The Shadow House(76)

Renee watched as a crane lowered a huge A-frame into place, fixing it on top of the structure like a flag on a sandcastle. The house had looked like a pile of matchsticks from the farmhouse, but close up it was much more substantial. She could see the theory of where the kitchen would be, the living room and the stairs, but couldn’t envisage the end result. It looked far too big for her. What would she do with all that space?

‘Hi there.’

Renee spun around, startled. A man in a hard hat was standing next to her.

‘Hello,’ she said.

‘Could I ask you to wear one of these?’ the man asked politely, holding out another hat. ‘I’d hate for you to have an accident.’

‘Oh,’ said Renee. ‘Sure.’ She took the hat and put it on, grateful to have something to cover her scalp.

The man smiled at her. ‘Just taking a look?’ He nodded towards the timber frame.

‘Sort of. That’s my house.’ Renee flinched. The words felt alien in her mouth. ‘Or it will be when it’s built.’

The man’s eyes lit up. ‘Is that right? Well, what a pleasure to meet you! I’m so excited to meet the buyers in person. So much of this initial stage has been handled by the agency – which is ridiculous, don’t you think? I’d much rather we all get to know each other first. But it seems people are beating the doors down to get in here.’ The man grinned. ‘Great problem to have, though. Can’t have a village with no villagers, hey?’ He stretched out his hand. ‘Sorry, I should’ve introduced myself. I’m Kit Vestey.’

Renee stuck out her hand and Kit pumped it enthusiastically. He was sweet, she thought. Impossibly young and optimistic.

‘I’m so happy you’ve joined us,’ Kit said. ‘It’s going to be an awesome community. And you’ve snagged one of the best spots. Nice big lot, great view, heaps of privacy. Plenty of room for a garden, too. Imagine a yard full of flowers and veggies against that backdrop.’ He gestured grandly to the forest.

Renee shook her head. ‘No flowers, I’m afraid. I end up killing everything I try to grow.’

Kit let out a good-natured laugh. ‘Well, I guess we can’t all be green fingered.’

They watched the crane for a moment, its huge steel arm swinging slowly back and forth over their heads. Construction workers called to each other as they stamped across the concrete slab, their banter fighting with the echo of tyres on gravel and the song lyrics stuck in Renee’s head.

‘Sorry,’ said Kit. ‘I didn’t catch your name.’

‘Jenny,’ said Renee, her head full of music. ‘My name’s Jenny.’





ALEX





35


I stood by the dam, my eyes still frantically raking over the party, searching for my son in the crowd. I called his phone. It rang out. I called it again, and again. No answer. He wasn’t there.

And neither was Jenny.

Michael’s words were stuck in my head like a radio jingle. She lives over on the far side near the trees. Split-level. White, with a blue roof. Don’t you know her?

The more he told me, I realised that I did. But not as Renee.

Jenny.

I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Jenny had once lived in the farmhouse? She’d been Gabriel Kellerman’s mother? She was Michael’s wife? It didn’t make sense … but of course it did. I thought about her loneliness, her fierce need for privacy. The way she’d danced around my family and me, desperately wanting to be both with and away from us. The dullness in her eyes sometimes, the downturn of her mouth, and the deep lines that I now understood had been etched not by sickness but by grief. The sheer weight of what she’d been carrying, the depths of her suffering, made me feel shaky. How had she hidden it for so long?

The past month flew through my mind. I saw our chaotic energy through Jenny’s eyes. Kara’s wailing, my yelling. Ollie, skinny and surly, not much younger than her son had been when he’d gone.

I imagined her life before, pictured her robust with health and purpose, standing on the veranda of the farmhouse with her hands on her hips, surveying the land. Now she spent her days looking back at her former house from the other side of the valley, watching it decay: a woman who straddled two worlds, whose broken heart had kept her tethered to the ghost of her own life. How could she stand it? Then I thought of those dust-free windowsills and swept floors, and I understood that a person with hope could withstand a world of pain.

My son was taken.

But had she withstood it? Or had it broken her?

Yours will be too.

With panic rising in my throat, I turned the pram around and hurried home.


‘Ollie?’ I called, unlocking the front door. ‘Ollie?’

Parking the pram, I rushed down the hallway to my son’s bedroom.

He wasn’t there. His sheets were tangled in a ball, the blind still drawn.

‘Ollie? Where are you? Ollie!’

I called his phone again. Straight to voicemail this time.

Fuck!

My brain didn’t know what to do so my body took charge. It propelled me in circles around the apartment, in the hope that if I just kept looking, he’d turn up like a misplaced bunch of keys.

Stuart’s voice. Not my job to keep track of your shit.