“No photos!” the porridge man keeps screaming. “No photos!”
They’re not keeping the sharks away at all. They’re bringing them in.
So many sightings. So many attacks. And now I know why.
Because here in Kangaroo Bay, they’ve been hunting them all along.
Chapter 29
I stand in our front doorway, dazed. The lights are all off. Jessie emerges from my bedroom, tail wagging lazily, still half asleep. I pat her absentmindedly, and she leans against my knees, yawning. She trots back to my bedroom, looking over her shoulder, waiting for me.
I don’t follow.
Instead I shuffle to the dining room table, thinking of all the times my father sat here, sharpening his fishing knife.
I never really sat at this table. I preferred the floor, the couch, anywhere that felt safer. Some days, I just hid in my room, curled up and hoping not to be noticed. But the nights were worse. If Dad was in one of his dangerous moods, Mum would bundle us into Heath’s room instead. Heath always gave Mum and me his bed, curling up on the floor in a nest of spare blankets. After she was gone, Heath continued this. He’d quietly shepherd me to his room, letting me sleep in his bed whenever Dad was in one of his silent rages, while he took the floor without a word. Later, we slept in the cabin to get away from him.
Even after Dad was gone, I never sat at his table. Like the boat, the table washis.I press my fist into the wood, and I swear I can still feel his rage rumbling through it. I’m sure I see the outline of him, sitting there, oblivious to everything but his anger. Sharpening his knife, over and over. I’m sure he thought that the more he sharpened it, the safer he’d be.
He was wrong.
They never recovered the knife. Or him.
I think of Terry Hargrave, and the afternoon he shoved my dadthrough the screen door. How Dad went missing a week later. I’m glad Terry did what he did. Thankful.
I lower myself into my father’s chair, resting my forearms on the table. I stay that way until the car pulls into the driveway, its headlights blasting light through the house. Jessie barks twice, emerges from my bedroom, listening.
I close my eyes. I empty all the air from my lungs, lower my head, and wait. An image comes to mind: my grandfather as a young man, fishing the back beaches of Kangaroo Bay, wanting more. And here it began, our long legacy of violence.
Their filthy blood.
Heath’s blood.
My blood.
My eyes snap open. I push back from the table, my head hot and spinning as keys rattle in the door and Heath steps inside.
“Min?” He flicks the lounge room light on. “What’s wrong?”
I don’t answer. His footsteps quicken until he’s kneeling at my side. “Are you hurt? What is it?”
I shake my head. He pulls out a chair, sits down, peering at me anxiously. Jessie hops on the couch, sighing before she closes her eyes.
I place my palm on the wood. “I know what you’re doing. At night.”
He blinks slowly, waits.
“I followed you. First to the beach…then to…”—my voice drops—“the weigh-in on Neptune Road.”
Nothing.
Then he leans back in his chair, scratching his jaw.
“You’re bringing the sharks in,” I say. “Aren’t you?”
When he doesn’t answer, I look away, watching Jessie sleep. “It’s illegal to hunt a great white. They’re protected, but you know that.”
Jessie sleeps peacefully on her side, golden chest rising and falling with each gentle breath. “You know what’s also protected?” I turn back to Heath. “Abalone.”
