“Come on in,” I say, nodding towards the front door. “Dad’s overnighting in Auckland, but the housekeeper’s prepared some meals if you’d like to stay for dinner.”
“Thanks, but I’ve got appointments stacked back to back until late this evening. Another time, maybe.”
“Sure.”
I lead him through to the study. One wall is covered in tall shelves with an eclectic collection of books, all of them belonging to my father. On the other side is a faux fireplace, the real things banned lakeside because the valley has the perfect conditions for smog. Much as a roaring fire is fantastic, the council voted being able to breathe was more important.
Vale sits and I take the leather chair opposite, a large oak table to my left-hand side.
“The story won’t repeat,” he says, taking his phone from his inside breast pocket. “The media organisations have agreed the public interest isn’t served by publishing these stories widely. That won’t hold if there are updates to the case, but I’ve also reached out to the individuals involved and we’ve come to an understanding.”
I sit back, feeling relief flood through my nervous system. “Thank you.”
He flicks his fingers at the praise, a man who doesn’t need gratitude for doing his job, possibly because it’s reflected in his pay grade.
“Unfortunately, the police are a different story. The few feelers I’ve put out have been met with some hostility. Without the key eyewitnesses, it shouldn’t matter, but I want you to be aware that if there are any new avenues, they’ll be pursued aggressively.”
He must catch the confusion on my face, adding, “Someone’s put a bug up their arse about the difference in clearance rates between the haves and the have nots in this town. Expect them to care until after the next council elections.”
“That’s a year away.”
“And my advice would be to curb your impulses for at least that long.”
Impulses. A nice way to say vendetta.
When I see him out soon after, it’s like his mind has already moved onto his next meeting, barely acknowledging my wave goodbye.
He’s done everything I could have hoped, but the news doesn’t set my mind at rest. We’d just built momentum. If I leave the targets alone until after the next elections, we’ll have to begin again from scratch. New dealers will creep in to replace the ones I’ve cleared, there won’t be any way to stop them.
A short sharp shock is what I aimed for. Poison the system at the roots so the next crop of young people coming through won’t have targets painted on their backs.
An overwhelming sense of hopelessness drags my mood into the basement. I can’t sit still, pacing the floor, counting out the steps to stop my brain churning.
Eventually, I head downstairs, pausing at the door to my sister’s room, hand resting on the doorknob.
I still have the urge to knock. She’s been dead and gone for eighteen months, but just walking inside her old room feels like an invasion of privacy. With a faint smile, I rap my knuckle against the wood, closing my eyes and imagining what it would be like if her sweet voice answered, “Come in.”
But there’s no answer. Not even an aural hallucination spit out by my brain to fill the silence.
I walk inside, leaving the door open behind me to remove some of the stuffiness from the room. Our housekeeper airs it out every few days but in the height of summer it doesn’t take long for it to build again.
The view from Addie’s window looks straight over the water. We’re one of the first cliffside dwellings, so the lower portion is filled with the lakeside marina.
Dad’s boat is probably still moored there, though I can’t remember the last time he used it. Not even a day trip to entertain a client.
During the last fraught months as Addie’s addiction spiralled our family into utter disarray, we’d lost touch with all the things that had once been commonplace. Once she was gone, it wasn’t worth the effort to reconstruct our former lives. Not with just the two of us. Not when I would head up north to university next year and dad was seriously looking at a permanent move overseas.
I bet Evie would love it.
A smile crosses my face a moment later, because she mightn’t have even the slightest inclination to sail across the beautiful clear waters. What I do know is that I would love to take her, would love to see her expressions change as she experiences each moment.
That was the best thing about today. Watching her face. Seeing her enjoyment, her reticence, her nerves and fears and joy.
I move to the wardrobe, pulling an old shoebox down from the topmost shelf, sitting on her bed as I remove the lid, shuffling through the contents. A locked diary gets set aside—a book I can’t even touch without a rush of voyeurism—the entries unread except by the girl who penned them.
The jewellery inside is worthless, sad plastic baubles. Anything of value was long ago sold or traded or bartered. Underneath are a collection of small treasures. I recognise a piece of quartz with a jagged seam through it she picked up from Parson’s Beach on a family outing. A toy whistle from an old Christmas cracker, a small skeleton with moveable joints that had been a necklace pendant until the screw at the top broke away.
Old snapshots are inside. One shows me, hand in front of my face as I push the camera away. Another is Addie, taken years ago. Back when she was sixteen, just before everything went to hell.
