No.
Was I sorry about it?
Yes.
And no.
It’s hard to be mad at someone who sees what you desperately want and gives it to you, no matter the consequences.
I don’t know what to say and I suspect Trav feels the same. I roll the pebble in my fist and get to my feet, the creek bathwater-warm. I hover over him, and he watches me silently, raising his chin.
“Got something for you,” I say, revealing the moon pebble.
He gets to his knees, reaches up, and I have a flashback that leaves me sweating. Dizzy, I drop the stone into his palm, stagger back.
“Thank you,” is all he says, holding it up to the moonlight.
“Where’s Chris?”
He closes a tattooed fist over the pebble.
“Trav?”
“I don’t know what you want from me.”
“I want to know where Chris is. Will you tell me?”
He won’t answer. Cradles the pebble in his hand, opening it, closing it.You’ve been gone so long you missed everything.
“What have I missed, Trav?” I ask softly.
He gives me a doleful look;I’m not going to answer that.
“Do you know what happened to my mum?”
“No,” he says emphatically, eye contact unwavering. “If I did, I’d tell you.”
Trav never lied about what he did to Amy; he admitted it frankly when he was brought in for questioning. I’ve never known him to lie to me, either. I believe him, but I’m not going to let it go.
“Do you remember Hannah Striker? The first attack?”
He nods, once.
“Before her death,” I begin carefully, “someone left a pair of shark jaws on her doorstep. Do you know anything about that?”
“On her doorstep?”
That’s a strange question to ask. Why not,Did you say shark jaws? Someone left a pair of fucking shark jaws for her? Why?
“What do you know about Hannah?”
He sighs like I’m asking the wrong question. “We were, what”—he frowns, calculating—“ten when she died. She was swimmin’, yeah? It happens.”
“Yeah, but what doesn’t happen is someone dropping off shark jaws right before the attack.”
“I don’t know anythin’ about her,” he insists.
“Something came for me, too. Teeth. Great white.”
