BY 4:00 A.M. LEITH had been sitting in a chair by Vivi’s bedside for over an hour. He’d been called in on a false alarm. Which was probably his fault for being so officious, telling hospital staff he wanted to be notified the instant she opened her eyes.
Might have qualified that a bit, but it was too late for fine tuning. The call had come, waking him and Alison, and he had leapt from pyjamas into trousers, sweater, boots, and with hair all on end like a madman he’d raced over here, only to find the patient’s eyes had opened for a moment, but were no longer. She was sleeping. Wired to machines, one arm in a cast and one leg in a splint, all signals showing she was on the mend, but, yeah, asleep.
He didn’t mind. The delight he felt for her recovery easily made up for the inconvenience. He sat and listened to the night sounds of a hospital. Hospitals didn’t bother him, maybe because he’d spent so much time in their wards and corridors since he was young, as relatives were born, or got sick, or died. One by one his grandparents had left him, and new cousins arrived. Then there were the casts to sign as friends broke their legs doing wheelies or falling off ladders.
Hospitals were rich reminders of emotion. Grief, laughter, boredom, thrills. Maybe he was accustomed to the place. Maybe it was just an extension of home.
He semi-dozed in his chair. As the room’s natural light began to spill in through the window, he woke and saw Vivi’s eyes were open and fixed on him. He straightened and smiled at her. Though she had to be disoriented and in pain, she smiled back.
The gratitude he saw in her smile was probably more generally directed to some saint of slim chances, but he accepted it as a personal hello. “Good morning,” he said. “And welcome back.”
* * *
“Well, the truth is Gemma doesn’t like kids,” Vivi told Leith. “She just knows she’s supposed to, so she acts like she does.” She was seated upright and was holding a glass of water. Her voice was raspy and disjointed, but she was getting her story across well enough. Like Dion, she had a way of stating her gut feelings as though they were fact. But she had a right to be so bold, being only nine.
“How do you know that?” Leith asked. His digital recorder was getting it all down, but there was nothing like the face-to-face of real-time conversation. And this one had opened with a bombshell accusation.
Not that he was going to take Vivi’s word for anything. What had Gemma called the child, according to JD? A manipulator. A mental case. Dangerous.
He thought back to what he’d seen as genuine grief in Gemma’s face on the night Luna Mae had gone missing. No, Viviani was wrong in saying Gemma didn’t like kids.
“I told you that Tia said I’m a seer, right?” Vivi said. “I think I know now what he meant. It’s like I have X-ray vision into people’s heads.”
Wrong again. If Vivi had X-ray vision, she would see Leith didn’t believe in ESP or crystal balls. He tried to sound like a believer. “And what do you see in Gemma’s head?”
“She wishes Luna had never been born,” Vivi told him. She said it with quiet regret, as though she didn’t like speaking ill of Gemma, but had no choice. “She wishes she could just spend all her time fixing up the house and looking nice and throwing dinner parties for Perry’s friends. She hates, like, dirt, and diapers, and babies crying. She especially hates it when Luna cries. It’s like I can see her swearing at Luna really loud inside her head, but when I’m there she doesn’t say it out loud, right? And then she gets even madder. But she acts really nice, especially to Luna, especially when people are around. And to me, too, and to Tia, when he was alive. It’s like she just wishes in her head we were all gone.”
Leith considered telling her she was wrong, that Gemma was under a lot of stress but that she loved her family deeply. Yet did he really know that was true? And did he want to risk breaking the trust between himself and the girl?
And besides, after what Gemma had done to JD, a part of him wanted to see the woman fall from a great height. He said, “You know what I think? I think what you’ve got is better than magic. I think you’re just uber perceptive.”
“What’s uber?”
“Super.”
She considered that, watching him, sussing him out. Then she said, “Gemma didn’t push me.”
“Nobody’s saying she did,” Leith said. “What I understand happened is —”
But Vivi’s hand went up to silence him. “She didn’t push me,” she said. “She just let go.”
Just let go? This was a twist. Leith absorbed the statement. He sensed the fragility of the moment, was afraid to break it. Softly, he asked her, “How did she let go?”
Vivi reached out and gripped his arm in demonstration. She tugged, suspended his arm as high as she could over the bedclothes, and released. Deliberately. His arm fell to the mattress and lay there. “Like that,” she said.
* * *
Viviani went on to tell Leith that Gemma had let her fall because of what Tia had seen. Tia had told Vivi, and after his death she’d told both Zachary and Gemma. Because what he’d seen could help find Luna. But instead of talking about it, they’d gotten mad at her and said she was lying. Or Tia was lying. Or both kids were lying.
Leith got Vivi to start from the beginning, as far back as she wanted. She began with the day Luna Mae disappeared. “Gemma and Perry were having a dinner party with their friends,” she said. “So they were busy, so I was playing with my friend Alexa, and Tia was at Oliver’s house. But Tia had to go home to pick up his homework, and when he cycled to the driveway and looked down, that’s when he saw.”
She watched Leith keenly now, making sure he understood. “He saw them fighting, Gemma and Zachary, and they had Luna, and they were all yelling and screaming. And they were holding onto Luna, Tiago says, and trying to pull her in half.”
Leith flinched. It was too much a reminder of him and Alison in the car on Picnic Day, shouting at each other, their anger escalating until Izzy in the car seat behind them interrupted with a heartbreaking howl, “Don’t, don’t, don’t.” Which had shut them up fast.
From what Vivi was saying, though, Gemma and Zachary were too much in the zone to shut up. “What did Tia do when he saw them fighting like that?”
“Nothing. They stopped when they saw him, and told him to go away. He saw that Luna was okay, just scared, and he turned and left. He didn’t tell me about it till after Luna was gone. He told me that it made him sick, seeing them fighting over her, not caring how she must feel. He said he couldn’t sleep well after that, because he should have done something. We talked about it, and I told him it’s not his fault. But I don’t think he really believed me.”
“Did Tia tell you he thought their arguing over Luna had something to do with her disappearance?”
“Oh no, he didn’t think that. He was just mad at them. When he died, though, I told them what he’d told me, and I told them they should tell you about it, because it might help find Luna. But they didn’t. So I said I would.”
“How did they react to that?”
“Zachary just pretended like it wasn’t true. Gemma said she’d kill me if I told.”
She had quoted the startling words without drama.
“She really said that?” Leith asked.
“She didn’t mean it, though. It’s just like saying I’m so mad I could kill you.”
Leith wasn’t so sure. “And that’s why you got in touch with Constable Temple.”
Vivi nodded.
Leith also wasn’t sure whether he should put this last question to Vivi. “The argument between Zach and Gemma might not have had anything to do with the disappearance. Why not just obey your mom? Why push her so hard, make her mad?”
Vivi looked surprised, and maybe disappointed with Leith and his dumb question. “I wouldn’t have pushed Gemma except she called Tia a liar, when I know he’s not. Why would she lie about him lying? I don’t know. All I know is she knows something important, and so does Zach, and they should tell you what it is, because you’re trying to find Luna. And they should stop telling me it’s none of my business. It is my business. Luna’s my sister, and I want to know where she is and if she’s okay. Right?”
Leith couldn’t argue with that.