Page 24

After a good phone call with Dad, we were watching Vera on TV when there was a knock at the front door. Declan and I glanced at each other. It was late for a caller.

“I’ll get it,” Declan said. “Precaution.” He was right. We were investigating a heroin ring. We were in danger. But still, I didn’t think someone would knock before harming us.

I got a glimpse of mad scientist hair. Who was that? I stepped closer to see better. Oh. Relieved, I scooted around Declan to open the door. “Hello, Mr.Saunders,” I said.

“Would you like to see the glowworms, dear?” He fiddled with his glasses. Mum got off the sofa and joined us. Declan looked puzzled. “Thought it might be soothing after all your stress today.”

Oh… yes. I smiled. “Seeing the glowworms was what Janey, Kingi, and I did on our sleepovers for years,” I explained to Declan. “It’s only at the end of the beach, under the cliff, but it was always one of the highlights of the night.”

On the way, Mum asked Declan about a plot point in Vera , which gave me the opportunity to hang back with Mr.Saunders. He had an even jerkier gait, with some sharp intakes of breath; the pain of his arthritis had obviously worsened .

“How’re you doing?” I asked him, trying to examine his face in the light of the moon shining down over the cliff.

“Better now I’m talking to you,” he said.

He patted my arm. “Oh, I miss seeing you girls and Kingi together. Do you remember how many hours the three of you spent out back in that tent you made from sheets? Writing stories and plays and acting them out? Gosh, from age five to—well, I suppose until that year you all started high school.”

I smiled at the memory, making a wiggle mark along the sand with my toe as we ambled.

“We let you make cinnamon toast on the barbie.” He chuckled. “And you’d pick unripe feijoas from the trees.”

“And complain about funny tummies.” I rolled my eyes. “Connect the dots, kids.”

We laughed, and for a second, I could fool myself that Janey wasn’t dead after all.

I looked up, hearing Mum’s and Declan’s voices.

It wasn’t a long walk to the cliff face.

I longed to keep enjoying this moment of pretending about Janey, but I couldn’t.

While Mum and Declan were ahead of us, I needed to use the natural space to have this conversation privately.

“I found out something from Snow,” I said in a low voice. “Sarge rubbished what I said—to everyone.”

“Oh, gee, we didn’t like what you implied about that note.” He fiddled with his glasses. “Snow is such a good boy.”

I gritted my teeth.

He touched my arm and stopped in his tracks. “But we were shocked that Sarge didn’t follow up on your shoes theory. That made perfect sense to us.”

“He didn’t even entertain it.” I heard my voice sound cracked and pained. “And no one challenged him.”

Mr. Saunders shifted uncomfortably .

“Yes, I didn’t protest enough,” he said quickly, chastised, his head bowed.

“Oh, heck. I’m so sorry.” I clutched his arm. “I didn’t mean to point the finger at you.”

“No, no. I must take responsibility. I’m angry at myself. I let my wife down, and I let Janey down.” He rubbed his forehead, his breathing distressed. He’d had many painful years alone to ruminate on it. “I caved to Sarge’s arguments. You know how forceful he can be.”

“Very. Kind of scary. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t make mistakes.” I felt bad that he was blaming himself and worried I was causing him distress, but sometimes I had to dig deep like this.

He didn’t answer immediately, but his lips twitched as though he wanted to respond but was hesitant. I rubbed his arm to show he was safe.

“There was something else,” he said eventually. “Someone came back for Janey’s shoes early in the morning.”

“What?” I stepped in front of him.

Startled, the others looked back. I gave them a wave.

“Around two in the morning, Honey—you know, our dog—barked, and the porch light flicked on. I checked outside, and when I looked down, her shoes were still there. Next morning, they were gone.”

My hands flew up over my head in shock. “What do you think happened?”

“Whoever had come for them must have been hiding around the corner. It can’t have been Janey, because Honey wouldn’t have barked. Sarge said I might have misremembered, or it was Janey who came back for them.”

“But why would she?”

“Exactly what I said. Then I pushed it. And Sarge said, ‘ I wouldn’t go putting that about. It might look like you’re protesting too much, if you know what I mean.’”

“Wait.” I spun around and clutched his shoulder. “Was he implying what I think?”

He nodded, and I could see the tension in his face. Anger singed my lungs, making it hard to breathe.

“Oh, God. You’d lost Janey, and he says something as revolting as that?”

“That’s what people think of me anyway.” His voice was flat. “It killed my wife. I think it did.” His wife had died of breast cancer two years later. “Not only Janey’s disappearance, but the fact that people avoided me afterward.”

Oh, the poor man, such heartache. “I’m so sorry that happened,” I said.

I’d thought it was because he was shy and ill at ease, which I could relate to, but maybe it was something darker.

Pointing the finger at Sarge was a risk, but I sensed there was no love lost between the two men.

“Sarge was either involved or covering up for someone, don’t you think? ”

He stopped and stared at me. “Yes. Oh, what a relief to hear you say that. I’d always thought that, but I didn’t think anyone would believe me.”

“Let’s start with that note,” I said.

I dredged back to the day before Janey disappeared. She’d sauntered up to me as I got home from school, her ponytail swinging, smelling of cigarettes and chocolate.

“Happy birthday, LaLa,” she said, using her old pet name for me.

She slipped her hand into the crook of my elbow, snuggled her head onto my shoulder, and joked about her geography class that day, and I laughed.

Did she want to be best friends again? We’d been best friends for years.

But when we started high school, she’d joined the popular girls.

I hoped she’d get sick of them. Maybe it had happened.

She asked me to take a note to Snow. I opened the note. Meet me in front at midnight.

“No, Janey,” I said. “He’s too old for you.”

“What a fucking baby.” She snatched the note from me and stalked up the driveway to her house.

Mr.Saunders’s head vibrated with tension.

“Snow was never going to meet her that night, of that I’m sure,” he said.

“She was bothering him constantly, obsessed with him. It was driving him up the wall. We tried to stop it as she was way too young for him for a start. Snow could have got in a lot of trouble.”

Snow should have been in a lot of trouble.

“Shh,” Mum said.

We’d reached the rock face. Had they heard what we’d said? I tried to study Declan’s face, but it was too dark under the cliff.

“Look up,” Mum whispered.

Lifting my head, I gasped. A quieter “Oh.”

The whole cliff face was pulsing with tiny dots of light, like fairies had poked their noses through from another world.

Mr.Saunders was breathing unevenly. Mum and Declan, on the other side of me, smiled, eyes wide, heads rolled back.

Declan took my hand while we silently enjoyed the night.

Something dense and locked down loosened in me.

My heart brightened. It had to be the memories sparked by the glowworms. It couldn’t be Declan beside me, his thighs grazing my hips, shoulder ghosting my temple, fingers pressing warm—I couldn’t get confused about that.

After we walked home, the three of us said goodbye to Mr.Saunders at the curbside of our shared driveway.

“You being here,” Mr.Saunders whispered, pressing his eyelids with the pads of his fingers. “I feel her somehow. ”

When Janey died, I’d been consumed with my own grief and shock that she was gone. Returning here as an adult, I was beginning to fathom the agony he’d suffered. I clutched his shoulder, feeling hopeless.

“This can’t be the end of it.” He choked out a sob.

I hugged him. Did I think I could help at all? Was I confident I could do anything at this point?

“Only you can do this,” he whispered into my ear.

My rattling self-doubts were replaced by a desperate determination.

He was right. Because at midnight, twenty years ago, I’d watched from our kitchen as Janey skipped down our driveway, across the road, and over the grassy patch—to meet the one person who knew the truth.

I will find him, Janey. I will bring justice to you, your mum, and your poor, lonely father.