“They filed the missing person report. But she had a history of leaving, Minnow. Lots of women shoot through in towns like ours.”
“But most of the times she’d left before, she went toyourhouse,” I argue. “And she always came back.”
“And I told them that. They dragged your dad in, questioned him a few times, put the pressure on him, but he insisted he didn’t know where she was.”
“Heath thinks Dad killed her.”
“So did Terry in the end,” she admits, scraping at the dirt with her heel. “We all did.” Her spine straightens, her smile cold. “But your dad got what he deserved in the end. They usually don’t.”
“Do you think he’s still alive? Or do you think Terry killed him?”
“I think Terry killed him,” she says flatly. “Wish I could take credit for it, though.”
“Me too.” The seagull lifts off, wings outstretched, moon glinting off its feathers. “Some people think he’s still alive, you know? That he’s out there somewhere…that he’ll come back one day.”
“Even if he’s still alive, Min,” Colleen says softly, “he won’t come back.”
The tide recedes and I see a shape, low and shifting, where the water meets the sand. At first, I’m not sure if I’m really seeing it. But I blink and it’s still there.
“And if he does,” she says heatedly, “I’ll kill him myself.”
The thing is moving now. Slinking, shoulders low, limbs fluid, like it learned to walk from the water itself.
Dad.
I blink again and it’s gone.
“I’m sorry I didn’t do more, Min.” Her voice cracks. “For you…for Heath…”
I force myself to look away from the shore. “For your mum,” she says softly. And it breaks something in me.
“You did what you could,” I tell her.
“I didn’t do enough. None of us did. And I know it’s no excuse, but I had my own issues I was dealin’ with at the time.”
“Trav.”
She nods sadly. “He was startin’ to…act up. I’d seen it before. Felt like I was losing him.”
“To what?”
I know what. But I need to hear someone else say it.
“The darkness in this town.”
I stare at the vast black waves, stretching endlessly, the night wind brushing my face.
“There aren’t a lot of resources for battered women and kids. They say there are, but they’re lying,” Colleen says hotly, and I know she’s thinking of her own marriage. Trav’s dad passed away when we were in second or third grade. Cancer, I think. Before that, Trav showed up to school with bruises blooming across his cheek.
“The coppers thought your dad did it. But there was no body, nothing. They couldn’t keep dragging him down to the station with no new evidence.” She clears her throat. “Plus, at the time, they were more interested in Hannah’s attack.”
Hannah Striker, the tourist attacked at beach 4. They found chunks of her flesh, bits of her torn wet suit. One piece had a tooth still wedged in it. Great white shark.
I straighten up. “When was the attack?”
“Early July, I think, 1998.”
“Did you ever meet Hannah?”
