Apples Never Fall

“And then finally she came home. I thought, Yes, dinner! But then I saw she was all dressed up and I said, ‘Oh, feck, it’s not today, is it?’ Like, it was obviously the first time we’d celebrated her birthday together, so it was a real balls-up.”

He clearly still felt bad about it.

“It’s strange, because she didn’t seem that angry at first. She was upset, but not crazy angry. She said it didn’t matter, we’d go there again another time. She made pasta! We were watching TV, having a glass of wine, it was all good, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, it was like she lost her mind. She stood up from the couch and said, ‘I can’t take this anymore.’ She was walking back and forth holding her wine and it was like she was having some kind of episode, and we still had boxes and shit everywhere. Next thing she trips over my guitar case. She’d asked me to move it out of the way, and I never did.” He looked at Logan. “I’m officially the lowlife in this story.”

Logan sucked his teeth sympathetically, which was a good example of a nonverbal affirmation while active listening.

“The wineglass smashed when she fell, and she cut herself.” He put a hand over his own eye as he remembered. “I thought she’d lost an eye for a moment. All that blood. I was trying to help her, and she wouldn’t let me look at it, she was turning in circles, muttering to herself. Next thing she just … left. Bare feet. It was a cold night. No money, no phone. Gone.”

“Where did you think she’d gone?”

“I had no idea. I said, ‘Where are you going?’ And she said, ‘I’m going back there.’”

“Going back where?” said Logan.

“That’s what I said, ‘Going back where?’ I assumed she meant going back to Adelaide. I said, ‘You can’t get a flight at this time of night!’”

Logan studied him, looking for the holes in the story that his sisters would find. “You must have been worried.”

“I didn’t know whether I should call the police or what. I didn’t sleep. But then the next day I went to work—it’s a new job, I had to work—and she’d left this weird, whispered message on my voicemail, like she was calling from a library. She said she was staying with old friends, and I thought, What friends? I didn’t think we knew anyone here. She said that she ‘wished me well.’ I took that to mean we were done.”

Logan winced. “She wished you well.”

“I know,” said Dave. “That was the way she talked sometimes. Like an old lady. Or like she was playing a part. I feel like I never even knew her. And you know, since then I’ve talked to people about it, and I just think, man, that’s one of those short relationships where you look back and think, What was that all about? Because she was fun and sweet but she was weird. I think maybe I dodged a bullet.”

“Maybe you did,” said Logan. Was that dodged bullet now headed straight for his parents?

“I don’t think she’s dangerous,” reflected Dave. “She’s just a really strange person. That night, her behavior was weird; so out of the blue. I remember thinking, Is this actually nothing to do with me missing her birthday? Was it something on TV that upset her? But it couldn’t have been. We weren’t even really watching it. It was just some random news story about tennis.”

“Tennis?” said Logan sharply. He’d been about to have a mouthful of beer, and the bottle banged against his teeth. “What about tennis?”

“Savannah has less than zero interest in sport, so it couldn’t have been that.”

“But you said there was something on TV about tennis. What about tennis?”

Dave shook his head adamantly, trying to make it clear that Logan had the wrong end of the stick.

“It was nothing,” he said. “Just something about that player making a comeback. What’s his name?” He frowned, snapped his fingers. “Harry Haddad.”

Chapter 35

NOW

“I just think if we tell the police everything about Savannah it might distract them from finding Mum,” said the client in the reception area of Marshall and Smith Criminal Defense Lawyers. “It will make them th

ink Dad has a possible—” She lowered her voice. “A possible motive.”

The receptionist, who had been at Marshall and Smith for over a decade, was used to overhearing conversations like this of a personal and sometimes salacious nature. It was a perk of the job.

The client, a woman who had very short hair but was a noticeably long person—she seemed double the length of an average woman, like someone about to stride out onto a field and win the gold medal for high jump—was here for a first appointment with the senior partner, Chris Marshall. She was speaking quietly into her phone, but the receptionist had excellent hearing, which was not her fault.

“If they work it out themselves, that’s fine, I mean, we worked it out ourselves. I’m sure they’re more efficient investigators than us. I just don’t see why we need to hand it to them on a platter. It’s not relevant. It just makes Dad look bad.”

There was a long pause, and then she suddenly said, “Well, that’s up to you, Troy. I can’t stop you. But you may as well know that I’m finding Dad a lawyer. Just in case.”

Another pause.

“Yes, I’m standing by him.”