The Lost Man(36)

‘Oh. Of course.’ She looked down. ‘Steve called from the clinic. Unless the autopsy finds it was something other than dehydration, they’ll release his body in a couple of days. We can have the funeral on Wednesday if we want.’

‘Christmas Eve? That soon?’

‘It’s either then or we have to wait until the new year. Ilse said she didn’t know, so I told them we’d do it then. Better done, I thought.’ She turned her swollen eyes towards the house and the girls’ bedroom windows. ‘Do you think that was the right decision?’

‘I think so. There’s no good choice.’

‘I suppose I’d better let the neighbours know, then.’

‘Will they come? This close to Christmas?’

‘Of course they will.’ Liz’s voice had an edge.

Nathan knew that was probably true. People had liked Cameron, and even if they hadn’t, they tended to make the effort for the dead. Funerals were one of the few events that ever drew his mum away from the property. Most were local, within a day’s drive, but a few months ago she’d flown all the way to Victoria to see her brother buried.

Nathan had barely listened when Liz had called to tell him his uncle had died. Malcolm Deacon, dead of a coronary, aged seventy-one. Nathan couldn’t pretend to care. He hadn’t even known the bloke. He’d only met him once, more than twenty years earlier at the funeral for the guy’s own daughter. All three brothers had gone to that one, because Liz had made them.

‘She was your cousin,’ she’d said, and apparently that settled it. Carl had point-blank refused to go, then seemed astounded when that hadn’t deterred his wife’s plans. Instead, Liz and the boys had flown and driven for hours, trailing all the way out to Kiewarra, some shitkicker town Nathan had never heard of in the arse-end of Victoria. They’d arrived and Nathan thought he could see why his mum had left practically the day she turned eighteen. It was bigger than Balamara, but there was something that felt off about the place. The soft-cock locals did nothing but bitch about the weather, while the Bright brothers strolled around in long sleeves, enjoying the cool change.

The family had listened to a sermon for a girl they had never met, surrounded by people they didn’t know. Nathan knew his cousin had been seventeen, only a few years behind him, but he was surprised by how young that suddenly seemed when he saw the coffin. There were two boys and a girl about her age sitting near the front, visibly shaken, their eyes wide with disbelief. Bub, who had only been eight at the time, had sobbed into his hands as if he’d known her.

After the service, Nathan, Cameron and Bub had held back and watched Liz’s frosty reunion with her brother. A cousin on the other side of the family had loitered the whole time, staring at them with the half-glazed eyes of a daytime drinker. He looked like the worst kind of dickhead and Nathan had been glad he kept his distance. Later, the bloke had said something to upset Bub so Nathan and Cam had cornered him in the toilets and roughed him up a little. Not too much – it was still a funeral and they weren’t animals – but enough that he’d remember it next time. As they’d left the wake, his mum had shaken her head and muttered something under her breath.

‘What was that?’ Nathan said.

‘Nothing. Just, we should have done better for that poor girl.’

They’d headed out of town the minute it was all done and dusted, Liz apparently not interested in staying even a single night in the farming community she’d grown up in. That year felt like it was marked by death. Within a few months, they’d prised Nathan’s dad from a tangled metal wreckage and buried him in the far corner of the yard.

After that, Liz hadn’t set foot on a plane again until three months ago, when she’d announced she was attending her brother’s funeral. Nathan had been completely taken aback. He’d felt nothing but vague relief at his uncle’s death and had assumed his mum had felt the same.

‘Why on earth are you going?’ he had asked.

‘He was my brother.’

‘Yes, but –’ he had started, then couldn’t think how to continue. She had all the same information that he did. To be honest, Nathan thought it was bloody lucky the heart attack had done the man in before the legal system caught up with him.

Not that the technicalities had mattered to Jacqui. She’d had an absolute field day when she’d heard what his uncle had been accused of and had jumped at the excuse not to send Xander for his visits, citing ongoing legal proceedings and appropriate role model behaviour and all that bullshit. Nathan had been forced to pay a three-figure sum for his lawyer to send a six-sentence letter reminding Jacqui of her court-ordered obligations. So if the bloke was dead in the ground, Nathan – for one – was happy enough about it.

But Liz had seemed determined to go, and Nathan had worried about her doing that absolute slog of a journey on her own. He’d thought about it for longer than he should have, then reluctantly said he’d go with her, only to be told that Cameron had already offered and she’d told him not to bother either.

‘For God’s sake,’ she’d said. ‘Mal wasn’t worth one airfare, let alone two. Not before and especially not now.’

There had been a long argument and in the end Uncle Harry had gone with her.

‘How was it?’ Nathan had asked him later.