How desperate had Jason become?
‘To think I wasted two years of my life with you.’
‘Oh honey, I only went out with you to keep you and Gabriel apart.’
‘Well, you failed in the end.’
‘Did I? You ask him about that night because I remember it clearly. He couldn’t wait to fall into bed with me. Ask him about our night at Eleventh Hour and then tell me if I failed. Say hi to Gabriel from me.’
Jason hung up on that cheery note, and Bruce was left with the phone pressed hard against his head. He should have rung off the second he heard Jason’s voice, before the honey-voiced psychopath dripped more lies into his ears.
They had to be lies. But they stuck to his insides, their grease hardening in the pit of his stomach. Gabriel had promised that nothing had ever happened between them. If it had, he could have said. It wouldn’t have mattered. Not as much as lying about it. He threw the phone onto the desk and slumped into his chair. That frenetic energy had gone, leaving him with a lead weight on his shoulders.
Gabriel had promised there weren’t any lies. But could he be trusted? He’d lied about the theatre. Gabriel claimed it was just a misunderstanding but he’d had plenty of opportunity to confide in him. And then Jason had played another hand. He shouldn’t believe anything his ex-boyfriend said but he’d sounded so certain, so gleeful about it. He could call Gabriel but the way the thoughts were tumbling inside his head he was unlikely to speak coherently. He’d wait. They were going to talk and when that time came he’d have figured out what to do.
Rachel crashed through the front door. She leaned heavily against the door handle, looking as dishevelled as she had the day before, dusty from the walk to the house. She startled when she saw him sitting in the chair.
‘Oh, hey bro, didn’t realise you’d be home.’
‘My ute’s out front.’ He stood up slowly.
She tried to evade him, her head down, hair covering part of her face.
The rage built in his chest. ‘Have you been drinking?’
‘What? No. You said I couldn’t so I haven’t. Jeez, you’re so suspicious.’
‘Come here then.’
‘Get lost. I’m going to lie down.’
He followed her, a whiff of bourbon and beer swamping his sense of smell. ‘You’re lying, Rachel. You reek.’
‘I haven’t been drinking.’ She wheeled on him and shrieked but her balance teetered and she had to hold herself up against the wall.
‘Get your stuff and get out.’
‘I haven’t been drinking! I went out and saw a friend in town but I haven’t been drinking. That was the rule.’
He towered over her, close enough for the stench to wrinkle his nose and burn his gullet. ‘I’m sick of the lies, now get your things and get in the car. I’ll drive you to Nowra.’
‘I’m not going to bloody Nowra!’
He pushed past her into her room and shoved her things into her backpack. She tried to stop him, but he held on to most of it. He stalked out of the room, grabbed his phone, keys and wallet and headed out to the car, all the while with her screaming and hitting. She got in a few tough blows—drunks always seemed to find strength when they needed it. She stopped at the edge of the verandah and held on to one of the posts. He wouldn’t drag her. He wouldn’t lay a finger on, but she was going to leave his house one way or another.
He half-climbed into the driver’s seat and threw her bag in the back. He rifled through his wallet and held up two fifty-dollar notes.
‘I’ll give you a hundred bucks if you get in the car right now. It’s either this or I call the cops.’
‘A hundred and fifty.’
‘Done. Get in.’
She slunk over. He kept a careful watch on her in case she made a grab for her bag. But she didn’t. She wanted the money, and he’d stuffed it into his wallet and put that into his back pocket. It was uncomfortable but not as uncomfortable as having to buy off his alcoholic sister.
And definitely not as uncomfortable as realising without a shred of doubt that all she wanted from him was money.
He started the car and the second she closed the door, he kicked it into reverse and set off towards Nowra. There was a bus terminal there and she could get a ride to Sydney or wherever. After he dropped her off, she was no longer his problem.
‘You know you’re the reason Mum’s dead,’ she hissed.
Another lie. They ruined everything. Their father’s lies about another family in a different town had broken their mother. That wasn’t his fault but keeping his father’s secret was. She thought she had a traitor in the house, and because their father had left them to be with his other family, he became the easy target for her hate. He’d become indentured, working as an apprentice at sixteen to help her pay for the house. And all the while trying to keep up appearances that all was well. Meanwhile, their mother was slowly killing herself with alcohol and eventually drove into a tree. He hadn’t killed his mother, and he wasn’t going to watch his sister die either.
She ranted but he didn’t respond. The more she shouted, the more he lanced the poison. Cut for cut, the venom of all his family’s hate dripped out of him. Rachel had suffered, followed in their mother’s footsteps but gone bigger, brought attention to herself which their mother couldn’t abide. Rachel raged against ghosts.
After forty minutes of her abuse, he’d been drained clean. He would have gone twice as long if it meant getting that crap out of his life. He pulled up in the bus terminal and put the car into neutral. He grabbed her bag out of the back and shoved it at her, then fished out his wallet. He held out two hundred bucks.
‘This
