Easy smile. Short black curls falling over his forehead. Lumberjack beard, drowsy eyes. He looked like the sort of guy who hung out at the pub most nights, and dipped out every twenty minutes for a quick smoke. Friendly. Unmemorable. That’s how I’ve always imagined him. Not that I really know. I only saw him. Once.
Missingsince late July 1998: Donny Granger.
Donny left his home in Warrnambool in a white Mitsubishi Sigma in mid-July. He was believed to be traveling to South Australia to stay with a friend, but he never arrived.
I quickly send Donny’s profile to Chris, then I turn the phone face down because I can’t stand to see him a second longer. Can’t stand that I never said a damn thing about what happened.
Sweat gathers at my forehead, and my chest feels too tight. I roll onto my back and pull the covers up to my shoulders. It’s hard to breathe.
Donny had a son. I found that out later. A young son with the same curly black ringlets and open smile. Aaron. He’d be mid-thirties now. Fatherless because I left his dad to die.
I hear them again as I drift off. Blackbirds clambering up and down a ghost gum as I hide in the tree’s shadow. Every twig crack feels like a warning. Something is moving through the underbrush, deliberate, dragging. A gust of wind stirs the eucalyptus leaves high above. I don’t dare move.
Then, a scream. It rips through the bush, echoing off the trees, bouncing between the trunks. The blackbirds scatter, black wings slicing the air.
Then another scream…shorter this time. Choked.
Cut off.
Then silence.
—
I wake up to thephone ringing. Jessie lifts her head, disapproving, before settling back to sleep. I grab the phone and note the time: 1:07a.m.
“Chris…” I say, voice hoarse. “What the hell?”
I rub my eyes. I bet he’s spent the last few hours researching Donny’s disappearance. Not that he would have found any new information. The case has been cold for years.
I clear my throat. “You found a new place to stay?”
“Yeah,” he says distracted, “Airbnb on Parson Street, Pine Bay.”
“Good, got a job lined up for me yet?”
He sighs impatiently. “I can’t just—”
I end the call.
Heath must be home now, but I didn’t hear him come in. I’m wondering if I should get up and peek in his room when the phone rings again.
“Look…” Chris huffs, not even saying hello. “I could go to the police with this right now, you know.”
“With what?”
I can feel him bristle on the end of the phone, and I find myself grinning in the dark.
“You know how to use WordPress?” he asks wearily.
“Yep.”
“Great, you’re hired.Tridentmag needs another content writer. Freelance. Eight hundred to a thousand words, two hundred bucks a story.” He pauses, adding, “You’re welcome.”
“Three hundred?”
He snorts, “No.”
“Two fifty?”
