“Rita. Jesus.” Frustration with the situation was making him irritable. He could not open that door. “Please, can we not—”
“What?”
“Pretend that’s something I’m ever going to do. Please?”
“All right.”
She dropped it, as Falk had known she would. Instead, she simply reached out and rested her hand gently on his arm. He looked out at the night.
“I barely know her, Rita.”
“I know.”
They sat there a little longer, listening to the voices drifting from the house. Falk looked at the darkened barn, so still and silent compared with earlier. He thought back to lunch. It seemed a long time ago now.
“Charlie and Rohan are still on speaking terms, are they?” Falk said.
“After a fun little public dalliance questioning Zoe’s paternity? I think so. They’re as okay as they ever really are.”
“There’s nothing in it, I’m guessing?” Falk would be surprised. Zoe looked very much like Rohan.
Rita was already shaking her head. “I highly doubt it. Not just Zoe’s features now, but because Charlie’s right—Kim would never have done that to Rohan. It wasn’t in her nature.” She paused. “Not in Charlie’s, either, no matter what he says. It was all stupid, anyway. When Zoe was born she looked like Kim more than anyone. It’s just that Kim had similar coloring to Charlie and the rest of them.”
A babble of chatter rose from the house, and they both looked over. Falk could hear a voice that sounded like Raco’s, although it could have been one of his brothers’。 He couldn’t make out the words.
“Greg’s worried, though,” Rita said. “About the whole thing with Kim.”
Falk frowned. “Yeah. It feels like it’s never sat right with him.”
“There’s something more, though. He’s mulling over things, I can tell. It’s been hard to find time to talk properly these last few days, but he’s got that look.” Rita swirled her water in her glass as she stared at the house. “He’s never liked the fact Kim left Zoe alone. He’s always thought that was out of character.”
Falk thought back to the festival grounds the day before. How do you get a parent to do anything? Threaten their child. Maybe character didn’t come into it. He looked over at Rita now.
“Were you surprised Kim would leave Zoe like that?” he said.
“The Kim I knew? Yes. Definitely. But I hadn’t seen her in person for a couple of years.” Rita frowned. “I’ll tell you this, though. Being a new mother can be very, very hard. We know Kim was already on medication for depression, and some babies are a nightmare. You’re not supposed to say it out loud, but they are. They wreck you. I mean, Henry’s quite mellow, but Eva?” She pressed her lips together. “And Kim had dragged her six-week-old all the way out here to see her teenage daughter, who had canceled on her, anyway. So she was probably feeling pressure to come to the festival, bring this baby along, and it’s noisy and crowded, and her husband’s heading off early to meet his parents. And suddenly she’s all alone in the dark, and maybe her medication is unbalanced after the birth, maybe she’s still in pain at times. And now she’s stuck with this baby who’s playing up yet again, and it’s all simply too much. So she goes for a walk on her own.”
Rita looked across at Falk. They were both silent for a moment.
“That’s what I think. Because I can see it happening.”
Falk nodded slowly. He said nothing.
“And the thing is,” Rita said, “Zoe was relatively safe. I mean, it’s not ideal, obviously. But she was tucked up in the stroller. She was warm, clean, away from the elements. That stroller bay is surrounded by festival staff, it’s full of parents coming and going. It was always highly likely someone responsible would find her.” She shook her head. “If I imagine what might have been going through Kim’s head that night, I can think of much worse outcomes. Much worse.”
Falk looked out at the blackness. He could think of some, too.
“Sergeant Dwyer doesn’t believe Kim didn’t talk to anyone she knew that night,” he said. “But I guess if she was already feeling isolated—”
Rita nodded as she reached over and refilled their glasses. “And look, don’t say this to anyone but Greg—and even he doesn’t fully agree with me—but I didn’t grow up here so I have a slightly different view on things.”
“And what’s that?”
Rita put the bottle down, her eyes on the house. The windows were glowing, and someone had put on some music. Through the veranda doors, Falk could now see Raco moving about as he made coffee, a long string of mugs lined up.
“I love these people here,” Rita said. “All of them, I mean, not just my family. And not because I have to get along with them, but because they are warm and genuine and kind. But whether they’d admit it or not, honestly whether they’d even recognize it, there was a rift when Kim and Rohan got together. There’d always been this…” She reached for the right words. “Unspoken expectation, I guess, that Kim and Charlie would eventually end up back together. And when Kim and Rohan got married, they broke that. I mean, they didn’t really break anything, obviously. Kim and Charlie had split up, there was nothing there to break. But logic doesn’t stop feelings. And we can all get along and co-parent and raise a glass to the bride and groom, and Charlie can pay for as much wedding wine as he likes, but the fact is that sides were taken. For all sorts of reasons, because we have connections through this place, through our lives and work and family. And Kim knew that. She’d made a choice. A perfectly legitimate one. But when the dust settled, even Zara ended up here with Charlie.”
Falk watched Rita. For possibly the first time ever, she didn’t seem able to meet his eye.
“I don’t need to tell you, Aaron, what it’s like to suddenly feel exiled from your own community by people you trusted,” she said softly. “But I can imagine it’s hard.”
Yes, Falk thought as he stared out into the dark. It was very hard.
They sat together for a long stretch of silence until finally he looked over. Rita was still staring into her lap, guilt on her face. This time it was Falk who put his hand on hers.
“Did anyone talk to Kim about any of this?” he said eventually.
“I don’t think so. Not directly, anyway,” Rita said. “The closest was not long after Kim’s engagement. Zara heard her and Charlie having this stupid fight. Probably nothing that blew up into something, but he told Kim she was making a mistake, that Rohan wasn’t right for her. Don’t come crying to him when she realized that. That sort of thing.”
“And what happened?”
Rita gave a sad shrug. “They were angry for a few days but had to keep it civil for Zara. Neither of them usually had the energy to sustain a grudge, so they made up. But the damage was done, you know? By everyone, really. Kim had been told. She’d made her bed. So a couple of years later, when Kim’s struggling, and maybe her head’s not quite right, and it’s all feeling too much—does it surprise me she didn’t come to any of us?” Rita gazed out over the silent vineyard. “I’d love to say it did. But no. It doesn’t at all.”