| |
Wiri woke after an hour, his head listed to one side and a line of dribble snaking from his open mouth to his ear. He stirred and pushed himself upright, which involved a crablike crawl using the back of the sofa.
His eyelids blinked, scratchy sand scraping against his eyeballs. It proved a mistake to rub them. He poked himself in the face with his bandaged finger and made his eyes sting with the pressure of the rubbing action. Looking around the lounge, he frowned, confused about the unfamiliar location. He recognised Leilah’s expensive furniture and the dreaded net curtains across the picture window. The bone deep sense of isolation shrouded him and he reached for the mobile phone next to him on the coffee table.
“Phoenix.” He said her name and forced himself to rouse with more energy. The isolation retreated, nipping at the fringes of his consciousness but wary of his newfound courage. He fumbled the phone into his fingers and stared around the room, seeking her essence but not finding it. “Phoe!” He called louder, expecting her to appear from the bathroom or bedroom, her hair neatened and her grey eyes sparkling with affection.
Nothing.
Wiri rose and shuffled through to the kitchen. The coffee mug sat in the sink, half filled with water and a layer of silty scum covering its surface. He rubbed at his eyes again before dropping his hand. “Maybe I dreamed it,” he said with a sigh. He ran his index finger over his lips and frowned. “It felt so real.”
Defeat shrouded him like a veil and the sense of isolation joined in to bow his shoulders and cause his head to hang. The passion and her declaration of possession, the fight with Seline and Phoenix’s care, dissipated on the wind as a false memory. “It didn’t happen,” he murmured. “She isn’t here.”
He turned back to the lounge, entering through the wide archway before halting, his brow furrowed. A pink sock nestled near the coffee table, balled as though tugged off a wriggling foot. Wiri swallowed and his reason stuttered over the presence of the alien thing. Seline’s sock. Kicked there by a petulant Phoenix.
He searched the house. Splashes of product on the mirror showed where she’d tried to tame her curls. Wiri spun, finding the lid ajar on his hair gel. He jogged to his bedroom and found the mattress bare. She said she’d stripped the sheets.
“Phoenix!” He lifted his voice and pulled open the back door leading from the laundry. Unlocked and ajar, it filled him with trepidation.
She turned to face him, her features aglow from the high sun and her hair damp. She sat on the top rung of the post and rail fence, swinging her feet beneath her. “Hey. You didn’t sleep for long.”
Relief coursed through Wiri’s veins and he struggled to stem the flood of adrenaline. He leaned against the balustrade and it wobbled, still damaged from its fight with Seline’s gelding. Dipping his body, he rested his forehead on his arms.
Phoenix’s feet tapped as she hopped down from her perch and walked up the steps. She arrived next to him and slipped an arm around his shoulders. “Larry visited,” she said, resting her temple against his biceps. “He checked you out, but then someone from the church called, needing him to sort out a crisis.”
“I thought you’d gone,” he whispered. His chest hitched with the effort of regaining control. “Or that you’d never been here at all.”
“Funny boy.” She used her mother’s expression for him and rose on tiptoes to place a kiss against his cheek. Drawing back, she traced a line along his jaw with her index finger. “You always shaved at home,” she said, eking out the thought. “I’ve never seen you so stubbly. I like your rugged look.”
Wiri laughed, the sound a muted snuffle. “How did you get here?” he asked, her lack of an explanation troubling him. “You never told me.”
“Ah.” Phoenix chewed her lower lip. “Perhaps it’s best you don’t know.”
“Tell me you didn’t hitchhike?” Wiri narrowed his eyes, tilting his head sideways on his forearms to glare at her.
Phoenix shifted on her feet. “It wasn’t quite hitching, but it also kinda was.” She stumbled over the sentence, creating more curiosity than she dispelled. Wiri rose and stared at her.
“You need to tell me now,” he demanded.
Phoenix inhaled. “I got a ride with David Allen.”
Wiri cocked his head. “Wait. What?”
She shrugged. “He doesn’t know. I used the bush path to get from home to the hotel. He parked in front of the main entrance and ran inside, but he left his truck open. I hid in the boot and hopped out when he stopped at the service station on the Bombay Hills. The hardest part was making it across all four carriages of the motorway in the dark and then finding a bus heading south. I had to wait until seven o’clock this morning for one to stop at the services.”
“You ran across the motorway?” Wiri jerked his head back in horror. “Not only is that dangerous, you’ll show up on CCTV.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Don’t you understand how vulnerable you made yourself just sitting alone at a service station at night?”
Phoenix wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t think about that.” She shrugged. “I’m here now, anyway. The bus didn’t have many people on it, so the driver let me pay cash, seeing as I only needed to stay on for a couple of hours.”
“You caught the night bus?”
“Yeah.” She smiled up at him. “I sat near the driver and he chatted to me. He also did a minor detour off the main highway, so I didn’t have so far to walk to get here.”
Wiri exhaled and bent to place a kiss over her lips. He closed his eyes, grateful she’d proved more than a figment of his imagination. Pulling away with great reluctance, he slipped his arm around her shoulders and tugged her closer. “Why were you sitting on top of the fence?” he asked, his voice a low rumble in her damp hair.
“Watching that horse.” Phoenix lifted her left arm and pointed up the slope to the paddock beyond the house. “She keeps going down and getting up again.” Her brow furrowed. “Pastor Hendricks came out to look at her, but he said he doesn’t know much about cattle or horses.”
“Hendricks?” Wiri’s body stiffened. “As in, Hendricks like the one who drowned in the water tank?” A picture painted itself in his mind. Donovan Hendricks knew things about people, things perhaps only a vicar would know.
“Drowned? But they pulled you out again. Larry told me about it.” She stared up at him, sunshine kissing her loose fringe and casting her features into highlights of glow and shadow. “What are you talking about?”
Wiri blew out a sharp breath and fidgeted, opening and closing the fingers of his right hand over the balustrade. He shook his head, unable to order his thoughts into anything which might help him formulate a plan.
A plan.
The Plan.
“We need to leave,” he said, his tone brusque. “Right now.”
Phoenix tilted her face to observe his panic, her irises paling through tiredness to the colour of a cloudy sky. “I don’t want to run,” she replied, her tone firm. “We’re never running, Wiri. I want to face things and take the consequences. But I’m not running.”
