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“On the back of manslaughter, theft, and fraud. A whole empire built on it.”
“No, Will. You had no choice. You did what you had to do to save Pete, to save yourself.”
He grunted. The clogging in his throat was guilt and shame. It was getting harder to speak past it. “You always have a choice. We had a choice. We could’ve run, gone to the police, talked to any other adult. I even lied about the burn. At the hospital I covered our injuries by saying we were brawling and I’d fallen in the fire.”
Darcy sat, set the hammock rocking. “You had no choice. You were a victim doing no more than fighting back. Nothing in the rest of your life ties back to this.”
He went to contradict her and she jammed a hand over his mouth. “Not Feng Kee. The man came at you with a knife, and threatened to kill you. Self-defence in anyone’s eyes with the added bonus of the fact you didn’t kill him.”
He lay there with her hand sealing his mouth, feeling flattened by the realisation she didn’t understand the thing about power and responsibility, about shame and what it meant to him.
She scrambled out of the hammock, gave it a shove so it tipped him out. “Get dressed. We’re going to the creek.”
“No.” He lunged for her and missed. She skipped into the house and he could hear her in the bedroom. He followed her in. “No.”
She’d wriggled into shorts and was pulling on shoes. “Coward.”
Good bait, but not going to catch him. He sat on the edge of the bed. “Be careful down there. The sand can be soft on the edge. There might be branches you can’t see.”
She gave him hands on hips, full-on diva with demands. “You’re coming with me.”
“You’ll pardon me declining the extreme pleasure.”
“Fucking coward.”
It was probably the swear word. And knowing she’d go down there alone. It got him off the bed. Darcy was already on the verandah doing up shoelaces. He found his jeans, shoved his feet into boots and snagged a t-shirt off the floor.
She was halfway across the paddock before he got to the verandah steps. He stomped back inside for his sunglasses. He put Bo’s chicken back in the fridge and wondered vaguely if he’d blown it by leaving it out on the bench too long in the heat. He realised his hands were shaking when he put the kettle on; that he was so anxious about going down there he’d do anything to avoid it, built this whole house to avoid it. And she was right again.
He’d spent his whole life trying not to be a coward or a victim. He grabbed his hat and a cap for Darcy and went after her.
She was standing under one of the giant gums. She smiled at him so serenely he had to wonder at her fortitude. His own stamina was severely strained.
“It’s incredibly pretty here. Peaceful.”
“That’s what Bo said.” He handed her the cap.
“How do you see it?”
He was seeing it lit by the moon, veiled in night. He should’ve been hearing birds and bush sounds, but his ears were ringing with Norman’s rough, slurred voice calling his name with increasing terror, and then the composed silence, the undercurrent whir of mosquitoes. He took his sunnies off and flung them away. Hard afternoon light was better than the shadows.
“Can you swim here?”
She wasn’t going in. No way, he wasn’t going to let her go in there. She’d dropped the cap and kneeled to undo her laces. He grabbed her arm and reefed her upright. “Come back to the house.”
“Ow, Will,” she pulled her arm back. “I’m disgustingly hot and filthy with you. I need a swim.”
“I have a perfectly good shower in the house.” Where he knew he’d feel a whole lot less like he was going to have a heart attack.
She got rid of her shorts. “And a perfectly lovely waterhole in your backyard.”
She stepped out of his reach, and he saw he’d left red fingermarks on her arm. She went to the edge, where the water lapped the bank. This part of the creek was more a pond than anything else, and unless it was running a banker after heavy rain, there was only a slight current. Drowning here was the bush equivalent of drowning in the bath but watching her, this close to the water, was making his skin crawl.
“Please come back to the house.”
“No, Will. You need a new memory of this place and I’m it.” She looked him square in the face and popped the studs on the shirt. “Come in with me.”
“No.?
