“At first, she refused to accept that Isabel could have done it. She was convinced that she’d have seen the signs and implored Dan to help her prove her sister-in-law’s innocence. As time went on, though, and other possibilities fell away, even she was forced to face the facts. But she refused to condemn Isabel. She kept trying to help Dan see the person beneath the despicable deed. She was a very loyal and loving friend.”
Jess remembered the way her grandmother always took her mother’s side if Jess was driven to complain. Even when Nora finally told Jess about the incident when she was a baby, she’d insisted on mounting a defense of her daughter. “She didn’t mean it... She didn’t know what she was doing... Something desperate came over her...” It was true what Nancy said: Nora was the very definition of loyal.
And now Jess wanted to do the right thing by her. “It would be really helpful for me to see the notebooks,” she said. “Do you think it’d be possible?”
“I’m afraid I can’t send them to you,” Nancy said apologetically. “But I can certainly scan some pages and email them. I have a client meeting in a minute, but I could do it later this afternoon. What are you interested in especially?”
Jess considered. The most pertinent facts had presumably ended up in the book. There was no point doubling up just to assuage her constitutional curiosity. To be honest, Isabel and the story ofHalcyon, while fascinating, was a side interest. Her focus had to be on her grandmother, finding out whether there was anything among Daniel Miller’s notes that might explain what was troubling her, why she had attempted to climb the stairs to the attic, or why she’d suddenly started worrying about Polly’s father appearing out of the blue to claim her. “Do you think you could send me Nora’s interviews?”
“Certainly.”
“And perhaps—” Through the phone, a doorbell rang distantly.
“Oh, shoot,” said Nancy. “That’s my meeting. Listen, I’m going to have to go. I’ll send across the scanned pages as soon as I can. But if you think of anything else, just let me know.”
Jess spent a frustrating couple of hours working on her article for the travel magazine. It was not going well, and the more she looked at it, the less she liked what she’d written. She couldn’t concentrate. Her thoughts weren’t with her in twenty-first-century Sydney; they were at Halcyon with Nora, waiting at the house on a hot Christmas Eve afternoon, the town of Tambilla yet to learn of the terrible tragedy that had played out on the banks of the creek on the Turner property.
Also: Nancy kept popping into her head, with her mentions of the Ghan and Uluru, and Jess couldn’t shake the sense of herself as a fraud. What business did she have anyway to be writing about this place as home? She’d been away for twenty years. She’d never seen a flock of wild budgies take flight. What did it mean to beofrather than merelyfromsomewhere?
Jess willed her phone to ping with an incoming email and put her out of her misery. Her conversation with Nancy had told her something of Daniel Miller’s process, but it hadn’t explained why Nora had pulled his book down off the shelf now.
She was curious, too, about Nancy’s claim that her uncle had been instrumental in helping police to solve the crime. Was it, as Jess suspected, because he’d reported to them whatever it was the reverend had told him?
When she caught herself glancing again at her email (still nothing new), Jess had to accept that she was no longer making progress—good or bad—on her article. With a short sigh of surrender, she put it aside and picked up her copy ofAs If They Were Asleep. Nancy had promised that she was about to meet the reverend...
As If They Were Asleep
Daniel Miller
Part Two
12
It had just gone five o’clock when Reverend Ned Lawson finally capped his pen. He had been working on his Christmas Eve message for the past week, hours spent sequestered in the vestry of St. George’s Anglican church. Now, at last, he was done, and not a moment too soon. Above the door, his clock ticked forward another minute. In half an hour, the church would be overrun with excited children dressed in their festive best.
He had decided to speak this year about John 1:14, picking up on the virtues of grace and truth, and the sometime struggle to embody both at once; theirs was a peaceful town, but there had been an element of disharmony rumbling along beneath the surface lately. He wasn’t certain whether it was simply a sign of the times, the modern age speeding things up and setting men’s tempers on edge, or whether there were more specific elements at work, but if the conversations he’d had with members of his congregation were any indication, many among them would welcome a soothing remark. Reverend Lawson felt certain that if the right words could be found, he would be able to set things on an even keel.
An ability to find the right words was something Reverend Lawson might have prided himself on, if pride had not been a sin hetook great pains to avoid. He enjoyed the performative aspect of his work, but it was here, at his desk, that he felt closest to his purpose. The Lord had given him the gift of wordsmithery, and thus it was his duty to put it to good use. His commitment to writing was one that predated his call to the ministry. No one knew it, but behind the cupboard door, in a neat set of file boxes, was every short story he’d ever written, along with the letters he’d received in return from magazine editors; also, the draft of his current work in progress, a novel in the pulp fiction style of Raymond Chandler. Reverend Lawson pulled the manuscript out in the evenings sometimes, tinkering around the edges while Mrs. Lawson was tending to the little Lawsons and he was free to slip across the parking lot to the silent vestry.
At 5:00 p.m. on December 24, though, he was focused only on perfecting the evening’s sermon. He had just started reading when a knock came at the vestry door.
“Come in,” he called.
May Landry entered, her high-boned cheeks pinker than usual, shoulders rising and falling as if she’d run all the way from her house on Thiele Street.
“Hello there, May.”
“Oh, Reverend,” she said, still trying to catch her breath. “Something has happened.”
He looked up over his half glasses.
“At the Wentworth place. Something bad. I was due to collect young Evie Turner—she’d arranged with Kitty to come together to choir rehearsal—but when I got there, why, I could hardly move my car for all the vehicles.”
“Vehicles?”
“Police, ambulances—more than one. Somethingverybad’s happened, I’m sure of it.”
Reverend Lawson was already on his feet. He removed his robe, shrugged into his civilian coat, and within minutes was reversingout of the church car park, having given May Landry instructions to welcome the early congregants.
