What had once been the children’s home was now a pile of blackened timber.

We were well out of town, surrounded by trees that scattered across the red earth and crowded together along the edge of the river in the distance. This whole area must have been swarming with police right after the fire. But now forensics and arson had been and gone, and the burned body taken for an autopsy. There was only the rubble, and the quiet, and the lingering tang of smoke in the air.

A crow flapped down to perch on a splintered beam jabbing upwards from the ruin of the home. I waved. Sometimes it seemed as if animals could sense that I was about. The crow fluffed out its feathers, tilting its head to one side. Almost as if it was asking me a question. Then it flew off. Maybe it had seen me and thought I was shooing it away? Or maybe the crow had always been going to take off right then. My science teacher said that just because two things happened together didn’t mean one was because of the other, or as she put it: ‘correlation does not imply causation’.

But Dad said that was scientist-talk not police-talk, and if two things happened together you’d suspect the first thing had caused the second until it could provide you with an alibi.

He was pacing around the ruin with the case file tucked under his arm. He’d got over being mad sometime during the drive between the hill and the home. I knew he wasn’t really angry with me anyway. More like angry about me, or at least about me dying. I could understand that. I’d been mad after the accident too. I wasn’t supposed to be dead before I even made it to my sixteenth birthday. In fact, when I let myself think too much about the unfairness of it all, I still got mad now. But I couldn’t lose myself to that, not when Dad had been left behind twice over. He’d told me once that when Mum died, it had been looking after me that had kept him going. Now what was keeping him going was me looking after him.

I wished Mum was here to help. Aunty June always said nobody had ever been sad around my mum because she radiated happiness like a fire radiated heat. But it was just me here, and Dad, and I didn’t like the frustrated expression on his face. He wasn’t seeing anything interesting in that ruin.

I asked the first question I could think of. ‘Why did they build the home so far from the town – especially when it was supposed to help kids who’d been in trouble? Doesn’t seem like there’s much for them to do out here.’

‘The idea was to get them back to nature, healthy living, that kind of thing,’ he replied. ‘Besides, it wasn’t purpose-built as a children’s home. Originally it was just a big old house, belonging to a local family.’

He reached into his file and pulled out a photo, holding it up in front of the ruin. ‘This was taken a few weeks ago.’

I hadn’t seen the photo before. Dad hadn’t wanted me looking in the case file, because it contained pictures of the body. But this photo was of a house. I walked over to him, peering at the image of a sprawling white weatherboard with wide verandahs. A group of about ten kids stood out the front, alongside three adults. The kids were all different ages and different colours – black kids, white kids, brown kids. None of them were smiling, or at least not properly. The corners of their mouths were turned up but it didn’t reach their eyes. I guessed I wouldn’t feel like smiling properly either if I was stuck in a home for kids ‘in trouble’, whatever that meant. They’d all been rushed off to the city by child services after the fire. I hoped they’d been sent somewhere they liked better than this place.

I pointed to one of the tall adults in the photo, a lean, pale guy wearing glasses. ‘Is that the nurse?’

Dad shook his head. ‘No. That’s Alexander Sholt. He’s the one who set up the foundation that funds the home. He donated the house as well; it was his family who used to own it.’

‘He donated a whole house? Guess he must be rich.’

‘Yes, I believe that he is.’ He gestured to the other two adults. ‘That’s the nurse, Martin Flint. And beside him is the director, Tom Cavanagh.’

The nurse was tall and clean-shaven, with brown hair that stuck out in all directions. The director was short and stocky and had a bushy black beard. They were both beaming proudly.

‘It looks as if they liked their jobs,’ I said. ‘What exactly were their jobs, anyway?’

‘Nurse Flint took care of the kids’ nutrition, first aid and general health and wellbeing. Director Cavanagh managed the home, and ran classes – literacy and numeracy and the like.’ He sighed. ‘Neither of them were from around these parts. They both came here to try to help these kids.’

There was a note of sadness in his voice, and I knew he was thinking about how Nurse Flint had died here.

You can’t bring him back, Dad. But you can find out what happened to him.

I almost said it out loud. But I didn’t need to. Dad dropped the photo back into the file and returned his attention to the ruin. Then he started speaking, only more to himself than me, going over what had happened: ‘Fire starts around ten p.m. Alarm goes off and the kids follow the fire drill like they’re supposed to, and make it to safety.’

‘Except they said they were out of the home before the alarm went off,’ I pointed out. ‘But that can’t be right, can it? The wind couldn’t have told them to run, like they said.’

‘Not the wind,’ Dad agreed. ‘But the kids might have made up a story instead of owning up to breaking a rule. So, one of them could have been up past bedtime, seen the fire start, and warned the others. We should know more when the psychologists get through talking to them. Not that any of them are saying much right now.’

‘Do you think they’re hiding something?’

‘I think kids who’ve been in trouble don’t like speaking to people in authority about anything. So it’s no surprise they’re not talking. If any of them do remember something relevant, someone will call me.’

He glanced around the clearing and shook his head.

‘Those kids were from the city. This seems to have been a good place, but … there were other places they could have gone, closer to their families. I’m not sure it was the best idea to bring them so far from home. Child services is going to sort something new out for them now.’

He lapsed into silence again. I prodded him with words. ‘Why didn’t Nurse Flint get out in time, if the alarm went off?’

He shrugged. ‘Something slowed him down. He was overcome by smoke, maybe. Or …’

‘Or what?’

‘I suppose it’s just possible that he was dead before the fire began. Or unconscious.’

I hadn’t thought of that! ‘You think the director killed him? Or hurt him? Maybe there was a fight, and the nurse got knocked out!’

Dad shook his head. ‘It’s unlikely there was a fist fight and an unrelated problem with the wiring in the space of a few hours. It’s far more likely Flint died because of the fire, and that the director’s missing for the same reason – he probably panicked in the flames and the smoke and ran out into the night. There’s a lot of land out here, and not many people. If he took a wrong turn, away from the town, he could be well lost.’

‘Then why haven’t they found him? They found that girl who was wandering around out here, and she wasn’t even from the home.’

‘True, but she wasn’t difficult to find – she was just meandering along by the river.’

‘We should go talk to her. She might have seen Director Cavanagh, be able to tell us which way he was headed. Or she might have seen something else useful.’

Dad grunted.

I persisted. ‘I know she didn’t remember much when they first interviewed her, but she might now. Don’t you always say that sometimes people don’t realise they’ve seen something important until later?’

‘She’s not likely to be very reliable, Beth. She was, um, that is …’

He thought I was still a baby. ‘She was high.’

He cast a startled glance at me. I rolled my eyes. ‘I was listening when your boss first told you about the case. And it’s not like I don’t know drugs exist.’

‘Ah. Yes. Well.’ He tugged at his collar. ‘Beth, you never … that is, you didn’t—’

‘No, Dad, I never did drugs.’ I gazed down at the ground. ‘At least, not many…’

He spluttered. I looked up at him and grinned. ‘Kidding, Dad.’

‘That’s not funny.’

But I started laughing and so did he, and for a second, we could have been any father and daughter. Until Dad’s laughter stopped, choking off into a gasp that was close to a sob.

He’d forgotten I was dead. Until he hadn’t.

Dad opened his mouth to speak and I knew he was going to tell me he missed me again. I didn’t want to hear it. Why couldn’t he be like Aunty June?

There’d been a day, not that long after I’d died, when Aunty June had been babysitting my many cousins. They’d been sad about me, so Aunty June had told them about the time I’d made Aunty Viv a birthday cake and accidentally used salt instead of sugar. Aunty Viv had said it was the best cake ever. She’d almost made it through an entire slice before throwing up.

The cousins thought that was hilarious, especially Aunty Viv’s kids. Sophie had giggled about it for an entire day. And Aunty June had said to them all: Just because Beth’s on another side doesn’t mean we have to stop loving her or that she’s stopped loving us. And it’s okay to be sad, but you can’t love someone only with tears. There’s got to be laughter too.

I strode towards the car, pretending that I hadn’t noticed Dad choke up. Pretending that nothing was wrong. ‘C’mon, Dad. Let’s go talk to that witness!’

I wasn’t sure he’d follow me.

But he did.