The Dry (Aaron Falk #1)(63)

Falk nodded.

Rita shivered, despite the heat. “I tell him, all the time. I tell him: What’s happening in this place, it’s not your fault. This place is different. It’s not like your dad’s community.”

Rita raised her eyebrows at Falk, and he nodded. She shook her head and flashed half a dimple.

“Still. What can I do? It’s too complex for logic, isn’t it? A man’s relationship with his father?”

Raco reappeared in the doorway as she spoke. He was holding three mugs of coffee.

“I’ve put the pots in to soak. What are you talking about?”

“I was saying you put yourself under too much pressure to live up to your father’s standards,” Rita said, and she reached out to smooth his curly hair. The dimple flashed again. “Your partner here agrees with me.”

Falk, who hadn’t offered an opinion either way, decided Rita was probably right. Raco colored a little but moved his head to meet her hand.

“It’s not quite like that.”

“It’s OK, my love. He understands.” Rita took a sip of her coffee and looked over the rim of the mug at Falk. “Don’t you? I mean, that’s partly why you’re here yourself, isn’t it? For your father.”

There was a mystified silence.

“My father’s dead.”

“Oh, I’m very sorry to hear that.” Rita looked at him, her eyes sympathetic. “But surely that doesn’t make it any less true. Death rarely changes how we feel about someone. Heightens it, more often than not.”

“My love, what on earth are you on about?” Raco said, giving her a friendly nudge as he picked up the empty wine bottle. “I knew you shouldn’t have any of this.”

Rita frowned a little, hesitating. She looked from Falk to her husband and back again.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Perhaps I’ve got the wrong end of the stick. It’s just that I heard the rumors, of course, about your young friend who died. They said your father suffered, was accused himself even, had to take you away, leave his home. That must have caused some … friction. And even now, those awful leaflets being scattered around town with his photograph.” She stopped. “I apologize. Please ignore me. I’m always reading far too much into a situation.”

For a long moment no one spoke.

“No, Rita,” Falk said. “Actually, I think you’ve read it just about right.”

Mal Deacon’s truck filled the rearview mirror for more than a hundred kilometers along the road out of Kiewarra. Aaron’s father, Erik, drove with one eye on the reflection and two hands clenched on the wheel.

Aaron sat mutely in the passenger seat, still reeling from his hasty good-bye to Luke and Gretchen. The Falks’ household goods clunked and shifted in the back. Whatever they’d managed to fit in. Far behind them, their farmhouse had been locked up and secured as tightly as they could manage. The sheep flock had been divided between any neighbors willing to take them on. Aaron was afraid to ask out loud if the arrangement was for now or forever.

Just once, near the start of the journey, Erik had slowed right down to encourage Deacon to pass. As if this were a normal drive on a normal day. Instead, the dirty white truck had advanced steadily until it shunted the back bumper with a jolt that sent Aaron’s head snapping backward. Erik didn’t slow down again.

Nearly an hour had passed when Deacon suddenly blasted his horn in one continuous bellow. He edged closer, his vehicle huge in Aaron’s side mirror, the noise blaring and bouncing along the empty road. The sound crowded Aaron’s head, and he pressed his palms against the glove box, bracing himself for the inevitable jolt from behind. By his side, his father’s jaw was set. The seconds stretched long, and when Aaron thought he couldn’t stand it anymore, the noise stopped. The abrupt silence rang in his ears.

In the reflection, he saw Deacon wind down his window and slowly extend an arm and then a single middle finger. He held it there for an age, braced against the wind. And then he finally, mercifully, grew smaller and smaller in the mirror until he disappeared from sight.

“Dad hated Melbourne,” Falk said. “He never really settled there. He found an office job managing the supply chain for an agribusiness, but it absolutely sucked the life out of him.”

Falk himself had been pointed in the direction of the nearest high school to finish his final year. Distracted and dismayed, he barely remembered picking up a pen, let alone raising his hand. He sat his final exams and emerged on the other side with grades that were strong, rather than outstanding.

“I managed to adjust a bit better than Dad. He was really lonely there,” he said. “We never talked about it, though. We both kind of closed in on ourselves and got on with it. That didn’t help.”

Rita and Raco looked across the table at him. Rita stretched out her hand and placed it over Falk’s.

“I’m sure whatever sacrifices he made for you, he felt they were worth it.”

Falk inclined his head a fraction.

“Thank you for saying it, but I’m not sure he would agree.”

Aaron continued to watch in the mirror as they drove on in silence. Deacon didn’t reappear. After an hour of nothing, his father abruptly braked, slamming Aaron against his seat belt as he pulled the truck over at the side of the empty road with a squeal of tires.