Cold Deception (12 page)

Nessa smiled. “You were always so generous, Jules. Maybe I’ll take you up on your offer, but I want to snoop around a bit, see what I can find. He’s got some kind of hidey-hole in his office. He thinks I don’t know, but I know it’s there. Just have to work out how to get into it.”

“Nessa…”

She held up her hand to ward off Julia’s objections. “Don’t worry about me. I know how to look after myself. I wouldn’t have survived this long if I didn’t. I’ll get him. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll get him.”

Amazing what a week could do in a detox. Blossom looked shaky but much more a real person instead of a wraith. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail which enabled Julia to see just how gaunt she was. But she had more color and her eyes were clear.

Not so her mind. She tried to put on a good front, but Julia could see she was struggling with some demons. Anger sizzled around her. Anger with Rez and, increasingly, anger with her family. She snapped and snarled whenever Julia tried to talk to her. Thankfully, she’d taken up Douglas Sinclair on his offer of counseling. Julia hoped she was talking to him. If she was traumatized by that awful night, he could set her straight.

Julia knew enough about referred pain and the power of suggestion to know that people could believe in events that hadn’t happened. Memory was unreliable and Douglas could help Blossom through whatever she thought had happened that night. There was enough information on the public record that provided an account of the murder of Father Pat. Some of it was even true. If Nessa could just find that DVD…

A tight band of guilt pulled painfully in her chest. Nessa risked everything staying with O’Reardon. But she couldn’t be reasoned with. She was determined to find the DVD and…

Then what?

Julia put the whole dreadful mess out her mind and concentrated on what was in front of her.

She scraped the chisel over the worst of the flaking paint, happy to be outside and in the sun. The cold snap of a week ago had disappeared. Now it felt like a summer reprieve before winter in the mountains again descended. Not that she disliked cold weather. As much as she liked the glitz and glamour of Sydney, to her mind there were no real seasons there. No frost to make the garden bare and dormant, no occasional days of snow, where everyone went crazy and hurled snowballs, no need for roaring fires and thick sweaters. Sure Sydney got cold, but not that bone deep freezing that made Julia realize deep in her heart that respect had to be paid to the elements.

She smiled to herself. She was becoming as eccentric as her mother and Dee, philosophizing about the world and her place in it. There were worse things to mull about she supposed. Like psychopathic ex-cops. Or the other cop who visited her dreams with his compelling gray eyes.

She knew a little more about Dylan but wished she was still ignorant. Dee had taken her aside a few days ago, a look of worry and what Julia could see was embarrassment in her eyes.

“You know I’m a member of AA.”

“Of course I do. What’s wrong?”

They were standing at the side of the house, Julia with the chisel in her hand about to start on the scraping and Dee with a trowel, about to start weeding. What a couple of old ducks we look, Julia thought with amusement. A house of slightly dotty women.

“I don’t go to meetings in Katoomba. I prefer to go to meetings further down the mountains where people don’t know me.”

Julia’s heart lurched. She knew why. Even though what was mentioned in twelve step meetings was under the strictest of confidentiality, the program was full of humans just like everywhere else. People gossiped and stared.

“It doesn’t bother your mother. She’s happy to go to NA meetings up here, but I don’t. It probably wouldn’t matter nowadays, since all of that was a long time ago, but I got into the habit and now I like barring my soul, so to speak, away from this community.”

Julia nodded. She was taking an age to get to the point.

“The thing is, I usually get a lift with someone else.”

Ah, this was it. Whoever it was had to come to the house and, of necessity, break their anonymity.

“It’s okay, Dee. You know I’d never gossip about people in twelve step programs. That’s your business and not mine.”

She shook her head impatiently. “It’s not that.” She hesitated. “It’s Dylan. He picks me up and we go together.”

Julia smiled and patted Dee on her arm while her heart beat a little faster. “That’s good. I’m glad you have someone to go with.”

“You don’t mind? You seemed to have a strong reaction to him that day you met him.”

Julia shook her head. “Just nerves. I’m sure he’s very nice. He didn’t arrest Blossom so that’s in his favor. If he’s a friend of yours then he’s fine.”

A look of relief crossed Dee’s face. “That’s good then. He’s coming to my fiftieth.”

Julia smiled again, cursing fate and all the gods combined. “Great! If anyone gets unruly, we have someone who can deal with it.”

Dee laughed. “No one gets unruly at the Taylor house. Not anymore. The wildest we get is staying up late to watch the stars.” She looked thoughtful. “Your mother and I haven’t done that for a while. I must drag her out.”

Julia turned her head and took a good look at Dee. She’d aged well. Iron gray hair cut into a smooth, sleek bob that suited her pointy chin and dark brown eyes. She had an extraordinarily diverse collection of earrings. No matter what she wore, whether it be overalls or flowing silk jackets, she always had great earrings on. Today they were tiny bunches of grapes made from garnets. They winked in the sun.

“I’ll bet you never knew what you were getting into that first day when you turned up to mow the grass,” Julia said. “The mad artist and her difficult children. Whatever possessed you to stick around?”

Dee barked out a laugh. “I ask myself the same question nearly every day, especially when your mother is infuriating.” She continued smiling as she gazed at Julia fondly. “Your mother was mesmerising. She still is. Then she had two-year-old Blossom and fourteen going on forty-five you and she was struggling with sobriety. She’d been trying to be the perfect mother for some years after getting you back from your Grandmother. Not that your Gran was awful or anything.”

Julia nodded. “Gran was great. She always told me living with her was temporary and one day, when Ma was better, I’d go back.” Julia suppressed a shudder at all the events leading up to her stay with her grandmother. She’d been seven and remembered feeling both relieved and grief-stricken at the loss of her mother. In many ways those two feelings summed up her whole relationship with Eleanor.

“I’d been sober for about five years and thought I could make everything all right for her,” Dee continued.

“You did. When you came into our lives everything settled down.”

Dee shook her head. “It wasn’t me. Not really. It was always her decision. She saw she could have a different life and she took it. I went along for the ride. Mind you, we had some rocky times.” She held up her trowel and stared at it, a million miles away. “But that’s all over with now,” she said softly, then wandered back to her garden bed.

As Julia turned over their conversation in her mind, she had a sense Dee wasn’t talking about that night. She’d never really thought about her mother’s relationship with Dee. Sure, she’d assumed they’d gone through the usual adjustments from both being straight to being in a committed lesbian relationship but even in the early nineties, and especially in the mountains where there was a thriving lesbian community, no one really cared.

But it couldn’t have been that easy. Dee’s marriage broke up a short time before she and Eleanor got together, so maybe there were some difficulties there.

Too much information. She didn’t need to know about the ins and outs of their relationship. They were her parents and she loved them. That was enough.

*

Blossom sat in the armchair and waited. Waited for her heart to stop hammering and the terror to subside. He’d taken her through it all again, trying to get her to understand. She tried, she really did, but she could still see the knife.

“So what does the knife look like?” Douglas asked. “Is it long, serrated, what?”

He hadn’t asked her about the specific details until today. Instead they’d spent the last session examining why she was so firm in her belief she’d killed Father Pat.

She frowned. What
did
it look like?

“Long. A carving knife I think.”

“Where did you get it?”

“What do you mean?”

“How did it get in your hand?”

“I… I don’t know. I just have a memory of holding the knife. It was covered in blood and… and the blood was on my hand.”

“When you say you have a memory, is it a memory you’ve always had or has it emerged only recently?”

She stared down at her hands while the squirming, awful guilt churned in her gut. “It’s the drugs,” she whispered. “When I started using, I started to remember.”

“Six months before your sister was due to get out of jail.”

Her head shot up. “So you think all this is about Julia?”

“What do you think?”

“That’s crap.”

He raised an eyebrow and regarded her steadily.

“Father Pat took me home from the school camp. I remember that. Everyone else says that’s what happened. But I don’t remember anything else until I woke up the day after he was murdered. Except for that one flash about the knife and the blood.”

“Your family says you were sick with a bout of the flu and Father Pat drove you home from the school camp and deposited you into the care of your sister.”

“No, my family doesn’t say that. Julia says that. Ma and Dee weren’t there until later.”

“So you think Julia is lying?”

She nodded. “She was trying to protect me. I think I killed the priest and Julia found me. She tried to cover it up but did a piss-poor job and ended up taking responsibility.”

He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Okay. Let’s say that you’re right. You killed the priest and Julia found you and took you away. Why would she say that she did it? You were eight. For a start you couldn’t have been charged with murder because you were under the age of criminal responsibility. Even if you were older, there’s no way you would have been convicted of murdering a man who must’ve taken you to his house for criminal purposes.” He hesitated. “Do you have any memories of anything else that happened in the priest’s house?”

“You mean did he rape me?”

Douglas nodded.

“No. Nothing like that. I think she got there in time.”

He sighed. “Blossom, is there a chance, just a small chance that the memory of the knife with the blood is not real? Memory isn’t reliable you know. We make up all sorts of things to explain unpleasant thoughts and feelings. You say you didn’t start having the memories until you started using drugs. And you started using six months before Julia was due to get out of prison. What do you think the connection is?”

She stared out of the window then closed her eyes, not wanting to go there. Not wanting to admit the thought of Julia finally getting out had terrified her. For ten years she’d been the good daughter, never causing her parents any worry, knowing they had worry enough. Julia in jail was like a break on her behavior. But when she’d moved to Sydney to go to university, their worry stopped being so important. Then she met Rez.

Opening her eyes, she stared at Douglas, not sure what to say. She could come clean or… Or what? End up like her mother?

She sighed. “You know my mother has bipolar disorder.”

He shifted in his chair and said nothing.

“I think I do too. As soon as I moved to Sydney I went on a binge. Within a week of starting university I’d fucked three guys and started using coke. I was off my face for a couple of weeks and then I met Rez. The last six months have been one long drug-fuelled party.”

He smiled sadly at her. “That doesn’t mean you have bipolar disorder. A drug and alcohol problem, yes. Some faulty decision making and bad choices, sure. Maybe a little more extreme than your average eighteen year old but not by much.”

“You think it’s normal to wake up in someone’s bed and not know who they are? To start snorting coke first thing in the morning?”

“I think you went wild for a period of time after a fairly protected childhood that became even more protected after Julia went to jail. It’s not the end of the world. You don’t have to punish yourself by making yourself believe you were responsible for Julia going to jail. Don’t you see that that’s what your memory of the blood covered knife is? A memory your mind has created to punish you for not being a ‘good girl’.” He stopped and regarded her gravely. “Did you ever read anything about Julia’s trial?”

“What do you mean? She didn’t really have one.”

“But you’ve read the sentencing comments?”

She pushed her hands through her hair and nodded.

“When? When did you read them?”

Unease prickled at the back of her neck.

“When I first moved to Sydney. I didn’t know I could download them from the Attorney-General’s website until then.”

“So around about the same time you moved to Sydney and started going off the rails, you read a detailed account of the murder of Father Pat. A murder your sister was convicted of. Do you think that might have had something to do with this memory that suddenly emerged?”

Blossom shifted in her chair. Maybe he was right. She couldn’t remember anything else about the murder, just the knife. But it was so clear. If she closed her eyes she could recall the feel of the handle, the blood dripping down her wrist and a terrible metallic smell. There was another smell too. Something she’d could almost identify but not quite.

Douglas put his glasses back on and glanced at the clock. “Our time’s up. Next session we need to start some work on your using and maybe your relationship with Rez. Is that okay?”

She nodded and stood, gathering her bag. “Thanks Douglas,” she said softly. “I really appreciate you seeing me. I don’t think I would’ve coped with rehab. And the others don’t understand.”

“Rehab isn’t for everyone, Blossom. We’re doing some good work here.”

She smiled and crossed to the door. “See you next week.”

Out on the footpath she pulled her scarf around her neck and walked up Waratah Street to get the bus. The wind was cold, making her shiver. Not quite as bad as the shivering in her brain. She needed to have a serious talk with Julia. No more beating about the bush. She wanted answers.