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Dawn thrust the police station door open. A young female officer with a tight bun pulling her hair back so harshly her eyes appeared oriental, made eye contact before Dawn reached the counter.
‘I want to speak with Sergeant Martin or Detective Ryan, now! And don’t tell me they aren’t here. I saw Ross’s car out the front.’
The officer on duty opened her mouth but didn’t get a chance to try and talk Dawn down. She must have yelled at the top of her voice, because the side door to the main office area opened to reveal Sergeant Martin scowling from the doorway.
‘Get in here!’
He stepped aside and waved his hand. Dawn was vaguely aware of Michael right behind her, but they hadn’t spoken a word since she leapt down the staircase like a woman with her hair on fire and jumped into her rental camper.
Dawn’s chest thudded. All she could hear, as she followed Sergeant Martin through the hallway into his office, was the blood rushing in her ears. Her entire body began to shake.
Michael slipped in a second before the sergeant slammed the door closed and pointed to a seat in front of his desk.
Dawn scanned the room, but the detective wasn’t present.
‘What the hell is wrong with you?’
Dawn refused to sit. Instead, she paced back and forth, her back stiff, her neck stiffer.
‘Lisa has a daughter. She’s missing too.’
Martin frowned. It wasn’t the earlier scowl—more a confused expression forcing Dawn to stop before saying the next thing on her tongue.
‘You didn’t know about Abby?’
‘Abby.’ Dawn shook her head. ‘No.’
She slid into the seat before her legs gave out.
‘I assumed you knew you had a niece. Abby isn’t a secret. She goes to the local school. Don’t you talk with your sister?’
‘How old?’
‘Six. Precocious little kid. Reminds me a lot of you, actually.’
‘Six.’
Dawn’s stomach knotted and flipped as acid rose in her throat. Six years, nearly seven if you count the pregnancy. Lisa had said nothing.
‘We talk ... well, Lisa talks, I listen—when I answer her calls.’
Dawn saw the sergeant’s expression change and drew a long, slow breath.
‘Lisa has been obsessed with Fraser’s death and ... you know, what we saw when we were kids. But I left town to get away, start again fresh.’
Dawn sat back in the chair. Her heart rate slowing, but the tension wasn’t gone.
‘I don’t take her calls often. Her subject matter depresses me. And I’m busy with work.’
Sergeant Martin nodded like he understood, then shook his head sideways like he didn’t get it at all.
Dawn remembered Michael and turned.
He leant against the back wall of the sergeant’s office, listening, his expression hard to read. She’d worked for twenty years to keep her history buried and here she was spilling it out in front of a complete stranger.
Rising, she pulled herself together, a decision made in her own mind. One that no one, least of all Sergeant Martin, was going to like.
‘I’m calling work and prolonging my break. I’m not going anywhere while Lisa and Abby are missing. Have you found Lisa’s phone yet? Got her call log?’
Sergeant Martin chewed his lip, leant back in his chair, steepled his fingers under his chin and studied her face in silence—for a long time. Too long.
‘You know I’m not going to give up.’
‘You did twenty years ago.’
The words hit her in the gut like a sucker punch, but it was nothing compared to the day she left town.
The funeral wasn’t a celebration of life. It was a dark, rainy day, not unlike today. The clouds thundered overhead. Trees swayed and bent over in the pre-cyclonic winds. The rain started as the coffin was pulled from the hearse and didn’t let up.
The local minister asked their dad if he wanted to delay the funeral for the weather, but he shook his head.
The words he said that dark, stormy day stuck in Dawn’s mind like a bad movie rerun now.
‘Just get on with it Jamie.’
The minister nodded, pulled out his Bible and began the service, while everyone popped umbrellas.
She scanned the faces in her mind now. Everyone consisted of Constable Martin, in uniform. Lisa, her dad, Fraser’s best mate Lachie and his parents, and a few faces she couldn’t recall now, after so many years.
In any small rural Australian town, the death of a local youth, even one who committed suicide, would have brought out hundreds of mourners, even in foul weather. But on that day, they were nowhere in sight.
And the reason everyone stayed away was a lie. A complete and utter fabricated lie. Dawn had spent the weeks leading up to the funeral trying to prove it, but no one, not even Sergeant Martin believed her back then.
After watching the coffin disappear into the ground and listening to the kind words of Reverend Jamie Norris, Dawn had turned and gone home to pack.
She hadn’t been back to town since, not even for her own father’s funeral.