowledge the contributions of Daily journalist Chris Cooper, who went above and beyond for this story in the relentless pursuit of truth. His legacy will forever be defined by the difference he made in exposing the truth and bringing about real change.
Chris Cooper was a fine journalist and friend.
I angle the phone screen to the trophy, then pan it around the room like a victory lap. I hope my mum sees this. I hope she’s peeking down from the windows of heaven, watching. And I hope my father, wherever he is, can read the three words atop the headline that I can’t stop staring at.
By Minnow Greenwood
I place my phone on the floor and take a slow, deliberate breath. My muscles loosen, and for the first time in what feels like forever, my mind stops sprinting. The light from the window stretches across the floor in soft shifting patterns, almost like the surface of the ocean from beneath.
I see myself as a child, diving into the water like a dolphin while Mum watches me from the shore, smiling. Heath’s knee-deep in the water, calling out, “I got a fish! I got a fish!”
I surface, salt water dripping from my chin as he reels it onto the sun-warmed sand. Its scales flicker in the sunlight. Kingfisher blue, sunset pink, poppy red. You’d swear it contains all the colors in the entire world.
Heath crouches beside Mum, offering the fish to her like it’s his whole heart.
Dad stands hatefully at the water’s edge, salt water gushing from his ears and mouth. When he calls my name, the ocean roars.
I hesitate.
Then I swim toward my mum and Heath. Dad slips away like a falling star, burning as he leaves until not even a smear of him is left. I reach the shore and Mum pulls Heath and me into her arms. A cormorant glides above us, and its wings seem to stretch across the whole sky.
I stare at the news article again, smiling.
By Minnow Greenwood
My story. Finally. All of it.
Except for one thing.
I lean back on my elbows in my new bedroom, feeling like I’ve crossed a finish line nobody else can see.
Mum’s silver fish pendant glints softly in the light, the delicate chain wrapped tight around my wrist. I like to feel it there at the base of my wrist. But what I like most is that each time my hand moves, the fish pendant responds with a subtle flicker.
A flash of light that feels intentional.
Like my mother’s right here with me. Always will be.
My heartbeat slows down as I reach for the knife. The kangaroo bone handle, the sharp black blade.
I can never think of my father without a knife in his hand.
No, not anymore.
Now when I think of my father, he’s drowning. Drowning in that dark ocean at night, all alone without a soul to help him as the water pulls and pulls, dragging him toward its hungry mouth. Roaring.
But it’s not a call anymore.
It’s a command.
He fumbles for his belt, grasps the knife handle, pulls it out. But the knife…
There is no knife. Only the handle.
He stares at it in shock, numb with terror. No knife.
Always take a knife.
A wave crests like a great black mountain—and then the crash, and he’s under. I see his hands reaching up for help that never comes. I see the water rushing into his ears, nose, and mouth, swallowing him up like it will never let him go again.
And finally, I see him returning to the part of himself that was never truly gone.
Dad is the ocean now, elemental and ancient.
I let myself believe he knew it was me. That he knows I took his knife and him with it.
I let myself believe that when the waves throw themselves against the shore, curling and collapsing with a strange kind of desperation, that it’s him. That he’s reaching for his knife, but it will always be beyond his grasp.
That it will always be mine.
And I like to imagine that I hear the ocean calling, roaring and endless, repeating the same words over and over:
I can never think of my daughter without a knife in her hand.