Detained (41 page)

“He thought it was funny, till, I don’t know, his boots, his pants, something snagged. He couldn’t pull free and went under. He kept calling me to help him and swallowing water. I wanted him to shut up. I didn’t want him to wake Pete. I didn’t want Pete to see him, because I’d have hit Pete myself if he tried to stop things. I waited till Norman stopped thrashing, till he sank. I waited hours till he washed up on the bank. It was morning. I hauled him out. Then I woke Pete and told him what I’d done and we buried him.”

Will closed his eyes. All that had come out of him so easily. Like it’d had been stacked up on his tongue forever waiting to scuttle out; when he’d thought he’d never have the words to admit it aloud.

That night, both of them sore, bruised, his own ribs blistered and weeping, he and Pete made a pact to never speak about what happened and until that conversation in Quingpu, they never had. Firstly from the sheer fear of what new horror might rain down on them, but later because it was irrelevant. Norman had meant so little to them, so little to the world, he was easy to be finished with. But Will had just told the woman he loved in stark detail how he deliberately, consciously, let Pete’s dad drown, and all she’d done was hug him tighter.

He felt like he was floating, not because of the hammock, but in his life. He was that sixteen year old again, burning with hatred and frustration, weighed down with his self-imposed responsibility for Pete, the younger, weaker, nerdy kid who alone accepted him for the dumb lug he was then.

He could walk the event through like it was a comic book, complete with thought bubbles. Here he was standing on the tarmac outside the block hearing Pete yelling. The thought bubble above his head said, “Danger. Save Pete.” In the next frame he was jumping on Norman’s back, drawing him away from Pete as he cowered in a corner of the container. “Take that, you evil bastard.”

Then, Norman crashing him into the side of the container, winding him, cracking him with his belt, pulling a branch from the barbeque fire and coming after him shouting, “I’ll get you, you brainless fuck.” Pete crying in the dark from fear, from pain. “Sob, sob.”

Luring Norman further away with the flaming branch in his hand and being outsmarted, the branch catching him on his side, burning his shirt, his skin, making him howl like Pete had.

After, the relief of seeing Norman burn his own hand and stagger to the creek. Plotting, not too strong a word, how to make sure the man never hurt him or Pete again.

Darcy was holding him tight across the chest. “It was a decent reason to get a new name,” she said.

“A new name. New lives. That came later.”

Will knew it was twisted and evil and intentionally wrong then, and he knew it now. More than being accused of Feng Kee’s murder, more than being beaten half to brain dead in Quingpu, what he’d done to Norman was the reason he wasn’t fit for the world.

What he didn’t understand was why Darcy wasn’t repulsed by him, how she could stand to touch him.

She came up on her elbow to look him in the eye. “It wasn’t your fault he drowned, Will. He might’ve drowned you to save himself.”

“Pete would agree with you. He never regretted it. Has never once blamed me. But he didn’t see Norman’s face.” He passed a hand over his own eyes, trying to clear the vision of Norman’s panicked eyes. “When he knew he was drowning he sobered up some, enough to know I could save him if I gave him a hand. Enough to know I wouldn’t.”

Darcy put her finger to the scar under his chin. Smoothed it. “How did the two of you survive?”

“Norman wasn’t missed. We let people believe he was drunk. Later we said he’d shot through. After a while people stopped asking. We lived off his dole payments, a part pension he got from veteran’s affairs. The money went a lot further outside the pub. Then a year later, a grandfather Pete didn’t know he had left Norman money. We got creative and claimed it, just like the dole payments. Everyone knew we were fending for ourselves; they cut us some slack, let Pete sign as Norman. Would only happen in a small town like this.

“The inheritance money was enough to get us out of Tara. Get Pete into a boarding school, get me to Brisbane. That’s when we became Parkers, brothers. We were going to change our lives.”

“And you did. You triumphed from such a bad place.”

“On the back of manslaughter, theft, and fraud. A whole empire built on it.”

“No, Will. You had no choice. You did what you had to do to save Pete, to save yourself.”

He grunted. The clogging in his throat was guilt and shame. It was getting harder to speak past it. “You always have a choice. We had a choice. We could’ve run, gone to the police, talked to any other adult. I even lied about the burn. At the hospital I covered our injuries by saying we were brawling and I’d fallen in the fire.”

Darcy sat, set the hammock rocking. “You had no choice. You were a victim doing no more than fighting back. Nothing in the rest of your life ties back to this.”

He went to contradict her and she jammed a hand over his mouth. “Not Feng Kee. The man came at you with a knife, and threatened to kill you. Self-defence in anyone’s eyes with the added bonus of the fact you didn’t kill him.”

He lay there with her hand sealing his mouth, feeling flattened by the realisation she didn’t understand the thing about power and responsibility, about shame and what it meant to him.

She scrambled out of the hammock, gave it a shove so it tipped him out. “Get dressed. We’re going to the creek.”

“No.” He lunged for her and missed. She skipped into the house and he could hear her in the bedroom. He followed her in. “No.”

She’d wriggled into shorts and was pulling on shoes. “Coward.”

Good bait, but not going to catch him. He sat on the edge of the bed. “Be careful down there. The sand can be soft on the edge. There might be branches you can’t see.”

She gave him hands on hips, full-on diva with demands. “You’re coming with me.”

“You’ll pardon me declining the extreme pleasure.”

“Fucking coward.”

It was probably the swear word. And knowing she’d go down there alone. It got him off the bed. Darcy was already on the verandah doing up shoelaces. He found his jeans, shoved his feet into boots and snagged a t-shirt off the floor.

She was halfway across the paddock before he got to the verandah steps. He stomped back inside for his sunglasses. He put Bo’s chicken back in the fridge and wondered vaguely if he’d blown it by leaving it out on the bench too long in the heat. He realised his hands were shaking when he put the kettle on; that he was so anxious about going down there he’d do anything to avoid it, built this whole house to avoid it. And she was right again.

He’d spent his whole life trying not to be a coward or a victim. He grabbed his hat and a cap for Darcy and went after her.

She was standing under one of the giant gums. She smiled at him so serenely he had to wonder at her fortitude. His own stamina was severely strained.

“It’s incredibly pretty here. Peaceful.”

“That’s what Bo said.” He handed her the cap.

“How do you see it?”

He was seeing it lit by the moon, veiled in night. He should’ve been hearing birds and bush sounds, but his ears were ringing with Norman’s rough, slurred voice calling his name with increasing terror, and then the composed silence, the undercurrent whir of mosquitoes. He took his sunnies off and flung them away. Hard afternoon light was better than the shadows.

“Can you swim here?”

She wasn’t going in. No way, he wasn’t going to let her go in there. She’d dropped the cap and kneeled to undo her laces. He grabbed her arm and reefed her upright. “Come back to the house.”

“Ow, Will,” she pulled her arm back. “I’m disgustingly hot and filthy with you. I need a swim.”

“I have a perfectly good shower in the house.” Where he knew he’d feel a whole lot less like he was going to have a heart attack.

She got rid of her shorts. “And a perfectly lovely waterhole in your backyard.”

She stepped out of his reach, and he saw he’d left red fingermarks on her arm. She went to the edge, where the water lapped the bank. This part of the creek was more a pond than anything else, and unless it was running a banker after heavy rain, there was only a slight current. Drowning here was the bush equivalent of drowning in the bath but watching her, this close to the water, was making his skin crawl.

“Please come back to the house.”

“No, Will. You need a new memory of this place and I’m it.” She looked him square in the face and popped the studs on the shirt. “Come in with me.”

“No.”

She dropped the shirt and wadded in. The sun through the trees striped her bare skin like a tiger, but she had every intention of turning mermaid, and once she did, she’d be out of reach.

“Darcy, I’m not comfortable with you going in there.” He went to the edge and his boots sank in the thick, damp creek sand.

She was thigh deep. “I can see that. I thought spiders could swim?”

“Some, not this spider, not here.”

“How deep does it get?”

“It’s very shallow from my new kitchen.”

She was waist deep, her back to him. “Can I stand further out?”

“I don’t know, please come back.”

She gave a little cry, “Something touched my leg!” He stepped forward, water inside his boots.

She was laughing. Facing him now, water to her armpits. “What’s down there?”

That was it, he tossed his hat behind him and he walked in. He’d drag her out by her hair if he had to.

“You could’ve undressed,” she said, moving into deeper water.

He was on her in a few lurching strides, his clothes heavy, his boots like twin dredges sucking into the sand, his jeans tugged down low on his hips, his t-shirt ballooning then plastering to him. At the deepest centre he was still standing easily. Why couldn’t Norman stand? Why didn’t he stumble out of here the same way he stumbled in?

Darcy came into his arms with no resistance, wrapping her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, and he breathed again. She wasn’t going to get dragged under and drowned and neither was he.

She stroked his face. “Norman had a choice, Will. To live like a responsible adult, not to be a legless drunk. Not to beat two defenceless kids who were dependent on him. You were young, terrorised, beaten. You did what you had to do.”

Will’s heart was really hammering hard, almost painfully in his chest, pumping out ridiculous, irrational suspicions about this creek and its fake and man-made monsters. He had to get past this. Get past the horror of seeing Norman’s waterlogged face, his staring eyes. The memory of how long it took to dig what they judged was a deep enough hole, lug him there and tumble him into it. How much quicker it was to cover him with earth and know they were finally safe. How they’d slept, sleeping bags set close together, until the pain in Will’s side woke him and he knew he needed help.

“Will, let it go. It happened. It was a terrible thing. But you and Pete survived, and it’s over. It has no hold on you, not then, not now.”

She pressed her lips to his. “Will?” He was seeing Pete’s face, the shock, the fear, but relief too. Pete who’d kicked and kicked Norman’s body, screaming himself hoarse as much to make sure his father wasn’t getting up again as to express his rage.

“Will. It’s over. I’m here now. Be with me.”

She was tugging at his shirt, trying to peel it off him, she unzipped his jeans. She wasn’t going to get them off over his boots. “What are you doing?”

“This is a beautiful place; the place where you were reborn. I want to make a new memory here with you—a beautiful one.”

She was extraordinary. He’d known it the moment he walked into that room in Pudong and she’d eyed him off, taking his measure. He wanted this new memory with her for now and to store up with all the others for when they couldn’t be together.

He carried her back into shallower water and put her down. He tore his shirt struggling to get it off. He hopped around like an idiot working on his boots, his cast getting soggy, ending up completely submerged with her laughter and the outraged squawks of birds for guidance to the surface. She helped him with his jeans and that was surprisingly difficult, like wrestling, like struggling to remember, struggling to forget.

He took her to him standing waist deep in the creek, loving her body with open eyes and light hands. They were buoyant but anchored together, solid and real. He drank her kisses and cleaved to her strength. He gave in to her reasoning, too tired to hold out any longer, too alive to welcome guilt anymore.

“Things that are done, it is needless to speak about, things that are past, it is needless to blame.” — Confucius

They had today and then she had to drive back to Sydney. Will wanted her to stay another day, fly from Brisbane. Leave her car there; he’d get it back to her. Maybe drive it back to Sydney himself. But he wasn’t ready to leave yet, and she knew she needed time to decompress from the intensity of the time with him before she went back to work.

Leaving tomorrow was better and not only because it was practical, though Will thought bringing a helicopter in to pick her up was practical, but because neither of them wanted to talk about the future.

As far as they’d ever got was the interview.

She needed to tell him how she felt about it now. It was off, she wasn’t doing it. He didn’t need it, and neither did she. And if the network couldn’t accept she’d tried and failed to land her big fish, they could turf her out or she’d quit. Regardless of what happened, it was better than pretending she could interview Will dispassionately and professionally.

She couldn’t even look at him that way. There was no chance she could school her eyes not to undress him, no way to sit across from him under studio lights pretending she wasn’t madly, completely, in love with him.

She’d asked him almost every tough question she could think of. She’d made him limp over old sores; poked a stick in new wounds, until he was drained of the energy to lift his head from her shoulder.

After that first time, they’d gone to the creek often, to swim, to laugh, to end up with coarse sand in awkward places, and to snooze in the shade after a Bo inspired picnic.