THE FLOORBOARDS THUDDED DOWNSTAIRS. Elena went to the landing. Daniel was running towards the stairs, his pale hair glistening in the soft hallway light. She smiled at the sight of him, so happy, jubilant.
Elena met him halfway down. “How was the movie?” she asked, gathering her robe around her.
Tommy had left only twenty minutes earlier, at her insistence, although they’d come to a compromise of sorts. He would be at his sister’s down the road. And he was only a phone call away. She had wanted him to stay – would have felt safer that way – but didn’t quite know how to explain his presence to the boy at this time of night.
“Awesome,” said Daniel.
“You had fun?”
“Yup.” He reached around her waist, squeezed tight. Then he pulled back and took the remaining stairs two at a time.
“Well, OK. Good talk.” She shook her head, called after him, “Don’t forget to brush your teeth.”
No reply.
She padded over to the front door to double-check the lock. But on second thought, stepped out to check the gate too. Elena stood in the porchlight, listening for any unfamiliar sounds, then went back in. She spied the carved wooden chair with the high back and brocade seat over by the console table. Without thinking, she dragged it over and wedged the handle under the doorknob. She seemed to be waiting for something to happen, remembering the Taser locked in the chest in her bedroom where, she mused, it could keep the furniture safe from harm. Then she pulled the chain across. It was a futile gesture but it made her feel better all the same.
She woke before dawn to the sound of a car engine; its rumbling rattled the bedroom windows and made her fumble for the light switch. Elena propped the pillows against the bedhead and sat for a moment, waiting for the haze to clear. It took a good while for her to be sure she really was awake. Tommy. He must have come back. Who else could it be?
She swung her legs across the bed and found her slippers on the floor. Walked to the door and grabbed the robe from the hook. She went across the landing, gathering courage with each step, making ready for what she might see. But part of her – inexplicably – knew it wasn’t him.
At the top of the stairs, still groggy, she held onto the railing. There was a slick of light spilling across the entry. She thought it must be from the car’s headlights, wondered why they were trained on the house. Wondered why the front door was wide open. She stood there for a long moment. She knew she’d locked the door before bed, had double-checked the brand-new deadbolt, felt the cool steel against her palm. She hadn’t noticed the splintered wood along the door jamb. Her eyes smarted.
“Tommy?” She took a couple of steps forward. “Is that you?”
No reply.
Perhaps he was waiting for her outside? But that didn’t explain the mystery of the door. Or why he would have come in and gone back out again.
And then screeching tyres.
Anderson. She stumbled down the stairs, skidding across the floorboards. On the verandah she caught the red tail lights disappearing down the driveway. So much for the security gate – it was wide open. Without thought, she ran after the car, stumbling across the clearing. “Come back, you bastards!”
Dark enamel, an arm’s reach away. They sped off into the black night, the gravel showering her legs. No chance to catch the numberplate, or the model. Not that it would have mattered anyway There was nothing she could do. Nothing but watch them go.
The headlights lit the vegetation, throwing gnarled trunks into spotlight. Beyond them was pure blackness, and once they’d screeched onto the street, absolute silence. She’d made it all the way to the gate, reached out a hand to steady herself. Her back was in spasm now and the pain was shooting down one leg. Elena fumbled for the post and found the security pad, fingering the shattered plastic, a jumble of hanging wires. She rested her head against the cool steel.
She probably could have stayed that way, open mouthed, but for the faintest noise coming from around the other side of the house. She heard whining, then no more, an unmistakable sound. Rafi. Where was he?
Elena couldn’t see anything. The light from the verandah was too dim.
“Rafi,” Elena said into the darkness. Her voice was low, pleading. “Where are you?”
She clambered to her feet and shuffled back to the house. The torch was in the console by the door. She yanked out the whole drawer, felt its heft, the momentum carrying her arm backwards. The thud as it hit the floor, scattering pens and notepads, takeaway menus in every direction. Then she was back outside, following the quivering light, feeling a dread in her chest so profound it doubled her over.
He’s just run off, she told herself, he’ll be back.
“Please be OK,” she whispered.
Elena cast the light in a wide arc. Her eyes were squinting, searching. She ran around the house. It seemed to take forever to get to the back of the garden. She came to a stop near the vegetable patch, saw the mound. She swallowed hard, seemed to suck in all the available air. Her head was shaking.
No.
The torch slipped from her fingers. It made a soft thud on the dewy grass.
“No!”
The dog was lying on his side, eyes wide open. There was blood all over his fur. They had stabbed him, one long slit which went from his neck to his belly. Elena cradled his tiny head, felt her shoulders shake violently. No sound, just pure grief. It sloughed off her skin and formed a cloud like a fine mist above her head, as though her body could not contain all this suffering. As though it sought release, the way water found its own level, but there was none, only salty tears and bile so bitter it made her gag. “Rafi, no. No, no, no, no.”
She pushed herself to her knees, carrying the dog in her arms, and stumbled towards the gate. She would take him to the water, one last time. As she walked out to the fire trail, she was aware of nothing but the hollow thud of her footsteps in her ears.
The trail was still dark, mottled shadows and uneven ground waiting to catch a misplaced foot. She went downhill, right down to the main road, then back in the other direction. Again and again, willing her legs to do her bidding, without any idea of what she was doing, until every outline of every tree and shrub began to look the same. She turned and fell twice, three times, scrambled to her feet. Her robe had snagged on a branch and she’d lost her slippers, but she barely noticed. When her knees hit the shale of the limestone path one more time, Elena didn’t get up. Couldn’t. The scream that broke from her now filled the air.
“I’m sorry, Rafi,” she whispered through streaming tears. She tried wiping them away, but only managed to transfer the gritty dirt from her hands. Her eyes stung. She blinked hard, but could still only make out the blurred shape of things, a dark wash of shape and suggestion. Everything around her was silent, even the birds had quieted. “I’m so sorry.”
Her beloved pet gone in an instant. Blood was thicker than water, they said at Children’s Services without a shred of irony. No matter what. All the while Nathan Anderson – manipulative, cunning, evil – plotted his next move from the luxury of his government-sponsored accommodation. Fear by proxy. Elena saw in her mind the sneering face of Dave, one hand filled with her hair, her head jerked sideways as he muttered threats, making sure she knew he meant business. This would never end. No matter what.
Down on the bay a fishing boat rumbled past, the unmistakable chug-chug-chug of a trawler heading towards the snapper grounds. The light had sharpened, taking on the greyish-blue wash of early morning. She closed her eyes again, listened to the sounds floating up from the water: more boats and the call of an ibis. There was another silence, a longer one this time, the air dense with the weight of what had happened and what was yet to come.
She pulled him tighter to her chest, his tiny body now in rigor, eyes clouded over. She considered digging him a spot at the bottom of the hill, at the edge of the sand. But that would not do. She needed to bury him in the garden so Daniel would have a grave to mourn at. Finally, slowly, Elena got to her feet. She looked up, face to the sky, her eyes searching the clouds for some meaning to all this. They were rounded grey puffs, the scattered rosettes of a snow leopard. They were so beautiful, almost mocking.
She walked. Went down to the shed. Down behind it she dug a hole, stumbling and slipping, barely able to break the earth. When, finally, it was deep enough, she wrapped him in a towel she’d pulled from the line, and placed him down carefully. She crouched down, whispered into the earth once more. “I’ll make them pay,” she said softly. “I promise you.”
Then she got slowly to her feet, and walked towards the house. There were clouds gathered high above the roofline, grey and oppressive. It had started to rain.
She went into the kitchen and sat down at the table. She didn’t see Daniel standing in the doorway, armed with his plastic lightsaber and the Cloudjumper.
“What happened?” he asked. His face was stricken.
She looked up so fast her head spun and for a second she thought she might vomit.
“What?”
“What happened?” he asked again, pointing to her robe. “Did you get hurt?”
She lowered her eyes to the mushroom of blood on her chest, a short gasp escaping her. When she spoke her voice was barely above a whisper.
“Come sit with me, darling. I have something I need to tell you.”
“I’m just so sorry, bub.”
Daniel didn’t look up. They were standing around the back of the shed, in front of the raised hump of dirt, as his mother tried to explain what had happened. The dim light glinted off the corrugated iron, made him squint. His eyes filled with tears. They ran down his cheeks and into the corners of his mouth, tasted salty like the ocean.
“Some bad men hurt him,” she said.
He kicked at the mound with his shoe.
“They came in the middle of the night. I’m so sorry, darling. It all happened so quickly – I didn’t know what happened until it was too late.”
Daniel could tell she was trying not to cry by the way she bit down on her bottom lip really hard. There were white marks on it where her teeth had left indents. But her eyes were red and puffy, and he knew she’d already been crying, that she was just trying to be brave in front of him.
“Mama.”
“Yes,” she said softly.
“Do you think he’s cold?”
She shook her head. “I wrapped him in a towel. So he stays nice and warm, for always.”
“Did you say goodbye?”
She smiled wanly. “I did.”
Daniel saw the tears running down her cheeks now, and the way she wiped them away with the back of her hand, how they kept coming anyway.
He turned his face up to her. “Can I say goodbye too?”
She put her arm around him, squeezed tight. “Of course you can. And you can tell him that you love him. That you’ll never forget him. Not ever.”
“He already knows that,” he said, his voice cracking.
He knelt on the ground and pushed down the loose earth around the edges. He thought of Rafi’s big eyes and his floppy ears, his always wagging tail. He remembered the way he barked in his sleep and woke himself up. In the mornings, Rafi jumped on his chest until he sat up. Daniel picked a couple of shells from the grass, and placed them in the middle of the mound. Then he shifted sideways and lay his cheek onto the cool dirt, and sobbed until his mother came and wrapped her arms around him, pressed her lips to the back of his head.
Mama sat back up, pulled him into her lap. She gently wiped the tears from his face, the dirt from his clothes, held him tight. Daniel rested his cheek against her shoulder. When he spoke again, his voice was muffled in the folds of her cardigan.
“It was my dad, wasn’t it?”
“Sorry?”
“It was my dad. He sent the bad men to hurt Rafi.”
Mama sucked in air. “Yes,” she said.
“I told you he’d come.”
“You did. And I should have listened.”
“What are we going to do now?” Daniel asked. “Are they going to come for us too?”
“No.” His mother shook her head. “I’ll never let that happen.”
Daniel saw the way her expression darkened, like a cloud passing, and he knew she meant every word. He knew that she would do everything she could to keep him safe. But he knew his dad too. And that filled him with a fresh panic, his heartbeat racing, a sudden surge.
“You promise?” he whispered.
“I promise.”
He clutched her even tighter.