The flowers just kept coming. Every morning saw a funeral pyre of lilies and white roses covering the front step. Some people rang the doorbell and quickly dropped them off in person, but most just quietly laid them on the mat, bland condolence cards tucked among the gypsophila. Thinking of you. Please know you’re in our hearts. Cameron was tempted to leave them there in the hope his stepfather would trip over them, but Pete rarely went outside.
The food was starting to slow down, though. The women from the church still came, with their cottage pies and banana bread, but there were fewer neighbourly casseroles, fewer blokes from the aero club clutching an awkward six-pack, ‘just come to see how you’re going, mate’. Cameron swore as he carried in that morning’s offerings. There was a time limit on people’s sympathy, he knew, but for God’s sake, you’d think it would last longer than a week.
Cameron’s own grief was still glowing, a hot coal of anger that kept him awake at night. Pete might not notice the lack of visitors, might be content to spend his days pacing the house, counting footsteps, memorising the positions of light switches, but Cameron wanted answers. For Lincoln’s sake. Few tragedies occurred without human error, Cameron knew. Even when it seemed there was nothing to blame for your loss except a malfunctioning GPS or a mutating cell, someone, somewhere would be culpable. If only for making things worse.
One woman still came though, nearly every day. The dark-haired woman from the hospital. Aimee. Constantly creeping down their driveway with a biscuit tin, jumping up from their sofa if Cameron arrived home before she’d left. She was the only one who wanted to talk about the accident, what happened. Cameron sometimes hid in the hallway, hoping Pete would let something slip.
She’s just an old friend, his stepdad insisted. I haven’t really spoken to her for years. But Cameron knew there was more. Old friends didn’t park across the street and sit staring at your house. They didn’t drive slowly past, taking note of other cars, checking who was inside.
Cameron knew he should be grateful Pete had company, that someone was around to help, but he wasn’t particularly interested in the old man’s wellbeing. Hadn’t been since Pete had left his mum to die alone, surrounded by machines. Wondering where her family was. Why her husband didn’t answer the hospital’s frantic calls. She’d never have known, the nurses said. She had very little cognisance at the end. But that was bullshit too. You’d know you’d been abandoned. You’d sense it.
Someone had left a tub of bougainvillea, no card, no name. Cameron lugged it down the driveway and settled it next to the letterbox. He waved at Mrs Verratti in her four-wheel drive on the other side of the street. And when she started and fumbled for her keys, he was ready. He let her make her way down the street, then hopped in his stepfather’s trusty Corolla and followed her out of town.
The visitors had stopped coming. Oh, Julia’s old friends still turned up, and those who had to be there: nurses, occupational therapists. Tradesmen fitting new handrails everywhere, making his sightlessness seem more permanent with every hole they drilled. And the aero club members still phoned, one a night; Pete suspected a roster. But he could hear the distance in their voices. Things had changed.
‘They’re not sure what to say,’ Aimee suggested, but Pete knew it was more than that. There’d be divided loyalties, now he’d pointed a finger at one of their own. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Aimee said, ‘you lost your son. They want to know the truth as much as you do.’ But Pete knew he’d broken the code. You didn’t do the dirty on your mates, especially when it wasn’t true.
Pete fumbled in his wardrobe for a pair of trousers, now conveniently hung from light to dark so he could tell what he was putting on. They’d know it was bullshit as well, the people he’d been flying with for years; they all knew those planes inside and out. They weren’t so crass as to call him out on his lies while he was grieving, but they’d be wondering why he’d done it. What he had to hide.
Pete patted along the wardrobe floor for his shoes. He didn’t care if people avoided him. He didn’t care if they hated him, if he was left alone for the rest of his life, if the doorbell never rang again — he probably deserved that. But he did care about implicating someone else in his mistakes. Pete shoved his feet into a pair of sneakers. He might feel dead inside, be numb to the core, but he wasn’t a complete arsehole.
It had been a moment of weakness, that was all. A bad judgement call. But at least he could set this one right. Pete fumbled around the bedside table for his phone, now set to voice command, and instructed it to ring Cameron. His son wasn’t keen on his company either, but he was nosy enough to want to keep an eye on him.
‘Cam,’ he said, as the phone went to voicemail. ‘Can you come back to the house, mate, soon as you can? I need a favour. I need you to take me somewhere.’
‘I made a mistake.’
Pete kept his hands in his lap, where they shook slightly. Nerve damage, the doctors said, but the truth was accidents aged you. The physical trauma, as much as the emotional pain. The body could only withstand so much shock.
‘What sort of mistake, Peter?’ Arthur’s voice was kind, too kind.
‘About the accident. It wasn’t the plane. There was nothing wrong with the plane. The engine was running fine.’
‘Then why . . .?’ A heavy wheeze from Arthur’s barrel chest. ‘Are you saying you remembered wrong?’
Pete grabbed the generous interpretation the policeman was offering him. ‘Yes. Yes, I remembered wrong.’
‘So what have you remembered that’s right, then?’
There was no offer of coffee this time, with or without biscuits. Pete swallowed, the noise loud in the concrete interview room. ‘If I tell you, can you keep the other stuff back?’
‘Your concerns about the maintenance? The condition of the plane?’
‘I don’t have any doubts about the condition of the plane. The plane was fine. I was confused.’ Pete could feel Cameron’s silent stare from the back of the interview room. He’d insisted on coming in, gripped his dad’s elbow as though daring him to refuse.
‘Well, that’ll be a great relief to Smithy. He resigned, you know. Even before you’d said anything.’
Pete ducked his head in shame.
‘But it won’t make much of a difference to the investigation. The ATSB will still inspect the plane. That’s their job.’
‘I know. But if you could amend what I said, about the engine seizing. Make it clear I was mistaken.’
‘I’ll make a note.’ The scratch of pen on paper. ‘They’ve probably got you on some heavy painkillers.’
‘They do, yes.’ Pete shot the policeman what he hoped was a grateful look.
‘But, Peter,’ Arthur’s voice moved closer towards him, and the desk moved forward as well, knocking Pete’s chest, setting off a flash of fire all the way down his right side. ‘If it wasn’t the plane, people are going to wonder what happened. They’re going to look at the lab reports’ — a meaningful pause — ‘and consider what was and wasn’t in your system.’
‘I know about the alcohol,’ Cameron called from his corner. ‘Don’t censor yourself on my behalf.’
‘I’m not talking to you,’ bellowed Arthur. He lowered his voice. ‘You know what I’m saying, don’t you?’
Pete nodded as he gripped the desk, his trembling hands setting off a little earthquake that travelled down the table legs. ‘I can’t have them saying that, Arthur. I can’t have them saying I deliberately . . .’ His throat caught. ‘They’re probably already thinking it though, aren’t they? Aren’t they?’
‘Do you want to tell me,’ Arthur said softly, ‘what really happened up there? Do you want to tell me why the plane came down?’
‘I made a mistake.’ Pete lowered his head, ashamed. ‘I got distracted by the fireworks, disorientated, and I cocked up the navigation. I saw a bright light at the far end of the river and thought it was a star. I thought it meant we were higher than we were.’
‘And you flew into the hill.’
‘I pulled the nose down. Deliberately lost altitude. A stupid, stupid mistake. By the time I realised what was happening, by the time I could see we were headed into terrain, it was too late to pull up.’ He crumpled the tissue that was placed in his hand. ‘I killed him, Arthur, not on purpose, but I might as well have. The accident was entirely my fault.’