The Dry (Aaron Falk #1)(95)
Falk tramped through the fields, his head clearer now. Twenty years was twenty years, but some things shouldn’t be swept away. Ellie Deacon. She more than anyone had been a victim of this town. Its secrets and lies and fear. She had needed someone. Needed him maybe, and he had failed her. Ellie was the one at risk of being forgotten in all the chaos. Like Karen nearly was. Like Billy.
Not today, Falk thought. Today he would remember Ellie, at the place he knew she’d loved. He reached the rock tree as the sun was starting to dip in the sky. It was nearly April now. The summer fierceness was fading away. They said the drought might break this winter. For everyone’s sake, he wanted them to be right this time. The river was still gone. He hoped one day it would come back.
Falk knelt by the rock and pulled out the penknife he’d brought. He found the point where the secret crevasse opened, and started carving. Tiny letters, E. L. L. The knife was blunt, and the going was slow, but he persevered to the end. Finally, he sat back against the rock and wiped his forehead. He ran his thumb over the letters, admiring his handiwork. His burned leg felt like it was on fire from the pressure of kneeling.
The pain jogged a thought. With a grunt, he turned and reached into his crevasse, feeling for the ancient lighter he’d left there last time. Nostalgia was one thing, but after recent events, he didn’t want to leave temptation around for anyone to find.
Falk knew he’d placed it deep, and at first his good hand found nothing but dirt and leaves. He reached in farther, stretching out his fingers. He felt the metal of the lighter as his thumb brushed against something soft but solid. He jumped, knocking the lighter away. Annoyed, he reached back in and paused as his hand hit the same object. It was rough but pliable and fairly large. Man-made.
Falk peered into the gap. He couldn’t see anything and hesitated. Then he thought about Luke and Whitlam and Ellie and all the people who had been hurt by buried secrets. Enough.
Falk thrust his hand in and scrabbled around until he got a firm hold. He gave a tug, and the object came free with a sudden jerk. He fell backward, his chest screaming in pain as it landed on him with a thump. He looked down and sucked in a breath when he saw what he was holding. A purple backpack.
It was covered in cobwebs and dirt, but he recognized it at once. Even if he hadn’t, he would have known who it belonged to. Only one other person knew about the gap in the rock tree, and she had taken the knowledge with her into the river.
Falk opened the bag. Laying the items on the ground, he pulled out a pair of jeans, two shirts, a jumper, a hat, underwear, a small bag of makeup. There was a plastic wallet with an ID of a girl who looked a little bit like Ellie Deacon. It said her name was Sharna McDonald and she was nineteen. A roll of money, tens, twenties, the occasional fifty even. Saved, scraped.
At the very bottom of the backpack was another item, wrapped twenty years ago in a raincoat to protect it as she packed. He took it out and held it in his hands for a long while. It was tattered and curled around the edges, but the writing beneath the hard-backed cover was there to read, in black and white. Ellie Deacon’s diary.
He called her by her mum’s name the first time he hit her. She could see in her dad’s cloudy eyes that the word had just slid out, as slippery as oil, as his fist slammed into her shoulder. He was drunk, and she was fourteen, with looks that were on the turn from child to woman. Her mum’s photo had long been removed from the mantelpiece, but the woman’s distinctive features were returning to the farmhouse each day as Ellie Deacon grew older.
He hit her once, then after a long while it happened again. Then again. And again. She tried watering down the booze. Her father realized from his first sip, and she never made that mistake again. At home she wore tops that showed her bruises, but her cousin Grant just turned on the TV and told her to stop winding up her old man. Her schoolwork deteriorated. If the teachers noticed, it was with a sharp comment about her lack of attention. They never asked why.
Ellie began to speak less and discover more what both her parents liked so much about bringing a bottle to their lips. The girls she thought were friends looked at her strangely and whispered when they thought she couldn’t hear. They had enough problems of their own, with their skin and weight and boys, without Ellie making them look even more out of place. A few teenage tactical moves later and Ellie found herself out in the cold.
She’d been on her own in Centenary Park on a Saturday night with a bottle in her bag and nowhere else to be when she’d heard the two familiar figures laughing in low voices from the bench. Aaron and Luke. Ellie Deacon felt a flutter, like finding something she’d forgotten but once held close.
It took them all a little getting used to. The boys looked at her like they had never seen her before. But she liked it. Having two people in her life doing as she said rather than telling her what to do suited her fine.
When they were much younger, she had preferred Luke’s exhilaration and bravado, but now she found herself more drawn to Aaron’s subtle thoughtfulness. Luke was nothing like her dad and cousin, she knew that, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that hidden deep in his fabric there was a small part of him not completely unlike them either. It was almost a relief when Gretchen turned his head at least part of the way with her radiant siren call.
For a while it was good. More time with her friends meant less time at home. She got a part-time job and learned the hard way to hide her money from her cash-strapped dad and cousin.