Another pause. Percy appreciated being checked on, but he wasn’t ready to speak about Polly or the serendipity of her turning up by the water hole that day. As it was, his son’s continued maintenance ofthe place was a subject they rarely broached. They were alike, he and Kurt, each very private, nursing his feelings close.
“Have you had a think about the Lobethal Lights next weekend? Sal thought you might like to stay up here with us overnight. Marcus will be back in town by then. He said he’d come—bring the kids.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Percy ended the call as a night bird flew overhead in the dark. His eldest son was happy; he and Sally were one of those married couples who were friends and equals before anything else, his kids were terrific, he seemed to have found an occupation that brought him peace and fulfillment. But Percy wondered sometimes whether Kurt still thought about Matilda Turner each year when the signs went up for the Lobethal Lights. It often came to Percy’s mind: the plans his son had made to see the lights with her that Christmas.
Percy was suddenly tired, ready for bed. He took up his teacup, tossed the cool dregs over the side of the balcony, and went inside. He closed the door behind him and rinsed the cup beneath running water at the sink.
It was Marcus who had gone on to the university. Funny how things worked out in the end. A determination had gripped him after the Turner deaths, and he’d dedicated himself to a pursuit of the law. For a long time, they’d only ever seen him at Christmas. He’d come back, because it was important to Meg, and then he’d disappear again. They’d find him mentioned in the newspaper every so often, protesting for this cause, representing that one in court, angering those in positions of authority, championing the powerless. He’d always had a sharply defined set of values. He and Meg were alike in that: no room in either outlook for shades of gray.
It wasn’t until after Meg’s funeral that they finally talked for the first time about what had happened. Everyone had come to Summers & Sons for drinks—the whole town had wanted to pay their respects, cramming into the shop and spilling out onto the pavement—and then, after they left, Marcus, Percy, and Kurt had sat with a bottle ofwhisky, reminiscing. Finally, Kurt had stumbled home, leaving just the two of them.
Marcus was in his thirties by then. He’d gained enough life experience to bruise the black and white out of his moral outlook. He wanted to apologize, he said, for not understanding how hard it must have been for Percy to lose Isabel. “In among all the rest of it,” he said, “I didn’t perceive back then that you’d have been experiencing a personal grief, too.”
“Thanks, mate,” Percy said. “I appreciate it.” And he had.
“I was so angry,” Marcus said. “After I saw the two of you, all I could think of was Mum. I used to lie awake at night, listening to my records, plotting ways to punish Mrs. Turner for coming into our family and ruining things.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“I know, I know.”
“There’s no need—”
“There is, though, Dad. There’s something I have to tell you.”
Percy had had a lot to drink by then. They both had. He wasn’t ordinarily a big drinker, and it didn’t take much to make his head swim. He was unprepared as Marcus continued:
“I went down to Port Willunga, and I caught a puffer. After old Buddy died, you’d warned us off them, said just as they’d killed Buddy they could make a person poorly. I had some vague notion it was just what Mrs. Turner deserved.”
Caught a puffer? What she deserved? Percy heard the words his son was speaking, but his mind was taking longer than it might have to assign them meaning. He shook his head as if to clear it.
“God only knows how I thought I was going to make her eat it.”
Percy suddenly saw where this was going. “But you didn’t, mate? You didn’t do anything as stupid as that?”
“No, thank God.”
Percy felt relief like a flood of nerves from one end of his body to the other.
“I could’ve, though. You remember what I was like.”
Percy did.
“Thankfully Mum found me in time. She was livid, I can tell you. Made me tell her what on earth was on my mind. I was so panicked—I told her, Dad. I told her why I’d been so upset, about you and Mrs. Turner. She gave me a big hug and said not to worry. That everything was all right. And she took the fish off me and made me promise I’d never do anything so stupid again.”
Percy shut off the lights on his way to bed. He cleaned his teeth, plugged in his phone to charge, and then opened his window so he could listen to the ocean if he woke in the night.
Percy had never believed that Isabel had done it. It was impossible; besides, he knew that she’d been making plans to leave the country. But he had been in no position to be giving statements of that nature to the police, and someone else—an unnamed source was how they put it—had told them something that convinced them otherwise. He’d had no choice but to watch from afar and trust that they would figure it all out correctly in the end. As time went by, and they failed to uncover the truth, he told himself that it made no difference to him. The way the Turner family died, the open finding, the questions about the poison—what did it matter? She was gone.
And then, for years, nothing. Until the night after they buried Meg, and Marcus told him what he’d almost done. Percy had had too much to drink for it to hit him hard in that moment, but he had lain awake in bed afterward thinking about the boy his youngest son had been: headstrong and loud, but good and kind and loyal to a fault. He’d thought, too, about the aftermath of the Turner tragedy and the white-hot fear he’d felt for Kurt. The irony wasn’t lost on him, as he finally fell asleep, that all along he’d been trying to protect the wrong kid.
Marcus’s story came back to him like a bad dream when he wokethe next morning, like something he’d seen on television years before and only half remembered. Now, though, it wasn’t his sons he was thinking of: his thoughts fell on Meg. Marcus had mentioned that his mother took the pufferfish from him, and the recollection made Percy think of something else. Something Meg had said, right near the end.
It was a merciless, messy time. She’d been dosed up on morphine, and the medication had knocked her sideways. She’d thought she was a little girl sometimes; at others, she’d believed they were just married. On occasion, she was angry with him. “I know what you’ve been doing,” she’d say, with a bitterness so acute that it made him wonder. “I see that dreamy look in your eyes. I know where it is you go.”
And then, one day: “I took it from him, Perce. I stopped him.”
