Her artistic style bore semblances to Sam’s and Dad’s—but that made sense. She’d grown up around them, learned to tattoo from them. But how had she developed the same creative instincts as a woman she couldn’t remember?
“Fucking hell,” Sam whispered. “Scott?”
“I can see.” Scott’s hand closed around Sam’s shoulder. “Has she always...? Did you know…?”
“I’d forgotten,” Nix said. “It’s been so long...”
“Me too,” Sam added. “Plus, she mostly did jewellery when we were kids.”
Tabby took a step backward, and everyone turned to stare again.
“This isn’t my fault,” she said. “I didn’t know art was genetic. And mine’s better anyway.”
“You’re right,” Scott said with a forced smile. “Good attitude, Tabby.”
Yeah, I’m totally not saying what I think you want to hear so I can leave…
Sam shook her head. “Where the fuck’s Dad? We need Dad.”
“We don’t know,” Nix said hopelessly. “But this is why he left. To get us to take responsibility for whatever’s happening in our lives.”
“That was ages ago! Maybe he’s fucked off forever too!”
“Sam, don’t say that!”
Sam clutched her head, pulling hard at her black hair. “Sorry. I know Dad would never do that. I need him right now. I want him to be here.”
Her older sister began sobbing again, and Tabby realised this was the most she’d seen Sam cry since that brutal three-day desert festival when someone stole her shoes. And back then, she was mostly crying out of anger.
Scott pulled Sam into his arms. “It’s okay. Whatever you’re feeling, give it to me. Let me hold it.”
Sam resisted for a second, then softened into his chest. “I will. I’ll try. I love you, Galahad.”
“I love you too, darling.”
Watching Sam and Scott embrace, Tabby felt something new shift among her ocean of guilt and shock—loneliness. All the DaSilva sisters had a missing dad and a stalker mum, but Sam had Scott, Nix had Noah, and all she had were debts with the Australian Tax Office.
Stupidly, she thought of Toby, and almost died of internal embarrassment. Wasn’t it bad enough that she was in this situation without thinking about that pile of human excrement?
Nix put down her tablet. “Enough for one day. Wherever dad is, he loves us, and even if we wanted his advice, we can’t get it. We’ll have to trust and support each other.”
She stood, winding her arms around Noah’s neck as Sam and Scott murmured their agreement. And as much as Tabby would have liked to take comfort in Nix’s statement, she was looking right at Noah’s face—a face marked by what could only be described as guilt. She studied his heavy features, wondering what the fuck he was guilty of. Noah was loyal as the day was long, and he adored Nix. Positively worshipped the ground she walked on. He wouldn’t keep secrets from her unless...
Unless he had a prior loyalty to someone. Someone important. Someone who pre-dated his and Nix’s relationship. Tabby squinted at her brother-in-law and was suddenly sure why he looked shiftier than an undercover cop at a rave.
Noah had always been her dad’s project, his best friend and confidant. They’d spent a billion hours together back when Nix was still living in Adelaide with her shitty ex-fiancé. Noah Newcomb, ex-biker and current husband, must know where her father was.
3
The Magnetic Fields hummed and whistled in Tabby’s ears as she stared at the minimal stars afforded by north suburban skies. Her headphones were noise-cancelling, and she couldn’t have heard her sisters crying or talking inside the house behind her even if she wanted to. And she didn’t want to.
She was sitting on the porch, beneath which had been the owl backpack that she’d failed to collect all those years ago. And from her seat, she had a clear view of the back gate where she’d failed to show up in time to get kidnapped.
The joint burning between Tabby’s fingers wasn’t doing much, but maybe nothing would at this point.
She’d always seen herself as motherless, like the Disney princesses. Or Frodo Baggins. She’d been raised by wolves. Raised by her dad. Raised by Brunswick. But that wasn’t true. Once upon a time, she’d been raised by Jo—Jo of the tarot card tattoo and surprisingly youthful ass. Jo was her mother. The information still refused to sink into Tabby’s brain. Instead, it skipped over the surface like a stone. Not having a mum was who she was; it was the story she’d told her whole life. She didn’t know how to change that narrative to one where she was actively ignoring the woman who gave birth to her. Where Jo, the friendly, normal-seeming person who’d talked to her about her boy problems, had once tried to lure her away from home.
Easier to absorb was the fact Noah was in contact with her dad.
