Exiles (Aaron Falk #3)(37)

Falk waited, genuinely curious, but when she didn’t go on, he said, “It’s honestly fine, you don’t have to explain.”

A pause. “Thank you.”

He’d kind of hoped she would, though. Was it her late husband? On some level that had to be part of the equation for anyone, but it didn’t feel like the whole answer. Falk had been around grief—spouses, children, friends—enough times that he was pretty well attuned to the complexities involved. This felt like something else, though. He ran through the last few hours again: the bar, the drinks, the walk, the restaurant, the candle— “It’s nothing you did, Aaron. It’s not you.”

He smiled at that, and despite herself she smiled back.

“Really,” she said.

“Okay.” He nodded. He’d take her word for it, but he’d love to know what it was, in that case. “Well.” He breathed out. It was a no. All right, then. Move on. “Thanks, anyway, Gemma, for tonight. I really had a great time with you. It was a lot of fun.”

She was wavering, he could tell. But then she simply nodded. “Yeah. It was.”

“And I’m glad I got to meet you.”

“Me, too.”

Stay or go?

Go.

He couldn’t help it, he paused for a moment, hoping for a last-minute change of heart. But all she said was: “Good luck with the new job.”

“Thanks. Have a safe flight home.” He raised a hand. “Well. Bye, then.”

“Goodbye.”

Falk turned and headed off toward the tram stop. He thought he could feel her watching him for a way, but when he glanced back, she had gone. The spot where they’d been standing outside the station was now occupied by a pair of teenage girls embroiled in a teary argument.

No.

No number, no text-or-call debate, no follow-up. It was a no. And that was her choice to make, and her decision was fair enough. But Falk still wished it had been a yes.





13


Falk had spotted Gemma only twice during his brief visit to Marralee twelve months earlier. The first, perhaps not surprisingly, had been at the festival. It had been just after 8:00 p.m. on the night Kim Gillespie would later disappear, and the sky was dark. Falk had been walking back from the HQ caravan, having tried and failed to deliver Charlie’s safety reports into Gemma’s hands personally, when suddenly there she was. Just beyond the ferris wheel, a little farther along the path.

She’d been deep in conversation with a blond woman Falk hadn’t recognized at the time, but now knew to be Naomi Kerr. Falk had paused, considering what to do. Above him, the ferris wheel had circled slowly on its axis.

His impulse had been to walk straight up to Gemma and say hello, but instinctively he’d been able to tell this wasn’t a great time. Both women were talking fast, standing close to hear each other over the noise. Naomi had seemed agitated, her hands moving in quick, tight gestures. She’d made a point emphatically, and in response both women suddenly lifted their heads and looked in Falk’s direction.

He had thought—hoped—for a second that Gemma would see him, but she and Naomi had been focused on something else, their gaze settling beyond him. Gemma had nodded, firm but calm—Okay, I understand—and Naomi had looked slightly mollified.

It had been that same moment that a feedback loop had screeched from the ride’s speakers behind Falk and he’d automatically turned; the moment he’d caught Rohan Gillespie’s eye, vaguely registered him talking to the Queensland tourist family, seen him waving up to the top carriage. And that—as Falk would have explained to the interviewing officer later if the guy had pressed him at all—was why two and a half hours before Kim was reported missing, his own focus had not been on her at all. It was instead on Gemma, who had been right there on the path before he’d glanced away, and was maddeningly, frustratingly gone by the time he’d looked back.

He did see her once more after that: the following day, in those strange black hours when the urgent question of Kim’s whereabouts was taking on a surreal nightmarish quality. Falk had spotted Gemma leaving the police station as he’d been arriving to make his own statement. From the pavement on the other side of the road, the main street traffic moving between them, he’d watched her come quickly down the station steps. She’d gotten into her car, started the engine, and driven away. If she’d seen him standing there, she hadn’t acknowledged it.

Falk had kept the diary, though. The pages were crinkled with pen marks and crossings-out. The days had been crammed full of meetings and reminders and corrections and calls to return and questions to check and reports due. But it still didn’t have her number.



* * *



Falk and Raco sat outside the guesthouse, drinking coffee in the morning sun while five-year-old Eva attempted to thread dandelions into a crown. Falk had woken up naturally before his alarm, which was somewhat unusual, and he’d lain in bed for several seconds, bathed in the light from the window and trying to remember where he was. Now, he and Raco watched in silence as the back door to the house opened and Zara wandered out. She crossed the veranda and walked down to the grounds, absorbed in her phone. She was hunched too far over to properly see her face.

“She told me she thought yesterday went quite well,” Raco said.

“That’s something, at least.”