“What did it say?”
“Well, I didn’t read it.”
“No, no, of course not.”
“And even if I had, I’m not in the habit of breaking the confidence of the people I care for.”
“I’m sure that’s true.”
“It’s only that I was so worried about her.”
“I understand. What did you see?”
“I noticed it because the envelope had an official look about it. Ialways open and sort Nora’s mail for her, so I’ve come to know what’s usual. This letter was from a law firm.”
Jess tried not to sigh too loudly into the phone. It was kind of him to want to help, but Nora had a lot of business interests and received mountains of mail; a lawyer’s letter was nothing out of the ordinary. “Do you remember the name of the firm?”
“No. But as far as I’m aware, all of Nora’s business is in New South Wales. Isn’t that right?”
“I think so, yes.”
“This solicitor, the one whose letter upset her, was writing from South Australia.”
11
Adelaide Hills
December 25, 1959
Meg and the boys were asleep at last, and Percy was alone. He was halfway through the last of Esther Hughes’s mercy cigarettes, and his wristwatch said that it was ten past two. The worst of the storm had passed for now, but rain was still falling. In rare moments, the three-quarter moon appeared between leaden clouds, illuminating the tops of the hundred-year-old oaks that lined the main street. Percy could never look at those oaks without thinking of his mother. She’d talked often about their planting, especially when there was something going on in town that, to her mind, smacked of shortsightedness; worse, self-interest. “My grandmother was a girl when they planted those trees. None of the adults there that day lived to see them grow to full height. People were wiser back then, and less selfish. They understood that they were part of a line, not the beginning, middle, and end of it.”
From where he was standing, Percy could glimpse only the leafy tops. This spot, on the narrow verandah that ran along the back of the small wattle-and-daub building in the rear corner of their lot, had been his special place when he was a boy and needed somewhere to hide from his parents. The coach house, as they’d called it, had been a general-use storage building back then, home to snakes, spiders, and an odd assortment of possessions deemed too good to be thrown away. In the years since, it had been repurposed as accommodation. He and Meg had fixed it up, back when they were first married.
It had been a good solution, far enough from the main house and shopfront, with a vegetable garden laid out in between, and they’d soon settled into a rhythm. Meg got on well with Percy’s parents,even his dad. She’d been one of the few people who did and, in a funny way, it had brought him closer to his father. It took years for Percy to understand that Meg and his father were alike in certain ways. They’d both survived hardship as kids and the concealed scars, carried into adulthood, made them wary of change and inclined to grip tightly to the things they had.
Percy started. He’d heard a noise nearby. Above the rain and the water gurgling through the downpipes had come the crying of a small animal craving shelter and warmth. He strained, listening, but the sound didn’t come again. His nerves were shot. Little wonder, with the evening he’d had. He leaned back against the post of the coach house, glad to have something firm behind him. He could remember painting the posts and rails out here, he and Meg together, spending every spare hour getting it ready. They’d been young and excited, all of it ahead. Things had felt so solid then.
The plan had been to stay just until they could afford something for themselves, but life had a way of upending the plans of those foolish enough to make them. They lost the baby. A little girl, born perfect in every way but for her failure to draw breath. Then the war started, and his dad died, and it made sense to stay close enough to help his mum. Truth be told, she and Meg were a support to each other. When the boys came along, and the family started to outgrow the small building at the back of the lot, they’d moved into the main house, and Susan Summers, glad to be somewhere more snug, had taken up residency in the coach house.
It had lain dormant since she passed. Lately, though, there’d been some talk from Kurt, keen to claim the space for himself. It hadn’t come to anything yet, but Percy wasn’t opposed to the idea. Anything to keep the boy happy at home, make things easier financially so he could take up a spot at the university when the time came.
He and Kurt had gone down to Adelaide together to see the campus some months ago. A beautiful spring day and Percy had parked the car on North Terrace, near the gallery. The grand stone universitybuilding next door was like something out of a Victorian novel and he’d felt like Jude the Obscure, circling his way around the edge of academic life with all his private reading and thinking. He’d fumbled the keys hopping out of the car and dropped them into the gutter. His own deficiency had struck him like a brick. But not Kurt. “Come on, Dad,” he’d said, with a wink. “Let’s go see if it’s up to scratch.”
Percy had been awed at the way his son walked into the place like he hadn’t a care in the world, as if he already belonged within those hallowed halls. A few years back, a lad from Adelaide had been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University. Kurt’s teacher at the Tambilla and District High School had said that Kurt, too, had the potential to go all the way. The key would be getting him to focus. His easygoing nature was his greatest gift; it was also his biggest hurdle. Calm and caring, inclined to see the best in people and places, he was predisposed to expect the same in return. It was as if, having fought to survive his premature birth, he’d arrived sure of his place on earth. Even as a baby, he’d been a breeze.
Chalk and cheese, in that respect, their boys. They’d joked after Marcus was born that just when you thought you’d got the hang of the game, another one came along and changed the rules. Marcus had been two years old before he slept through the night and there were times when nothing seemed to placate him. It wasn’t until he grew old enough to speak that they’d understood he was a small person with big emotions. “He’s passionate,” they’d told one another. He’d had firm ideas about fairness, too. “A bit black and white at times,” they’d said with weary smiles, “but he means well.” Then, somewhat hopefully, “He’ll come good in the end.” And he had. He’d blossomed into a real fine kid, loyal as could be, and kind, too, always advocating for others, collecting strays and standing up for lost causes. Moody lately, but that was part and parcel of being fourteen.
Percy looked across the night-black garden toward the rear of the main house, the dark upstairs windows of his sons’ bedrooms. If either boy were to glance through the glass, he might notice the tinyorange tip of a cigarette in the far back corner. But Percy was confident they wouldn’t. They were asleep and he knew he was alone. For as long as he could remember, he’d had an almost animal instinct for such things. Senses honed over the long period of bed-bound confinement he’d endured as a lad.
If he and Meg agreed on one thing, it was their fierce determination to protect their sons. The search party had stayed out long after the rain started to fall heavily. Both boys had returned home together, drenched and muddy, around ten o’clock. Neither had volunteered much, each as quiet as he’d seen them. But Percy had been able to glean that Jimmy had told them any tracks left by dogs—or humans—were long gone, washed away by the rain. There was talk of starting up again the next morning, but no one held out much hope.
Marcus had kicked off his boots and gone straight to his room, shrinking from Percy’s attempt at comfort. The door upstairs closed loudly behind him and moments later strains of Buddy Holly began drifting through the floorboards. Meg, who’d come rushing in to see that they’d arrived safely, towels at the ready so they wouldn’t catch their deaths, disappeared again quickly, leaving him alone with Kurt.
She was intuitive like that. She knew what he wanted, even if he’d decided against mentioning to her Sergeant Duke’s interest in their boy. She’d been distressed when he came in from the police station. Along with the rest of the town, she’d already heard what had happened. Percy could tell how upset she was by the glass of sherry she’d poured: Meg was a teetotaler, having suffered at the hands of her old man’s drink-fueled rages, and although she hadn’t touched it, the mere fact of the small glass of deep burgundy liquor was proof of how shocked she’d been by the afternoon’s events. She listened carefully as Percy filled her in on the interview at the police station, raising her eyebrows slightly when he mentioned the sergeant from Adelaide. Then she took a deep breath and told him how the afternoon had run from her end.
The boys were still out with the search at that point, and he andMeg talked together about the Turner baby, trying to understand what had happened, wondering what was unfolding out there in the dark, stormy night.
“Will they find her, Perce?” Meg said at last, her voice weak with worry. “Will they figure out what happened?”
