Naomi hesitated, touching a hand to her chest.
“You know that adrenaline sensation,” she said, finally. “That you just dodged a bullet? Like when you hit the brakes in time and miss that other car? Or slip with a kitchen knife on the chopping board but get away with it? Well, that’s what it felt like out there with Kim. Like I’d come along and interrupted—” Naomi could tell she didn’t need to spell it out. “Well, you can both guess as well as I can. Something bad.”
14
“Did Kim say anything?” Falk watched Naomi across the table. “Once you had her back on the path?”
A light breeze swept through, rustling the vines below the veranda. The sun came out from behind a cloud and Naomi slipped her sunglasses on again. It made it hard to read her expression, but her mouth was a firm line as she shook her head.
“She was past the slurring stage even, so no. I walked her home. Helped her get into her bedroom without her parents realizing the state she was in.” She drained her water glass. “I went around to see her the next morning, though, to check if she was okay. Ask her what had gone on. God, she was so hungover. She did remember some parts, like arriving at the party, Charlie being a dickhead and her being upset about it, but after that—” Naomi’s eyes flickered behind her dark glasses. “Not much. Not deciding to leave, or who she left with—if anyone. Not me finding her, not getting home.”
“A lot of blank space there,” Raco said, frowning into the light.
“Yeah. I told her how I’d found her, what it looked like, but honestly, she seemed embarrassed as much as anything,” Naomi said. “I know it sounds stupid, sitting here as adults, but back then…” She shrugged. “Kim didn’t want Charlie or anyone at school finding out. And what can I tell you? I was a teenager myself and I thought no real harm had been done.” Naomi gave a dry, humorless laugh. Underneath, Falk sensed rather than heard that faint false note again. “So I did what she asked. Never brought it up again, never told anyone.”
Falk nodded slowly. “Until when? Last year?”
“Yep.” The word was clipped and Naomi’s face was set. “After Kim abandoned her newborn in a public place and walked off alone to take her own life a hundred meters from where it had happened. So at that point—yes, big pat on the back for me for finally stepping up. I told Sergeant Dwyer, because I thought—I still think—it was relevant to her state of mind.”
They were all quiet for a moment.
“It’s not a cop-out to say things were different back then, Naomi,” Raco said. “We were all young. And the three of us can sit here now thinking the word assault and considering consent issues under the influence because we’re both police and you’re a GP and it’s twenty-five years on. But that’s not always how it was. And definitely not when it came to teenage girls drinking at a party.”
“I know. I do. And I believed Kim at the time when she said she was okay. But, Jesus—” Naomi took off her glasses and ran a distracted hand through her hair. “It’s just so bloody sad. I wish I’d done things differently, that’s all.”
“Did Kim ever tell anyone else?” Falk asked.
Raco and Naomi exchanged a glance and shook their heads.
“I don’t think so,” Raco said. “The first I heard of it was in the week after she disappeared, when Dwyer asked me if I could tell him anything. It was news to Charlie and Shane as well, I know. Even Rohan, I’m pretty sure?” he said, and Naomi nodded.
“Yeah, she hadn’t told him, either.”
“Are you surprised she didn’t tell anyone?” Falk could tell Naomi had asked herself the same question, probably a few times. Still, she thought about it again now.
“Not really. I mean, she never mentioned it again to me, so I could imagine she didn’t talk about it to anyone else. It was almost like it had never happened until—”
Naomi stopped as Rita put her head out of the door. “Sorry to interrupt, Father Connor’s car’s pulled up.”
“Okay, thanks.” Raco finished his water and made to stand.
“So that’s why you cataloged the party photos?” Falk asked him, pushing back his own chair. “Working out who was there?”
Raco nodded. “It’s impossible, though. There were kids there who aren’t in the pictures, people I never knew and don’t remember. And where Naomi found Kim, it wasn’t far from that main reservoir track”—Naomi was nodding in confirmation—“so anyone could have come along there. Someone from the festival. Dog walker. Late-night jogger. You’d never know.”
From inside the house, they heard the front door close.
“That’s him.” Raco immediately straightened and hurried inside. Falk watched him go and suppressed a smile. Father Connor was in the building. Naomi caught his eye. She also looked a little amused, and the tightness in her face relaxed.
“Come on.” She stepped around the table, slipping her honed body through the gap between the chairs. “We’ll get through this together.” She linked her arm through Falk’s. “Do you have kids, Aaron?”
“No,” he said. “You?”
“Three.”
“Really?”
“They’re with my ex-husband for the school holidays.” She peered up at him from beneath her eyelashes. “You sound surprised.”
“Oh. No.” He was. Definitely.
“Sometimes people are,” she said with the kind of confidence unique to a woman who knew she looked spectacular in leggings, and Falk had to smile back.
A round, white-haired man who exuded the welcoming warmth of a freshly boiled kettle was already settled and waiting for them in the kitchen. He was slipping cookies from a plate on the table to Eva, who was cramming them into her mouth with gusto while Rita made coffee. Henry was dozing, so Raco passed him to Falk and then hovered, getting in everyone’s way.
Falk pulled up a chair next to Naomi, ready to engage in his first real conversation with a representative of the church since—when? He tried to think. Organizing his father’s funeral, possibly. Before that, he couldn’t remember. Falk had never been religious, but after a while he had to admit there was something innately soothing about sitting here in his friend’s sunny kitchen, drinking good coffee and holding his sleeping godson-to-be while listening to this affable man talk about how a child was a blessing and it took a village.
Afterward, Naomi asked a couple of questions that Falk suspected were more out of courtesy than confusion, and which Father Connor was delighted to answer. He finished by pumping their hands and congratulating them on their roles so enthusiastically that it was almost as though Falk and Naomi were the proud new parents themselves. As he rose to leave, Falk felt almost disappointed. He could have sat there longer.
“Well,” Naomi said, when she and Falk were alone again. She leaned back in her kitchen chair and smiled at him. Raco had taken Henry back, and the soft murmur of him and Rita saying goodbye to the priest floated along the hallway. “I think between us we’ll manage. What do you reckon?”