“It’s 911 in Canada.”
“Did you call 911, then?”
I swallow. My face goes hotter. I can’t remember. I really can’t. “I think so. Yes. How else would they have gotten there?”
He writes something in his notebook and nods. He opens a folder and reads some kind of report. I wonder if the lawyers somehow got hold of the old coroner’s report. It would all be in there, what happened and when with my mother. The only reason he’s asking me must be to see how I react.
He looks up. “How did your father treat you afterward—when you learned she’d died?”
I rub my knee. I feel nine again. I feel so small, and sad, and scared. I feel tears coalesce in my eyes. I feel all these things, but the memory of the events is not clear. Just the feelings.
“Did he make you feel safe, Ellie? Did he make you feel loved?”
“No,” I say quietly, and I think of the little girl in my drawing, looking for her woodcutter father in the forest. Her father, who was big and strong, should have come with his ax to cut away the evil vines trying to strangle her and drag her down into the loamy earth where she would rot alone.
“He sent me away. To my mother’s sister’s house at first, because he was busy working and traveling a lot. And then I went to a boarding school.”
“Did he love your mother?”
“He was always worried about her, fussing over her, taking her to doctors, or arguing with her about drinking or the pills.”
“How did that make you feel?”
I hold his gaze. “How do you think?”
“Maybe you thought she stole all the light.”
My stomach tightens. “Maybe,” I say with a shrug.
“Did it change after she was gone?”
“No. Like I said, he basically dumped me—left me entirely. Just paid for my care and sort of forgot I was there.”
“How did that make you feel?”
“Christ,” I say as I get to my feet. I walk to the window. I look out. The playground is empty today. It’s raining. Just a man walking a very tiny dog. “How do you think it made me feel? I hated him. I loved him.”
“Do you still hate him?”
I waver. “Yes. And no. Conflicting feels.”
“He’s a domineering man, has a very commanding presence, no?”
I nod.
“Was your first husband like him at all?”
“Oh, I see where you’re going, Doc.” I turn to face him. “You think even though I hate my father I’m attracted to men like him? Out of some childhood need. Or genetic echo. Like my mother was attracted to my dad—you think this weakness runs through my DNA? That. And a susceptibility to addiction.”
He says nothing.
“Maybe it does. I don’t know.”
“What about Martin?”
“What about him? He’s dead now, isn’t he? Doesn’t matter what I feel about him now.”
“Except it does. If they put you on that stand.”
I smile slowly. “Well, there’s your answer to the legal team right there, Doc. Yes. I wanted him dead.”
THEN
ELLIE
Over one year ago, October 27. Jarrawarra Bay, New South Wales.
“Ellie! Hold the damn boat steady!” Martin yelled at me through the open window of his truck as he pulled the empty boat trailer up the concrete ramp. I stood barefoot in knee-deep water struggling to hold tightly on to the bowline of the Abracadabra so the boat wouldn’t float away or come broadside onto the sand. He’d left me to hold the boat while he took the trailer to find a parking spot.
“She’s drifting, Ellie! You’re letting the current swing her around—she’ll run aground, damn you!”
I winced at his words but was too afraid to respond. Already my muscles ached and the polypropylene rope burned my palms. The tide was pushing in hard and the currents swirled powerfully around my calves. I couldn’t hold the Abracadabra at the correct angle for much longer. She was swinging sideways.
“I didn’t listen to the ‘captain.’ . . . We were going out from the river mouth, and big waves started to break over the sandbar . . . My brother was hit, broke his back . . .”
Anxiety sank deeper talons into my heart. I shot a terrified look at the sandbar at the river mouth. Waves were breaking on the bar, getting bigger. Spectators were starting to line the tops of the cliffs to watch. My thoughts looped around to Chloe. My heart began to hammer.
I felt her slippery little hand in mine, water swirling around my legs. Suddenly I was back in the Waimea Bay being tumbled and churned in monstrous surf. I felt her slipping from my grasp. Tears burned into my eyes. This was a mistake. My head hurt. I could barely remember anything about our visit to the Puggo last night, apart from arriving at the pub and meeting Rabz and Willow. After that everything was a blank, and while Martin had been as sweet as sugar this morning, I felt something very wrong had happened.
I looked out to sea again. The waves were getting even bigger. Rolling in more consistently. Wind whipping now. A glop of foam slapped against my face. I blinked, but it stuck near my eye. I had no free hand to swipe it away or to wipe my nose, which was starting to run. The tide pushed harder. Panic started. Amping higher with each beat of my heart. Any minute I would tip into a full-throated attack. I thought of the pills in the pocket of the cargo pants Martin had loaned me for fishing. I couldn’t reach them without letting go of the rope.
“Need help?”
I whipped my head around to see Rabz in her jogging gear. She had her hands on her hips, bright-yellow shorts, was breathing hard, cheeks pink, her hair gloriously wild in the wind as it fought to free itself of her hair tie.
I nodded, desperate, close to tears. Rabz took off her runners, tossed them up onto the bank, waded into the water, and expertly pushed against
