The Shadow House(73)

Fortunately for Michael, work was a distraction, an activity in which to get lost. But for Renee, the house was now a purposeless void. Unless April came to help, the laundry went unwashed, the carpets unvacuumed. The same minutes and hours still made up the day, but Renee had no idea where they went. She’d spent the last few weeks sitting, staring, weeping, waiting.

The police had concluded that Gabe’s disappearance was not suspicious. They’d found evidence on his computer that he’d been depressed and scared. He’d been active in certain chat rooms and forums, he’d said hateful things about his family, other people, the world. His search history turned up research on religious mortification, solitary confinement and personality disorders. Doctors said his medication could have had adverse side effects.

He ran away, the detectives said. He was probably living on the streets somewhere.

But Renee’s intuition was telling her something different.

Sometimes she’d walk through the forest at night, stumbling through the trees and calling for him. Sometimes she’d black out and whole days would pass without her noticing. She was rarely alone, though; visitors knocked constantly at the door. Bess Hassop, mostly. Bess was losing her mind, but she wasn’t bad company. At least she listened.

April and Frank came over, too, often with members of their church. They would bring food, cook, clean the house, sit with her and pray. When they left, Renee would go to bed.

In the evenings, Michael would come home with Ebony in tow. Always the same sounds in the same sequence: the hum of the microwave, the clink of the whisky bottle, the soft tack-tack-tack of paws on the floor. The rustle of bedsheets being spread over the couch. Paul McCartney, playing a bittersweet tune. And then the lights would go out and the house would fall still.

‘We need to talk,’ Michael said again.

Renee blinked and reached for a towel. Wiping her face, she turned away from the mirror but found her reflection again in the bathroom window, that same spectral hag lurking like a ghost. She looked through the ghost and out onto the farm. It was dark outside: a small slice of moon illuminating the outline of sheds and greenhouses, shipwreck-vague in the distance.

‘I sold the farm,’ Michael said.

Renee inclined her head. Whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t that.

‘We’re downsizing. Moving closer to the coast.’

Renee opened her mouth, then shut it again. When she’d married him, she’d known that the farm would be their life. Michael had been adamant; it’d been in the family for generations. So they took it on, and he’d worked hard, much harder than he ought to have done in her opinion. From time to time, Renee had suggested moving on, changing things up. ‘We could buy an RV,’ she’d said. ‘Travel around Australia, see where the wind takes us.’ But he’d always refused: ‘Real men don’t shirk their responsibilities,’ he would say, and she’d known that the spirit of Len Kellerman had spoken.

Renee looked back through the window, at the dark farm, the bordering trees and all that lay beyond. ‘When?’ she said, not knowing whether she was asking when they were moving, or when he had sold.

‘A little over a month ago,’ said Michael, choosing the latter.

‘But that would’ve been …’

‘The day of the disappearance.’ Michael nodded. ‘I got the call that morning. I tried to tell you – but then …’ He looked at the floor. ‘With everything that happened, it didn’t seem important.’

A dim memory – of Michael walking into the house, opening the door and smiling. I have some news.

‘It’s a good opportunity, Ren. The buyers offered way above what the farm is worth. I didn’t feel I could say no.’

Buyers. Renee looked at the taps, the bathtub and the shower, and tried to imagine someone else using them, someone else’s reflection in the mirror.

The land had been bought by a cooperative, Michael explained. The entire property, all two hundred acres of it, was to be rezoned and turned into an ecovillage. The development had already secured government support and funding from the local council. And there was no rush to leave; the buyers had agreed to lease the house back to them for as long as it took for them to find a new home.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. You were in such a state; I figured I’d just take care of it.’ He had his eye on a nice little two-bedroom place by the ocean, he said. They would retire, take long walks on the beach, plant a garden. They would have space and freedom. Ebony would love it. ‘We could even get that RV you always dreamed about. Do the grey nomad thing one day.’

But all Renee could think was: four weeks. It had only been four annihilating weeks since their son had disappeared.

‘No,’ she heard herself say. ‘What if he comes back?’

Michael pressed his palms together and brought them to his lips. ‘Ren …’

‘He won’t know where we’ve gone.’

‘Renee. He’s not coming back.’

‘What if he was taken? What if he’s being held captive, what if he escapes? He’ll come straight back here, I know he will.’

Michael sighed. ‘We won’t go far,’ he said. ‘Just to the coast. It’s fifty kilometres at the most.’

Renee shook her head, imagining an older version of Gabriel, exhausted and traumatised after an arduous getaway, or contrite and homesick after living on the streets, or maybe plump and healthy after ‘finding himself’ on a beach in Thailand, arriving back at the farm with a suitcase in his hand to find that his parents had not missed him, they had not waited, they had moved on.