“…What?”
“She stayed with me, when…” She hesitates again, mouth grim.
My chest tightens. “When he hit her?”
“That’s where she went, to my house.” She bites her lip. “Most of the time, anyway.” I turn away, shielding my face. She reachesfor me, placing a gentle hand on my shoulder, and I throw it off. “She didn’t want you and Heath to see her like that.”
I hold up a hand, warding her off. My throat is tight and painful. “Someone should have told us.”
“Minnow.” She digs in her jacket for tissues, dabs clumsily at my chin. The jacket is far too big for her small body; it swallows her. She stuffs the tissue back in her pocket and holds me by my shoulders. “She was always watching over you, you know that? Sometimes she’d walk to your school during lunchtime. Make sure you and Heath were safe.”
She releases me, arms hanging loose at her sides.
That’s where she went, most of the time…
“Where did she go the other times?”
Colleen stares at the waves with a slack expression, eyes distant and empty. “Violence does something to women. Makes them…not them anymore. Turns ’em into somethin’ else.”
“Ghosts.”
She rubs the heel of her palm against her chest. “Yes.”
We fall silent, watching the waves roll in, dissolving into foam on the sand. “She made it to Pine Bay a few times,” she says. “Don’t even know how she got there, to be honest. Local cops found her wandering the street, brought her home.”
My mum didn’t have a car. She walked to work, and to pick us up from school. Though, in those last few months, she’d skip days dropping us off. Heath would walk me to school while Mum retreated further and further into someone small and silent and…
Ghosts.
A seagull circles above, soaring on an updraft, hunting. One swoops down, lands on my car bonnet, looks in my direction, cawing.
I hold the phone up to her face, showing her the photo of Donny Granger. “Have you seen this man before?”
She squints. “I don’t think so? Who is he?”
“He’s also well acquainted with the woods…”
“Dead?”
“Murdered.”
Her mouth is grim. “Your dad?”
I don’t answer.
“When did he go missing?”
“Not long before Mum.” I click my phone off, bury it in my pocket. “You sure you didn’t see him in town?”
“No, I’m not sure. This was nearly thirty years ago, Min.”
The seagull on my car bonnet inches closer.
“After Mum went missing…” I can’t keep the sharpness out of my voice. “Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“I did.”
I press my palm to my heart. “Thank God, and?”
