The Game You Played (14 page)

Saturday night

I POURED MYSELF A BOURBON AND listened to the silence in the house.

Then pulled out my phone from my pocket and dialled my mother.

She answered with that slightly worried tone she always used when she answered the phone—to anyone, as though eternally bracing herself for bad news. “Luke?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”
Of course it’s me. The name popping up on your phone’s display right now is telling you it’s me.

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

“No, not really.”

“Well, what’s going on? Is it Phoebe?”

“Why do you think it’s Phoebe?”

“Oh, Luke, it’s always her. You’re always the one picking up the pieces.”

She surprised me with those words, and it took me a second to adjust. She’d never spoken of Phoebe in that negative way before.

“I’ve been trying to get you on the phone since this morning. So has Aunty Joan. I’m guessing you haven’t heard what happened?”

“Oh my goodness, what is it? No, you know the cabin’s out of range for phone calls. We’re in town right now, having some dinner.”

“It’s all over the news, Mum. We’ve been getting letters. About Tommy.”

“
No.
About Tommy? What kind of letters?”

“Just . . . letters. Rhymes. They make no sense.”

“So you’ve told the police?”

“Yeah. Mum, it’s
national news
.”

“Oh dear. Just who are these letters from? The kidnapper?”

“The police don’t think so. Just some misguided person . . .” I wasn’t going to tell my mother the whole story. Not yet anyway.

“Oh, I feel terrible. All the way down here away from everything.”

“Look, I was thinking . . . Phoebe’s not handling it well. Maybe I could bring her to the cabin for a bit. Give her a change of scenery.”

I could almost hear Mum thinking. “I just don’t know if it’s the best timing.”

“What’s happening?”

“Your father’s not well.”

“Yeah? What’s up with the old guy?”

“He’s just going through a bit of a thing. Depression, I guess you’d call it. He really needs some quiet time so he can recharge and get back to being himself again.”

“When did that start?”

“A while. What happened with little Tommy affected him deeply. I think he just can’t make peace with the world at the moment.”

I rubbed my forehead, not knowing if I could handle hearing about how Tommy’s disappearance had affected yet someone else. Sometimes it seemed like I was the one expected to soldier on while everyone else had a licence to fall apart. “Okay, well, I’ll figure out something else.”

“I think that would be best.”

She didn’t even try to offer me any alternative. I was on my own with this. I’d been hoping my mother would welcome us with open arms and that Dad would take me fishing out on the lake. They’d had the cabin for the last sixteen years, ever since I was a teenager. Nine hours down the coast, on a lake about twenty minutes inland from the ocean. Damned freezing in winter when snow covered everything, but the best place ever in the summer. Dad had always seemed in his element there. He tolerated his trips around Europe with Mum well enough, but the cabin was his special place. He’d sit out on the porch with a grin so lazy and contented it was half sliding off his face, hands on the ballooned gut that was a sign of the good life.

Mum and I chatted briefly about nothing in particular. It was obvious she was just being polite before we ended the call.

I dropped the phone back into my pocket. It occurred to me that I didn’t know when the bulk of my mother’s attention had swapped from me to my father. I used to be the one that she worried and fussed about. But now it seemed that it was all about
your father
. Maybe the two of them were just getting old and afraid, and in her eyes, life had become all about keeping her husband alive for as long as possible. My dad wasn’t known for his healthy eating. And he drank a lot more than was good for his liver.

Watching myself in the mirror, I set my bourbon down on the side table. I wasn’t thirty yet, but already I looked older than thirty. My hairline was creeping back, and the tired look around my eyes had become a permanent fixture. For a second, I saw my dad’s face merging with my own. Who was I going to be when I was in my sixties? Was I going to become a faded version of myself who sat on the porch of his cabin, drinking and staring transfixed at a lake, occasionally thinking about the toddler son he hadn’t seen grow up? The son that was still missing? In all likelihood, that was my future. My parents would leave the cabin to me. What I couldn’t imagine was Phoebe still by my side, fussing over me. Phoebe was never going to become like my mother or even her own mother. She was made of different stuff.

The silence of the house seemed different now. Like I was alone in it.

Leaving my drink, I headed upstairs.

The smell of vomit soured the air. The bathroom door was ajar, and I pushed it open.

Phoebe was lying fully submerged, her eyes wide open, just staring from beneath the water. A small pile of vomit sat on the tiles beside the bath, a thin trail of it leading to the toilet. A film of vomit floated in the toilet bowl. She must have flushed the rest.

It took me a moment to register what I was seeing.

In a single leap, I was across the bathroom floor. I was grabbing her, lifting her head and torso from the water. She barely registered that I was there. Just blinked at me.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I didn’t recognise my voice.

“I can’t . . . bear it.” That was all she said.

I knelt on the floor, in the water that’d been splashed everywhere, in her vomit. “I lost Tommy too. Remember that.”

“I don’t understand anything. I don’t understand why Tommy’s gone or how the letters happened. Everything’s wrong, and I can’t fix it. I can’t fix it. I don’t want to live anymore.”

As I stared at her, the urge to choke her rose from the pit of my stomach for the second time today. She’d lost Tommy, but she still had me. But I was not enough. Me—and all the things I’d given her—were not fucking enough. My hands clamped around her shoulders, thumbs on her gleaming, wet throat. A single word hissed from between my teeth. “Don’t . . .”

She showed no emotion.
Nothing.

My fingers slipped away, brushing the bath water. It had gone cool. “What were you trying to do? Drown yourself?”

“I don’t know.”

I brought down my fist on the side of the bath. She didn’t flinch. “Tell me why. Why did you write those letters? To punish the police? Or to punish me?”

“Please . . .”

“Tell me why.”

“I don’t know why. I don’t have any memory of it.”

“How could you not remember? That makes no sense. Just admit what you did. That would be a start.”

“Go to hell.” It was a broken, softly spoken
go to hell
. But the look in her eyes broke me inside. A look of hate.

I was tired of saving her. When she was growing up, I’d done my best to save her from her shitty life. And I’d been saving her ever since. How long could you keep on saving a person?

But like the idiot I was, I picked her up just like I had all those times she was drunk. I wrapped her in a towel and deposited her in our bed. Her hair still smelled vaguely of vomit.

Stepping back to the bathroom, I cleaned up the mess with a bunch of toilet paper.

What was I supposed to do now? Sit downstairs and watch TV? Pretend my life was some kind of normal?

Instead, I went to lay myself down beside her. She didn’t even acknowledge me. I turned to look at her, but her face was stony.

What I wanted from Phoebe was something she’d never been able to give me—a soft place to land.

Phoebe Phoebe

Not so easy

Locked up tighter

Than Ebenezer

When we were both sixteen, I used to tease her with that. Teasing her in the hope that she’d relent and fool around with me, just like Sass and Pria had already done—even Bernice. I’d felt shame years later for comparing Phoebe to Ebenezer Scrooge. But back then, when we were sixteen, I didn’t think too hard about anything. I eventually wore her down. For a couple of months that same year, we used to go upstairs at number 29 and make out. Until the day that Bernice did something so damned evil at that house that none of us ever went back there.

Turning away from me, Phoebe curled herself up.

I was an intruder. In my own room. In my own bed.

Rising, I pulled on a hoodie and returned downstairs. Now I knew even less what to do with myself. So I headed out.

The front door was deadlocked, and I made sure I had both keys with me. Phoebe couldn’t get out without the keys. And I’d changed the number sequence on the alarm. I didn’t know if I believed in the whole sleepwalking thing, but at least my conscience was clear. She couldn’t get out of the house.

Lock up your wife

She’s nothing but strife

There was a rhyme I couldn’t have anticipated back when I was sixteen and thinking Phoebe would be the girl I’d marry one day. Feeling like Peter the Pumpkin Eater, I jogged down to the docks.

Two homeless men passed each other’s paths along the waterfront, reminding me of two ferries crossing each other on the water, carrying nothing but loneliness on board.

Before I knew what I was doing, I was on the next block, running back up the hill.

I wanted to make myself turn back. But I didn’t.

Standing at Kitty’s front gate, I caught my breath.

She answered the intercom, sounding sleepy.

The metal gate rolled open, and I walked up her path. Her face was all concern and comfort. “Luke! You don’t look so hot. What’s going on?”

“I just need some company right now. Is that okay?”

“You know it’s okay.”

I told myself I was going to hold back and keep the wall up—the kind of wall I kept for my business clients. But I crumbled as soon as she had a coffee in my hands and had me sitting on the sofa.

I was shaking all over, and I couldn’t make myself go still.

“Oh hell, you’re a mess.” She touched my arm, taking the coffee from me and placing it on the low table in front of us.

My ribcage began squeezing into a series of silent sobs.

She grabbed me in a bear hug. I was grateful that she didn’t speak.

“I should go home,” I told her. “I’ve been leaning on you for months, and you don’t need that.”

“Nonsense. Lean on me all you need to. If you get yourself right, then you’re in a better place to help Phoebe through all this.”

Something inside me snapped, and I grabbed her arms “You know, that’s all I ever hear. Poor Phoebe. Everyone says it. Everyone thinks it. I’m just expected to keep propping her up. No one gives a flying fuck how I’m doing.”

She winced, shrinking back. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“I’m just over it. Do you know what she did tonight?”

She shook her head in response, her expression tensing as if she didn’t want to know the answer.

“She fucking tried to drown herself.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Oh my God! What?”

“Yeah. In the bath. I dragged her out. She’s sleeping now. Like a baby.”

“Don’t you need to call someone? She might need help. This is serious. Luke, you can’t—”

“Can’t what? Can’t stop being her keeper? People don’t drown themselves in their bathtubs, Kitty. Not if they really want to do the job. They’d cut their wrists first or take a bottle of pills, or—”

“Are you sure she didn’t? The pills, I mean.”

“No, she went straight into the bath. Anyway, I counted the sleeping tablets that she keeps in her drawer. I count them every few days. They were all there. She’s just looking for attention.”

“Look, do you want a drink?” Not waiting for a response, she went and made me a bourbon and cola and planted it in my hand.

I downed the drink. A fuzz immediately spread through me—my fourth drink in the last hour. I’d had three at home already.

“Talk to me about the notes,” she said. “I can’t imagine what it would be like to get those in the mail. The latest I heard on the news is that the police think they were just from a crank?”

My teeth set together. “Yeah. Just a crank. The notes are just the latest episode in my shit life.”

“Sometimes, things happen that make us stop and evaluate everything in our life. Maybe you’re just at a crossroads.”

“I don’t know where I am. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.”

“You will. You’ll find your way.” She smiled tentatively. “Hey, have you had your yacht out for a spin lately?”