She said, ‘But just because it wasn’t reported –’
‘Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,’ finished Ethan.
He listened. Rare for a private school boy.
‘Remember your ABC?’ she said suddenly, on impulse, as Ethan turned off the car ignition.
He didn’t hesitate. ‘Accept nothing. Believe nothing. Check everything.’
Her mood elevated. Maybe they had their rhythm.
She gave him an avuncular thumbs-up, opened the car door, got out, straightened her jacket and tugged hard on her shirt.
Somewhere in the distance an ice-cream truck played its familiar tinkling chords.
*
Two hours later the house no longer looked quite so benign. Blue and white checked police tape hung from the letterbox and ended at the side fence.
Christina had put in a request for a crime scene warrant and sealed the house immediately following her interview with Mr Stanley Delaney.
The interview had told her both nothing new and everything she needed to know. This evening’s bridesmaid dress fitting was going to have to go ahead without the bride. Her phone was aquiver with outraged texts from outraged cousins.
Christina didn’t care. She was reserving her outrage for Mrs Joy Delaney, because her husband was a liar.
chapter eleven
Last September
It was mid-morning when Logan Delaney drove down his parents’ street a little over the speed limit, his head ducked low so as to avoid eye contact with friendly neighbours out washing their cars or walking their dogs.
If the Volvo was in the driveway he might circle the cul-de-sac and keep going, because he wasn’t in the mood for solo conversations with the parents. He preferred to have his siblings around to take some of the heat. Being an only child must be hell.
The Volvo wasn’t in the driveway so he pulled in. He got out and shielded his eyes as he looked up at the house gutters clogged with leaves from the liquidambars.
He checked the vintage-style letterbox – a present from Troy, naturally – in case there was any mail to bring in.
He wore paint-stained track pants, an old t-shirt and runners. He hadn’t shaved and he was a man who looked like a criminal when he didn’t shave. His hair stuck up in tufts. His mother would say he looked like a hobo. He was a big, solid guy and he knew he should dress more respectably because women sometimes crossed to the other side of the street if they saw him walking behind them at night. He always wanted to shout out his apologies. ‘Oh, that’s exactly what you should do, Logan, in fact you should run after them shouting, “I mean you no harm, fair lady!”’ his sister Amy said once, and then she’d laughed so much at her own joke he’d been morally obliged to throw her in the pool. Troy’s rooftop pool: it had an infinity edge.
His mother had asked him to do the gutters in that way she had of asking without really asking.
‘Oh, gosh, Logan, you should see the leaves in this wind! What’s going on? Climate change? They’re just rocketing down,’ she’d said on the phone last week.
‘You want me to do the gutters?’ Logan had said. Climate change. His mother threw certain phrases around at random to make sure they knew she was up to date with current affairs and listened to podcasts.
‘Your dad says he’s perfectly fine doing them.’
‘I’ll swing by next week,’ he’d said.
After Logan’s dad celebrated his seventieth birthday with a torn ligament and a complicated knee reconstruction, the family had begun playing with the idea that Stan was ‘elderly’。 It was a nurse who first used the word. ‘Elderly people can suffer confusion and short-term memory loss after anaesthetic,’ she’d said as she checked their sleeping father’s blood pressure, and Logan saw all of his siblings jerk their heads in a mutual shocked shift of perspective.
‘It’s like seeing Thor in a hospital gown,’ Amy had whispered. Their dad had never been sick, apart from his bad knees, and seeing him diminished and acquiescent in that hospital bed had been distressing, even though their father suddenly opened his eyes and said very clearly to the poor nurse in his startlingly deep voice, ‘Nothing wrong with my memory, sweetheart.’
He had fully recovered and was once again winning tournaments with their mother, but the ‘elderly’ idea had persisted. Dad shouldn’t climb ladders. Dad needs to know his limitations. Dad needs to watch what he eats. Logan wasn’t sure if they were all jumping the gun. Maybe they enjoyed it. Maybe it made them all feel like they were finally grown-ups, worrying about an elderly parent who didn’t really need their concern yet. Maybe there was even satisfaction in it: Thor toppled at last. Although Logan wouldn’t be surprised if his father could still beat him in an arm wrestle, and he had no doubt at all that he could still beat him on the court. His father knew his strengths, his weaknesses, his strategies. Logan was powerless against all that knowledge. Ten years old again: hands sweaty, heart thumping. Jesus, he’d wanted to beat his dad so badly.