Good Girl Bad (23)

Why does it feel different, this time, though?

“I’m afraid you’ll lose your temper in front of them.”

What did that even mean? Was her yelling worse than other mothers’? She had never yelled in front of Tabby’s friends, what was Tabby even talking about?

Rebecca feels the familiar rage bubbling in her chest. And half of her wants to burrow into Tabby’s pillow and cry, but she doesn’t understand the feeling, and she pushes it away angrily, and lumbers out of bed to get ready for work, plastering a bright smile on her face, and thinking there will be no jewelry for that bloody child, she’s sick of feeling guilty about yelling at her when frankly, she’s such an ungrateful little shit.





19





Wednesday

Rebecca wakes with a start.

She lies in bed, very still.

What had woken her?

Rustling. She strains to hear in the dark, her heart thumping in her chest. For the third or fourth time that day, she’s grateful Nate is sleeping down the hallway. If he wasn’t here, being woken by strange noises in the night would be terrifying.

There’s nothing. Her heart keeps pounding though, as though it knows something she doesn’t. She takes some deep slow breaths.

Leroy.

The bed is empty beside her. She feels it acutely, like a cold, icy lump where his warm body should be. It still doesn’t feel real. Here, in the dark, her heart hammering in her ears, it can’t possibly be more than a bad dream, can it?

She gets out of bed and pads down the hallway to the kitchen. She can see the green glow of the clock and squints to make out the time.

1:01 a.m.

She’s just thinking she’ll make a cup of tea when she notices a slash of light underneath the door of Tabby’s bedroom, and stops in her tracks.

Tabby?

Her instinct is to throw the door open, see her daughter there, crush her to her chest, look after her and love her and cherish her, but she stops herself.

Rustling. She remembers what woke her, and strains to hear if there’s any rustling now.

Nate’s door is shut, but he’s right there. Should she wake him?

Instead she shakes herself. If someone was in Tabby’s room, it is most likely Tabby, and whatever is going on, Tabby is the only one who can explain it. So she steps forward confidently and flings open the door.

And shivers.

The window is wide open, and the room is freezing.

The orderliness that Rebecca had admired only a couple of days ago is now thrust into disarray: pens scattered across the desk, doonas thrown on the floor. The trundle mattress is half out of its trundle, gently sighing onto the floor, its sheets rumpled and messy.

Someone has been searching for something. Springing into action, she sprints to the window, her eyes searching the parts of their yard she can see. “NATE!” she yells toward his door, and she runs past to the front door, flinging it open, dashing from one end of the veranda to the other, a useless activity—she can’t see anything in the dim light.

Further down the road, a streetlamp throws a cool light onto the road and frontyards, but in front of her house, it’s dark and silent.

Nate appearing beside her makes her jump.

“Bec?” he says, rubbing his eyes, looking confused and middle-aged in the cheap pyjamas she’d loaned to him; a gift for Leroy from some relative with no sense of taste. Pyjamas she wouldn’t let Leroy wear in a pink fit. “What’s going on?”

“Someone was in Tabby’s room,” she says, breathless, marching back into the house and surveying the mess again. “The light. The window.”

“The mess,” Nate adds, fully awake now. “What were they searching for? Jesus.”

“Don’t touch anything,” Rebecca snaps when Nate steps into the room. “I’ll call the police.”





After the officers have gone, Nate and Rebecca sit at the kitchen table.

The police had dusted for fingerprints, though Rebecca had had to push for it—she couldn’t say if anything was missing, and had to press them that Tabby was missing and Leroy was dead, so they were dealing with a possible homicide investigation, not a case of a missing iPhone. When she said this, she stopped abruptly, thinking of Tabby’s second phone. They hadn’t managed to locate it, didn’t even know its number.

The police had suggested Rebecca check and fasten all the locks.

Now, they sit in silence.

Genevieve has not stirred—or at least, she hasn’t emerged, if she heard anything.

“Let her sleep,” Nate had said, his hand on Rebecca’s arm as she headed for Genevieve’s door, and she’d stopped, looked down at his hand pointedly. Nate had removed it.

“She needs to tell us who Tabby’s lover is.”

Rebecca had wasted no time asking her after they left the police station the day before, but Genevieve had looked alarmed, and denied she knew anything. When Rebecca had recounted what Nate had overheard, Gen got a stubborn look on her face, and insisted they were talking about celebrity crushes.

“Oh, come on, Gen.” Rebecca had been angry. “You don’t get angry about celebrity crushes. ‘Mind your own fucking business’?” But Genevieve was sticking to her story and remained stony-faced.

Minutes tick by. Nate rubs his face. He’s doing it repeatedly, like he’s trying to rub away this reality, and the gesture irks Rebecca. “Maybe I misheard,” he says now. “Maybe she’s telling the truth.” Maybe I was primed to hear things that implicate Leroy in something seedy, he admits to himself, but not to Rebecca.