Lou cleared her throat. ‘I’m sorry, but that is relevant exactly how?’
The fifty-something investigator with the distracting bald head cleared his throat. He’d done charming, then accommodating, then patronising, and he was fast moving to downright rude. Lou smiled to herself. She was obviously doing something right.
She dragged her chair a little to the right, so the afternoon sun streaming in from the window didn’t reflect quite so blindingly off his scalp. She wondered if zapping her with his pate was a strategy. He was a hard one to work out, unlike his limp young partner, who seemed bored and ready to wrap this thing up already.
‘Well,’ Detective Farmer said, scratching his goatee and shifting his considerable bulk in one of Gage’s lovely old antique dining chairs. ‘I guess I’m just … wondering … if Ms Samuels –’ He grinned at Skye, showing off a row of veneers that looked at odds with his untidy grey suit. ‘Beg my pardon, now, Ms Samuels Senior.’ He emphasised the last word and Skye snorted.
‘Nothing senior about me, sunshine,’ she barked in a voice that told Lou she was nervous about the encounter. She’d obviously ducked around the back for one too many cigarettes this morning.
‘Sorry, ma’am,’ he said, smiling with such determined artifice that Lou’s stomach started to clench. ‘If Ms Skye Samuels’ condition is …’ He paused, shrugging delicately, as though he was sorry but there was nothing for it. ‘Terminal.’ He let the word sit fat and awkward in the room for a moment before he went on. ‘If she is terminal,’ he began again, more confidently this time, ‘then some’ – he held up a thick finger bedecked by a fat gold signet ring – ‘some suspicious types might see that as a reason for her to deliberately set fire to her home.’
Lou frowned, feigning lack of understanding. ‘Why?’ She forced her voice to be flat and brutal. ‘If she’s dead, why does she care?’
‘Because you’re the beneficiary,’ Detective Farmer said with a flourish. ‘And maybe she feels like she should leave something to her only daughter. The house itself wouldn’t have fetched much, not in the current market.’
Ah. Understanding settled comfortingly into Lou’s bones. So that was what this was. That was why these two slick limpdicks had made the trek from Sydney. Hard times, rural town, people looking to get out. They must have had a spate of such incidents. Homes weren’t worth much once towns died; the insurance money started to look very attractive. And the company would be keen to send a message, no doubt heavying the police to bring in the big guns and get to the bottom of the cause of the fire.
Lou sighed with relief. Things were always so much easier once you knew what you were dealing with; and while she knew in her bones that Skye had lit the fire, she also knew that these two wind-up coppers were barking up completely the wrong tree if they thought the reason was so that Skye could leave a legacy to her beloved Lou.
‘Detective,’ she said, clearing her throat. She spoke softly because she knew he was already annoyed with the way she had checked his credentials so thoroughly; insisted on sitting in on the interview; brandished her impressive qualifications in the way she only ever did when it was absolutely necessary; and asked clarifying questions every time he had directed one to Skye. ‘Perhaps you need a little backstory here.’
The man rubbed his shiny head, and Lou was sure she saw a look cross his face that suggested he knew something bad was about to happen. She wondered if the scalp-rubbing was some kind of good-luck ritual.
‘I don’t need any money, from my mother or anyone else. I make …’ She leaned forwards delicately, trying to manage this carefully, conscious that jobs like hers easily alienated men like him, especially when performed by skinny girls who still looked the wrong side of thirty. ‘More than enough to keep myself very comfortable without Skye’s help.’
She waved a hand at Skye, who was looking bored but not fooling Lou for a moment. Her right hand picked at a thread on her denim miniskirt, and she kept turning to glance at the younger detective who was prowling the living room as though sniffing out a smoking gun. Or perhaps a smoking match.
‘And,’ Lou went on, drumming her fingers on the table and pushing up her glasses, ‘even if I did need money, my mother and I are not …’ She avoided looking at Skye as she tested the words in her brain before speaking them. ‘… On great terms. Until a few days ago, I hadn’t been back to Stone Mountain since I left home to go to uni twenty years ago. And that’s the way I –’ She waved a hand at Skye but avoided looking at her. ‘The way we like it.’ She nodded to underline her point.
The younger detective suddenly seemed interested. He returned to the dining table and leaned one skinny hip against it, close to where Lou was sitting. ‘Maybe you just don’t like small towns?’
Lou pushed her chair back so she could move away from the two men. ‘No,’ she said, folding her arms across her chest. She’d loved this small town, once upon a time. ‘I don’t like playing happy families.’ She jabbed a finger at Skye. ‘And if you think for one moment that Skye thinks leaving me some play money is going to endear her to me in her dying days …’ She whistled softly. ‘You’re a thousand kinds of wrong.’
Hostility rose from Skye in waves, but Lou couldn’t think about it right now. If this was their angle, these overbearing cops, they needed to know they were mistaken.
It was time to put this shit to bed. ‘Detectives,’ she continued, ‘do you have some evidence that this fire was deliberately lit?’
The bald one sucked his lips in against his teeth. ‘Well now, I’m not sure we can go into the evidence the police service …’
‘Yes, you can,’ Lou said. ‘And I would like to know. Do you? Or is this just some really crappy fishing expedition?’
The bald detective shrugged. ‘The forensics could sure support a case, if that’s what the rest of the picture led us to believe.’
‘So let me tell you something,’ Lou said. ‘This is how your story is going to look, should you be brave enough to try to press it. A very sick woman, a woman with terminal cancer, whose doctor will testify to the pain she is currently experiencing, dropped a joint on the way to bed. Her house burned down and the whole community rallied around her.’ Lou tried not to overtly cross her fingers behind her back – if any rallying was to be done in Stone Mountain, it would not be for Skye Samuels. ‘The police, on the other hand, decided to launch a witch hunt.’ Lou looked at Skye at this point, and had to admit the analogy worked. There had always been something far away and otherworldly about Skye’s beauty. She could have been a witch. Lou pressed on, pushing her nails into her palms against the horrors of what she was saying. ‘Your case might wrap up before Skye dies, or maybe not. Either way, I’m going to wheel a very sick woman into that courtroom, to argue with you over – how much did you say your policy was worth, Mum?’
Skye sniffed, her eyes blue like ice as they glared at Lou. ‘Hundred and twenty.’
‘For a hundred and twenty thousand dollars,’ Lou finished, wiping her hands together like she was cleaning dirt from them. ‘I reckon it’s going to look a little mean-spirited,’ she said, flicking her notebook shut. ‘To say the least.’ Her message was clear: Are we done?
Detective Farmer pushed back his chair and stepped closer, indignant lines hardening the soft edges of his body. He bared his perfect teeth at Lou, in what was clearly supposed to pass as a smile. ‘We’ll be in touch,’ he said.
When they were gone (you knew you were unwelcome in Stone Mountain when no-one went out to the veranda to wave you off), Lou sat opposite Skye at the table. They had avoided this. Like a carefully choreographed dance, they had moved around the house, in each other’s orbit, but never quite coming in for landing. After her injury, Lou had spent two days in bed, wrapped in her own pain, both physical and mental, aware that the rest of the house was continuing about its business. Skye had been the soul of motherly caring – not overdoing the Mommy Dearest thing, but checking on her regularly, bringing her meals and medication, and keeping visitors away.
As soon as Lou could move without feeling like her head was going to drop off, she was up and about again, determined that she would get the things done – for both her mother and her father – that would let her leave this town for good. And she and Skye had slipped back into their separate corners. But now the time had come. It was Friday, she had been here for almost a week, and they had to have a conversation.
Skye spread her fingers out on the table in front of her – studying her glittery nails. ‘You hate me,’ she said, her voice flat.
Lou’s legs turned to water and she wanted to run. Skye had it wrong. She could never hate her. Skye had been the softest part of Lou’s heart, even over all the years of managing her fallout. Skye was the most beautiful, the most mesmerising, the most loving. She was also the most careless, hopeless and wild. And people got hurt around her. Lou pressed her eyes shut, remembering Skye as though in a collage – screaming, spinning, skipping, laughing, singing; always in motion, always in pursuit of the next reckless dream. Lou pressed her feet into the floor to remind her legs to get with the program and ordered her brain to switch the slide show off. Because it always ended in a bad, bad place and Lou couldn’t afford to watch it right now.
‘I don’t hate you,’ she said, wishing she could give it more heart. ‘I just can’t be near you too long.’
Skye shut her eyes. She looked so young, the new, chin-grazing hairstyle emphasising her firm jaw and neck. ‘I’m different now,’ she said, and Lou could hear how hard it was for her to say it, to have to say it. ‘It changed me too, you know.’
It might be true, but Lou didn’t care. It was too late for Skye to be different. The time for her to be different was twenty, thirty years ago, when she was a mother.
Lou thought about Gage – he had been nineteen years old when he had gotten some random girl pregnant. He had been a tearaway, a boy used to living hard and following his own rules, but he had still woken up and smelled the coffee. He had raised Piper like she was the most precious and important thing that had ever graced the earth. He had cleaned up his act, and his father’s, and the farm in the process. Skye had been young, sure, but it wasn’t that. Skye had never let the fact of her motherhood break her stride in one single way. She had loved the fact of it, but never let it change her.
But caring for a child did change you. Lou knew that, because she had been a mother too. She’d had no choice. She had been the mother Skye refused to be. But it wasn’t fair, and she hadn’t been good enough and that was why everything was the way it was now. This was not just on Skye. It was on Lou, too.
But Skye needed to own her part of it.
‘I’m glad,’ Lou said, not knowing if it was a lie or not. ‘I’m glad you’re different, and that things are good with you and Bo. But I …’
Skye was dying; could Lou ever find some common ground rich enough to feel anything other than relief when her mother died?
‘But there’s just too much there.’ Lou stabbed at her chest with her finger. ‘Too much here.’ She pointed to her head. ‘And here.’ She passed a hand over her eyes, her head starting to ache again. ‘I can’t see you, can’t be near you, without opening it all up again.’
Skye nodded, her face not angry or understanding, just neutral.
‘You going tomorrow?’ Skye lowered her head so she didn’t have to meet Lou’s eyes. ‘To the grave?’
The room folded in on itself. Lou knew what tomorrow was, of course she did. But something stubborn had made her avoid looking the date in the eye over the last week. She could feel it gathering just over the horizon, like some mean mother of a hailstorm. But this year it was different.
This year she was back where it all happened.
Would it really be possible to follow her usual routine – wilful avoidance followed by a spectacular end-of-day crash, falling into booze and tears and Sharni’s loving hugs before passing out with exhaustion? Something was different this year. And it wasn’t just that she was here. Things were ending. Skye was dying, although it was kind of hard to believe it while her mother continued to look resolutely sexy and biology-defying young. Lou sucked in a breath and felt like the universe was conspiring to make her face her demons. Godammit, it was such a revolting cliché.
Skye raised her face and tears tracked down it in shiny trails. Lou wanted to scream at her that she had no right to cry, but knew better that she had no right to say it. There was a time Lou had wanted to see Skye cry – wanted her to break open and fall apart, smash through the wall of numb regret that had enveloped her at the time. Back then, Lou had imagined striking her mother – hard – across the face, just to see if anything would make her take responsibility. But there was no satisfaction in Skye’s tears now, she looked like the bottom had fallen from her world. Her shoulders rose and fell in rapid, jerky sobs and snot ran wild from her nose. ‘I – I –’ she hiccupped, her eyes wild as she searched for the words.
The scream that had lain dormant and cancerous in Lou for twenty years knocked at the door and begged to be set free. It wanted to tell Skye exactly what she was. It wanted to roll up all the anger and disgust and bitterness inside Lou and hurl it at her mother, make her own it, swallow it down.
But to Lou’s surprise, as she imagined doing it, finally doing it, it fell away. When she opened her mouth, the thing that emerged was not a creature of rage and hate. It dissipated on contact with the air, dissolving like ashes. ‘I’ll come with you,’ Lou said, having no idea where the words came from, suddenly filled with a reckless desire to see the place. She walked over to her mother’s chair and placed a hand on the back of it. As she did, Skye froze, and time seemed to slow as Lou watched her hand, small and white against the dark wood. Why was it there? What did she intend to do with it? Was she really going to touch her mother, after all these years?
‘Skye.’ Lou’s voice cracked as she said the word and Skye looked up, startled.
As she did, something else captured Lou’s attention and wrenched it from the altogether bizarre notion that she wanted to take some of the pain away from her mother. A thick red-black trickle of blood slid like a portent of doom from Skye’s left nostril.
‘Mum.’ Lou’s voice broke again as she reached across to touch the delicate skin between her mother’s nose and mouth. She lifted the finger to inspect it, detached from the physical act, and Skye gasped as they both inspected the dark red smear.
Skye quickly wiped at the blood with her sleeve and stood, pushing her chair back and knocking it to the ground. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said, avoiding Lou’s eyes. ‘It happens sometimes.’ But her voice was strained and breathy as she said the words and as Lou watched, she seemed to sway on the spot. Lou’s brain yelled at her to reach out for Skye, but her fall was too fast. Her mother lay tangled on the timber floor, white and bloody.
Lou fell to her knees beside her and began to scream. The words seemed to come from somewhere else. She screamed for help and to God and at Skye for being so damned sick. She yelled at her not to die; that she wasn’t ready for her to die, not yet.
But Skye lay so still in her arms that Lou was almost sure she was already gone. She couldn’t summon the wits to check her breathing or feel for a pulse. She could only hear her brain screaming at her that it was over; her mother was gone.
‘I won’t go.’ Gage was standing in the middle of the dining room, his hands on his hips in a gesture so achingly male Lou wanted to yell at him to sit down so she could focus on what he was saying instead of thinking how much he looked like some kind of pin-up boy for raw beauty. He was all dressed up, more formally than Lou had seen him since graduation night.
‘Nonsense,’ Skye said, curled on the sofa in yet another of her endless array of fluffy dressing gowns. ‘Why not? You heard the doc. I’m fine. For now,’ she added, scrunching up her face and pulling at a thread on her gown. ‘She gave me the shots and I didn’t even need to go to the hospital.’
Lou wanted to remind her mother this was not quite an accurate representation of events. Dr O’Brien had fought hard to get Skye to the hospital, get a proper check on what was going on. But Skye had held her ground like the knockdown-drag-out fighter she was. And at the end of the day, as the good doctor had explained, this kind of decision was Skye’s to make at this stage of the game.
Gage ran his hands through his hair in that boyish, exasperated gesture that was becoming so familiar to Lou again that she wanted to offer to do it for him. There was no chance of that – ever since their chat on the day of her concussion, Gage had been politely distant. It bugged Lou more than it should. She knew it was her fault; she had dismissed him. And she had lied to him. But she was also sure something was wrong. Gage had been preoccupied these last few days. The frown lines on his face were deeper, and his mouth wore a permanent scowl. Lou wondered if it was the pressure of all he had taken on. Now that she was through the concussion, she planned to move back to the Welcome Inn to stay out of his way while she wrapped up business in Stone Mountain. But then she looked across at Piper, snuggled up to Bo on the beat-up old leather lounge, looking so much like a child, and Lou’s breath caught. She had been getting closer to the girl these last few days, as Piper had taken it upon herself to cook for Lou, bringing her snacks, and hanging around to chat about any number of topics.
Lou shook her head to clear it, but the picture her eyes settled on offered no clarity. Gage was still standing tall and devastating in the middle of the lounge room. Well-fitted black dress pants clung to his long legs and sculpted arse. A fine white cotton collared shirt encased his torso, but he had rolled the sleeves almost all the way to his elbows, as though unable to bear the constraint of them, offering Lou an uninterrupted view of strong, tanned forearms. Clearly a tie had been a bridge too far, even for whatever formal event this was, because the shirt was open at the neck, offering a glimpse of brown skin, soft hair and sculpted collar bones. His feet were booted as ever, but Lou had never seen these ones before: they were soft and black, with a slightly pointed toe, and looked expensive. He smelled good too, but different. Whatever cologne he was wearing smelled like spicy butter – musky and rich. He could have been a king or an oil baron or a shipping tycoon, and for a mad moment, Lou wished with every fibre of her being that she could be on his arm as he ventured out tonight.
‘Looking good.’ She smiled weakly, having no idea where he was headed and realising belatedly that her attempt at a friendly compliment had come off sounding more like a desperate sigh. She had been distracted since the events of the afternoon. ‘Where y’off to?’
The room fell silent as Gage’s eyes settled on her and Lou had the distinct feeling everyone else knew something she didn’t. ‘District library dinner,’ he said shortly, turning to grab a jacket from a chair behind him. ‘Annual awards,’ he added.
Lou’s tummy sank at his words. Of course – the librarian; the one Skye had made sure Lou knew was young and sweet. Chalky green jealousy snaked through Lou’s blood as the realisation settled in her. She forced herself to talk through the claggy bitterness clogging up her mouth.
‘Lovely,’ she said, smiling in what she was sure looked like the grimace she was feeling. And then, because something had to give: ‘Didn’t realise you were a reader.’ She could have kicked herself at how pompous and stilted she sounded, like she was putting him down for being some country hick.
Gage turned to face her, his cheeks a little flushed as he shrugged into his coat. Lou heard the sound of a car pulling up on the drive. ‘I’m not,’ he said shortly, pointing to the door. ‘But she is.’
‘I’ll get it,’ Piper said, jumping up and running for the door before Gage could make a counter-offer.
Lou saw Gage’s face turn to stone as he realised his date was going to be brought into this screwy family tableau: Bo and his unpredictable girlfriend; the teenage daughter with whom things were only just beginning to settle back to normal after he had threatened to shoot her new flame; and the … what? What exactly was she? His once-upon-a-time almost-girlfriend? The girl who’d written cheques with her body that she’d never stayed around to cash? The same woman who was now staying under his roof for some reason that had seemed pretty good at the time but now seemed terrifyingly like a flimsy sham to let herself be closer to this man she couldn’t have.
Lou wanted to dive under the nearest cushion as Piper ushered the woman into the living room. She had no idea how she might respond to the sight of Gage, dressed to kill, going out to some event with some almost-girlfriend. All she could think, completely unreasonably, was that she wanted to stab this new woman and bury her body in one of the many convenient hiding places on this great big property.
Until she saw her. Then all she could do was sigh and give up. She certainly couldn’t bring herself to look at Gage. The young woman was lovely: tall, curvy and blonde, all the things Lou wasn’t. She wasn’t beautiful, but she had a sweet, round face, a shy smile and an instantly appealing demeanour that somehow made Lou’s fantasies of homicide and dismemberment seem that much worse.
‘Hi,’ the librarian breathed sweetly as she stood in the middle of the room in a demure blue cocktail dress, belted at the waist. ‘Nice to meet you all.’
Lou vaguely registered Gage moving over to greet the librarian with a chaste kiss on the cheek. Lou stood up and knocked over Skye’s coffee cup, her legs weak and her arms even clumsier than usual as her brain instructed her to fake nice with the sweet blonde. Luckily Bo righted the cup quickly, mopping up with a nearby tea towel, and Skye stood and started to do her thing.
‘Well hey, sweetheart,’ she enthused. ‘Look at you two, you just look grand. And it’s so nice to meet you.’ She thrust out a hand. ‘Skye Samuels.’
‘Beatrice Walker,’ the librarian said, lowering her eyes as she took Skye’s hand.
Skye affected sizing the girl up. ‘Now let’s see …’ She winked at Beatrice. ‘You don’t seem like Gage’s usual type.’
Lou finally granted her eyes permission to look at Gage. He was gathering keys, wallet and phone, and his face was closed, his jaw set and the lines of his body so tense Lou thought he might break with the effort of collecting his things. He stopped at Skye’s words.
‘I don’t have a type, Skye,’ he snapped.
‘It’s true,’ Piper said, also clearly sizing up the new arrival with wide-eyed amazement. ‘He never dates. An emotional cripple.’
‘Oh, this isn’t a date,’ Beatrice said, blushing. ‘Gage just agreed to come with me to the thing tonight because I helped him with some research recently.’
Research? Lou’s ears burned at the bone they had been thrown. Not a date, not a date.
Then her brain corrected her gullible heart. The two were young and beautiful, dressed to kill, heading out together in a town where people didn’t do such things unless they were comfortable with the fact that people were going to talk. This was way more of a date than French kissing under the old jacaranda outside the pub, or doing the dirty on the mountain.
It hurt. Oh God, it hurt to watch Gage walk out with that woman.
But why should it? Who knew what Gage had been doing for the last twenty years? He certainly hadn’t joined a monastery; he had a teenage daughter as proof. And neither had Lou been a nun during the time, although she hated to admit, even to herself, just how sad her love-life had really been. Unless you counted that randy Santa Claus.
But not knowing what Gage had been up to had nothing to do with how it felt to watch him go out with this woman now. She had no right to him – she had been as clear as she could be with him a few days ago. She had even made up her own lover, just to help it along. He had every right to live his life and do what he needed to do. But did it have to be with someone so different, so utterly alien from Lou?
Lou worked hard, and in some ways she had become hard. The last time she smiled sweetly and shyly at someone was when she’d needed one of the interns to change a tyre for her. And she had never, ever had killer curves like the girl in the blue dress. The librarian screamed youth and fertility.
As that last thought landed, brutally accurate, in Lou’s brain, she knew that was the worst of it. Beatrice looked like a girl looking for a husband; a person to marry and have babies with. Lou’s mind raced ahead – seeing the woman walking down the aisle with Gage; then huge with his baby; and then holding sweet sticky fingers as she crossed the road carefully with a mini-Gage in tow.
Lou had once wanted children of her own. She knew how it felt to love like that. Now it was too late; she knew she was too broken and she never would.
She moved like an automaton to take the woman’s hand. Beatrice regarded her with polite curiosity. Lou made some feeble joke about being part of Gage’s home for strays and retreated to the couch as they left.
She watched Gage’s back as they all called out to the pair to enjoy their evening, and she couldn’t imagine a universe in which he might turn to see her, melting into misery and nothingness on the couch. It was wrong, so wrong, of her to want Gage to look back at her. His dark hair curled softly over the collar of his jacket and she imagined again that it was her going out with him tonight; imagined brushing that hair away just for the heady thrill of possession that it would give her.
Turn around.
Just as Gage ushered Beatrice through the door to the anteroom and outside, he spun on his heel. ‘Pip,’ he said. ‘It won’t be late. I’ve got the phone.’
Piper nodded, nose already back in the book about Spanish horticulture she had been perusing.
Look at me.
And then, as Gage made to turn back for the door, his eyes brushed Lou’s. A sharp charge sizzled between them as he opened his face to her for the first time in days. He looked weary, and something else – he was looking for something from her but she didn’t know what it was. All she could do was stare mutely back at him, sure all her misery and hopelessness was written there for him to see.