Exiles (Aaron Falk #3)(70)

“Forget something, mate?” Charlie’s voice was light and strange, and he gently shook Raco’s hand off his elbow.

Rohan stood for a moment longer, then shifted Zoe to his other arm, and walked back toward them. He stopped a few paces short of where he’d been standing.

“Didn’t go down there for nearly twenty years.” Rohan let the words hang in the air. “I mean, did you ever ask her why?”

There was a long silence. Charlie didn’t move, but something complicated shifted behind his eyes even as his face went slack, and his gaze fell to the ground.

Rohan seemed strongly tempted to say more, but kept his mouth pressed shut in a hard, thin line. He looked sad rather than surprised, Falk thought as the man turned to leave, while Charlie just sighed and pushed a chair under the table like nothing had happened. More than sad, in fact. To Falk, Rohan looked very much like a man who’d had something he’d long suspected finally confirmed.





23


“Aaron? Wait!”

Falk was almost at the end of the vineyard drive when he heard the voice behind him. He turned. Zara was jogging toward him, and he stopped until she caught up. The cottage beyond looked still and peaceful in the afternoon sun, but Falk was glad to be getting out for a bit. Once Rohan and Zoe had left, Charlie had muttered something about work and had been holed up in his office ever since. Raco had gone in at one point to talk to him but reemerged quickly. He’d shrugged at Falk and shaken his head.

“He does this. Works through things on his own. He’ll be right in a few hours.”

“Is that true, do you reckon?” Falk had wondered. “That Kim avoided the reservoir?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible. Thinking back, I actually can’t remember her down there myself, but that’s not saying much.” Raco’s eyes were on the closed office door. “Charlie would know, to be fair.”

“If he is right,” Falk followed the train of thought, “does that make it more or less likely Kim would go down there to end her life?”

He and Raco had stood side by side, watching the light filtering across the vines as they silently played out scenarios.

“I wish we had a sense of what she was thinking then,” Raco had said finally. “Like with the view from the top of the ferris wheel. Say she did spot something she wasn’t supposed to, or something that upset her—” Raco stared out unseeing at the rolling valley and the huge sky. He shook his head. “I don’t know. I can’t get past this feeling that we’re missing something.”

Falk felt it, too. A translucent shimmer of a thought hovering in the distance, dissolving and reappearing without warning. He’d tried to grasp it. There was nothing to hold on to. “I’m not sure what.”

“Me, neither.” Raco had glanced back at the house as a child’s irritated squawk pierced the air, and breathed out a heavy sigh. “For God’s sake. I’d better give Rita a hand.”

Falk had watched him head off, then let himself into his guesthouse. At something of a loose end, he’d sat and stared at his closed work laptop for several minutes, then instead picked up the bottle of paint thinner he’d found in Charlie’s barn. He’d dug around in the cupboard under the sink, emerging with a handful of cleaning cloths, and headed out into the afternoon.

“Thanks,” Zara said now as she caught up to him, a little breathless. She pointed to the bottle of paint thinner under his arm. “Are you going to the Drop? To wipe off the graffiti?”

“Yeah, thought I’d see if this stuff worked.”

“It does,” she said. “We’ve used it before. I’ll call Joel, tell him to meet us.”

“He doesn’t have to,” Falk said. “I just wanted to stretch my legs. He’s probably got better ways to spend his Saturday.”

“He probably doesn’t. Anyway, he’ll want to.” Zara finished texting and put her phone away. They walked together in companionable silence, taking the back route past the park and the oval. No Shane today; instead a group of young girls were chasing around after each other, scrambling for the footy.

“Hey, what were my dad and Rohan arguing about before?” Zara said as they reached the reservoir turnoff, the gate still closed and locked. She seemed subdued as she stepped off the main track and around the barrier.

Falk considered what to say. Honesty usually worked. “It was about your mum.”

“Obviously. But what specifically?”

“I think in essence it came down to who was closer to her.”

“Oh.” Zara sounded fed up. “I wish Dad wouldn’t do stupid stuff like that, trying to get one over Rohan. He can’t seem to stop, though. I think because he still loved her.”

“Yeah?” Falk looked over.

“Yeah. She’d moved on, but he hadn’t really. Not in the same way. He acted like he was fine with her and Rohan and they were all friends or whatever but—” She shook her head. “After she got married, Mum had to tell him to back off in the end, because he was calling her too much, like they were still together.”

That was interesting, Falk thought. He wondered if Raco was aware. Probably.

“It’s so awkward,” Zara said. “Watching someone chase someone who’s not interested in them.”