“Have you figured out how to spellaccidentallyyet?”
“For shit’s sake, Chris.”
“And what will you giveme?”
“Joy,” I tell him. “And something else…something better.”
His eyes are fixed on my face, trying to read ahead, but even he couldn’t guess the bomb I’m about to drop.
“A name,” I say. “A name that will solve a thirty-year-old missing person case.”
He’s playing it cool, but I can see the eagerness in his eyes. “What makes you think they’ll talk to me?”
“They can’t,” I tell him. “They’re dead.”
Chapter 8
Victoria Police: Missing Persons List
I’m lying on my single bed with Jessie, scrolling through my phone. My mum is officially listed as a missing person, but the truth is she had a habit of leaving. I used to whine endlessly, cross-legged at the front door, waiting for her to come home. She’d leave for a few days, stay for a few months. I never knew where she went. But as I got older, her absence became more common than her presence.
She left for the final time on August 8, 1998.
There she is. Mum. Danielle Greenwood. Soft blond hair falling over her forehead. Spooked look in her brown eyes. A cheap sterling-silver chain hanging from her neck and a Christian fish pendant resting on her green T-shirt. I’d bought it as her Christmas present.
I was so excited for her to open that box. When Christmas morning finally came, I woke her up at 5a.m.,placing it on her chest. I remember her opening it so carefully, peeking inside, while I hovered at her elbow, breathless and squirmy. She held the pendant up and read the inscription on the back of the fish:
Merry Christmas, Mum!
Love, Minnow
Then she pulled me into her arms and cried.
“I love it, darling,” she told me later, patting my cheek. She always had the softest hands. “I just wish…” She looked out the window, eyes far away again, and I knew I’d lost her. “I just wish I deserved it.”
I think I understand now. How some gifts feel like wounds.
She wore it for me, I think. Never took it off. I wonder if she’s still alive. Wonder if she’ll ever come home.
Mostly, I wonder if she evenwantsto. Even when she was here, most of her was missing. That’s what abuse does.
Don’t let them turn you into a ghost…
I rub my thumb over her precious photo.
He’s gone now, Mum. He’s gone.
I wonder what the odds are of being the child of not one but two missing persons. Luke said that once.Doesn’t look good for you two,he cackled.You got somethin’ you wanna confess?
I scroll down, hover my thumb over Dad’s picture. Black hair, shark eyes, mouth that seems to sneer,Just hurry up and take the farken picture, will ya?
Peter is the owner of the fishing charter Deep Sea Fishing…
And Peter Greenwood pissed off a lot of people in town, which is why they neither mourned him nor looked too hard after he disappeared.
I scroll past Dad’s photo. Women, men, a handful of teenagers. And one face that I still see in nightmares.
Donny Granger, 28.
