The Wife and the Widow

by Christian White

  ‘Are you lost?’ a voice drifted down from the verandah.

  It was screened, so all Kate could see was the red tip of a glowing cigarette. From somewhere behind the screen, a wind chime clinked and clattered. Kate then heard what might have been a can snapping open.

  A compact woman in her early sixties stepped out onto the steps, holding a beer in her left hand and a paperback in her right. She was dressed in a loose-fitting wool cardigan and pyjama bottoms with a faded pattern of stars and crescent moons. Her face was round and warm, framed by messy, stark-white hair. Her eyes were deep and dark, like Ed’s.

  ‘No, I’m not lost,’ Kate said. ‘I’m looking for Ed.’

  ‘That’s my son,’ the woman said. ‘Are you a friend of his?’

  ‘No, not exactly. I…’ She hesitated. ‘… I have a holiday house over on Neef Street and I’m looking for a winter caretaker. I saw the sign on the front lawn.’

  It wasn’t a perfect lie, but it was all she could come up with in the heat of the moment. She couldn’t exactly say she was here to question Ed about her husband’s murder.

  ‘Ed will be with you in a minute,’ the woman said. ‘He has to wash down his truck and lay out his tools for tomorrow. You can wait for him inside if you like?

  ‘Are you sure? I don’t want to impose.’

  ‘Oh please, I only came out here to smoke and it’s colder than a fairy penguin’s pocket. If you come in, I’ll have an excuse to light up inside. I’m Abby, by the way.’

  ‘Kate.’

  They shook hands. The woman’s fingers were dry and dusty, like moth’s wings. She led Kate through the front door.

  Inside, a fox mounted on polished oak stared at Kate from a side table, its face caught mid-snarl, tail up and out in the defensive position. On each of its four paws was a baby-sized Converse All Star. Behind the fox stood three blind (and dead) mice, each with its own pair of tiny sunglasses. Next to them were two dead rabbits serving as bookends to a stack of takeaway menus. A toad leaned back on its hind legs, its front hands up, webbed fingers outstretched, holding a small bowl with loose change and a set of car keys inside.

  Kate gaped at them.

  ‘Stuffed them myself,’ Abby said. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘They’re very … striking.’

  Abby laughed. ‘Now that’s a lovely way of saying weird. I know taxidermy is an odd sort of hobby, but I try to do one crazy thing per day to keep from going crazy. Would you mind taking your shoes off?’

  Kate did as she was asked. She stepped out of her sneakers – which were still wet from the boat ramp – and followed Abby down a short hallway and into the kitchen. It was cluttered with curiosities. A wooden ladder was suspended across the kitchen ceiling, off which dangled various utensils: a wok, a handful of wine glasses, pots, pans, and a single soup ladle. A stolen street sign – Gilpin Ave – was nailed above the back door. Beside that was a wooden carving of a semiautomatic machine gun and the words, Forget the Dog, Beware the Owner.

  The kitchen was so busy, in fact, that it took Kate a few seconds to realise what was spread out over the dining table.

  Arranged neatly on a pink bath towel were a box of surgical gloves, a set of tiny glass eyes, a silver knife with a scalpel blade attached and a furry, half-skinned creature that Kate couldn’t identify. She took three quick steps backwards.

  ‘It’s a bush rat,’ Abby said with a grin, reading her gaze. ‘Marnie Conroy found the poor little bastard in the space between her wood heater and the wall. If I’d known I’d have company, I would have put him away. You want a beer?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘You’re really going to make me drink alone?’ She slammed the fridge shut. ‘Just kidding. I’m used to it.’

  She sat down at the kitchen table and offered the seat across from her. Kate took off her parka, hung it on back of the chair and sat.

  ‘Ed won’t be long,’ Abby said.

  ‘Does he live here with you?’

  Abby necked her beer, stifled a belch, and shook her head. ‘He has an apartment over on Deepwater, but he doesn’t have enough space for his tools, so he keeps them here.’

  ‘So, it’s just you in this house?’

  ‘Uh huh, which means I can drink as much as I want and fart as loud as I can. That’ll change when the hubby comes home, of course. The drinking part, anyway. Not the farts.’ She grinned, rocked back in her chair, and lit a cigarette. Smoke filled the room. ‘I know who you are.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You’re the widow, right? Of that poor fella who got killed at the boat ramps?’

  ‘How did you…’

  ‘My husband called me five minutes after you left South Hallston and told me to expect a visit from John Keddie’s widow. I should have said something when I saw you creeping around out there, but you’d gone to all that trouble making up that caretaking cover story and I didn’t want to make you feel awkward. Too late for that now, I suppose.

  The muscles in Kate’s neck tightened. Her cheeks flushed with colour.

  ‘How did Ray look, by the way?’ Abby asked. ‘He resembled a big old bag of pork crackers last time I visited.’

  ‘He looked fine,’ Kate said.

  ‘It’s nice of you to lie,’ Abby said. Leaving the cigarette skilfully balanced between her lips, she took a sip of beer. ‘So, what do you want with my son, really?’

  ‘I think Ed and John knew each other as kids. I’m just here to ask him some questions.’

  ‘About what?’

  Well, I’ve come this far, Kate thought.

  ‘About David Stemple,’ she said.

  Abby flinched at the sound of his name, but only slightly. ‘What do you know about David Stemple?’

  ‘I know that John had information about his murder,’ Kate said, as coolly as she could. ‘And I know that’s why he came to Belport.’

  Abby dragged deeply on her cigarette. She ashed into a ceramic ramekin. ‘You have a daughter, don’t you? What’s her name?’

  ‘… Mia.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Ten.’

  ‘That’s a good age,’ she said. ‘Is she here with you, in Belport?’

  ‘No,’ Kate said. ‘She’s in Melbourne, staying with her grandparents.’

  Abby stubbed out her cigarette in the ramekin and finished her beer in three steady gulps.

  ‘Life is funny, don’t you think? We bring babies into this world, let them rip up our bodies, let them drink from us, bleed us dry, and we love them for it. We give and we give and we give. We sacrifice. And do you know why? Because we’re mothers. It’s what we do. I’m having another beer. You sure you won’t join me?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  Abby stood, struggling against a little lower back pain, and went to the fridge. ‘I mean, think about it: is there anything you wouldn’t do for your daughter?’

  ‘… No,’ Kate said.

  ‘That’s right,’ Abby told her, smiling a sad and distant smile. ‘So you understand?’

  She didn’t think much of it when Abby moved behind her, nor did she notice that the knife was missing from the table. Not until it was too late.

  ‘Understand what?’ she asked.

  ‘What I had to do,’ Abby said. ‘And what I have to.’

  30

  THE WIFE

  ‘Do you need cash for your ticket?’ Abby asked.

  John shook his head. ‘I bought a return.’

  ‘What about breakfast? You should eat something on the ferry. You need a couple of bucks?’

  ‘I’ve got money,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I’m not hungry. I’m not sure I’ll ever be hungry again.’

  He reached into the front pocket of his backpack and pulled out a pair of woollen gloves. He slid them on and looked out over the water.

  ‘Thanks for the ride,’ he said, pushing the door open.

  ‘Hold on, John. I want to talk to you for a second.’

  He shut the door.

&nb
sp; ‘I need to know you’ll keep this secret,’ she said. ‘Ray is giving a lot so that you and Eddie don’t lose a lot. You understand that, don’t you? And you understand that if you tell anyone – and I mean anyone – it all comes undone and everything my husband is giving will be for nothing.’

  ‘… I keep seeing that man’s blood,’ John whispered. He gave her a despairing look.

  ‘Then close your eyes, John. Put it someplace out of the way, in a room behind a locked door. Then all you have to do is not go in that room. Understand? Never go in that room.’

  He nodded, once. There was a good chance he’d tell his family what had happened the second he got home. Soon cops might storm her house and drag her and Eddie away to prison, leaving Lori to fend for herself. But then again, there was a chance John wouldn’t say anything. It might have been blind hope, but hope of any sort had been in short supply lately, so Abby clung to it.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Gilpin,’ John said.

  ‘That’s alright, John.’

  ‘No, I mean it. Thank you.’

  She looked at the boy for a moment, and hoped she’d never see him again. ‘Have a safe trip home.’

  John got out of the car and boarded the ferry. Abby watched him get on, then watched until the boat eased away from the island, turned in a long slow arc and headed back towards the mainland. When the boat was a white shape on the horizon, she started the car and drove home.

  * * *

  For the next twenty-three years, Abby lived as if waiting for a bus. She baulked at people who said things like life’s too short and time passes in a blur and Jee-zus, is it Christmas already? Life was long, time moved too slow, and anyway fuck Christmas.

  She spent her time driving out to South Hallston Correctional Facility, borrowing paperbacks from the Belport Public Library, working at the Buy & Bye, stuffing animals, smoking cigarettes on the front porch and watching the seasons come and go. Her body aged and the world changed, but her life was on hold until Ray came home.

  She took her own advice, locked all the dark thoughts in a room in her mind and tried not to visit it. For the most part, it got easier. But in the dead of night, when Milt Street was quiet, she could hear them growling behind the door and scratching at the walls. It reminded her that the dark things were still there and they weren’t going away.

  Lori got out of Belport when she turned eighteen. She studied art history in Melbourne. She found a job on campus and moved into an apartment with three roommates. She fell in love with one of them, and when he was offered a job in Sydney that he couldn’t refuse, she moved there with him and they got married.

  At the wedding, when Abby asked if it made her sad that her father wasn’t there to give her away, Lori said he gave her away a long time ago. Abby cried herself to sleep that night.

  Eddie, who became Ed, stayed on the island to take over the family business. He ran it well. He spent his days haunting those big empty houses on Neef Street, retreating further and further inwards. He might have wanted to leave. He might have eaten his lunch down at Beech Tree Landing as his father had done and fantasised about a boat coming in to take him away. Abby wouldn’t know because they never talked about it.

  Abby thought about leaving too, once or twice. A developer would probably give her three times what she and Ray paid for their place, knock the house down and put in three townhouses. But Belport wouldn’t let either of them go. It was David Stemple who died in the winter of ’96, but it was Abby and Eddie’s ghosts that were doomed to haunt the island.

  * * *

  In the winter of 2019, Abby Gilpin, then deep into her fifties, was nearing the end of her shift at the Buy & Bye. Her left foot ached with what the internet had diagnosed as either gout, a corn, or foot cancer. Bay Street was practically deserted.

  There was a single customer roaming the aisles: a man somewhere in his late thirties or early forties, a dusting of salt and pepper in his hair, a shopping basket under one arm. He had been standing in the medicine section for close to three minutes, engrossed in their very limited selection.

  Abby thought about asking if he needed help finding something, but then she’d have to walk all the way over there on her sore foot, and besides, she had just borrowed the new Stephen King from the library and Biller wouldn’t be in for another twenty minutes, so she might be able to knock off a chapter or two before he arrived.

  She made it halfway through the first page when the man unpacked his basket in her check-out: bread, milk, bottled water, Mi Goreng noodles, water crackers, a box of Frosties, chamomile tea, valerian capsules, three different types of antihistamines and a bottle of Wild Turkey.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Gilpin,’ the man said. ‘Do you remember me?’

  For the first time since he came in, she looked at the man’s face. John had been a teenager the last time they met. She had thought she’d spotted him at a distance now and then over the years – wandering down Bay Street or sitting on the beach – but had always managed to avoid him. Or maybe he was the one avoiding her. He had filled out a little and had three- or four-day growth on his face, so it took a moment to place him.

  ‘John?’ she said. Her mouth groped for more words like a fish, but nothing came out.

  ‘It’s been a while,’ he said.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Grocery shopping,’ he said, gesturing to his shopping basket. There were dark bags under his eyes and his skin was pasty, almost yellow. It looked like he hadn’t slept since the day she dropped him at the ferry twenty-three years earlier.

  ‘I mean, what are you doing in Belport?’ Abby asked, her tone unintentionally icy. Ray had told her about John’s visit. He’d assured her that there was nothing to worry about, that he’d sorted it and John would be leaving again very soon.

  ‘My wife and I have a house here,’ he said. ‘Actually, I’m here most summers.’ Abby couldn’t tell whether he misunderstood her question intentionally or not. He certainly looked dazed enough to have forgotten meeting with Ray.

  ‘You’re married then?’ Abby said.

  Nodding, John took out his phone and showed her his screensaver of a pretty but uninteresting brunette with a cute little girl wrapped in her arms. Abby looked into the woman’s eyes and thought, Does she know? Did he tell her?

  ‘How’s Eddie?’ John asked.

  ‘Fine,’ she said.

  She began ringing up and bagging his items. She had to concentrate to keep her hands from trembling.

  ‘I drove out to Beech Tree Landing today,’ he said. ‘Strange, being there without the old ferry terminal. When exactly did they tear it down?’

  ‘Must have been a good fifteen years ago,’ Abby said. ‘It was a safety hazard.’

  And after what happened, people said it was haunted, she thought, but kept that detail to herself.

  ‘I’ve managed to avoid it, mostly. Took me nearly two weeks to work up the nerve to go out there,’ he said. ‘And a little longer to work up the nerve to talk to you.’

  The door behind which she’d locked all the dark things rattled and shook.

  ‘We have nothing to talk about,’ she said.

  ‘We made a mistake, Mrs Gilpin. Abby,’ he said. ‘Eddie and I were just kids, but you … you should have known better.’

  ‘Keep your voice down.’

  ‘I’m sick of keeping my voice down,’ he said. ‘I’m sick of keeping your secrets.’

  ‘John, just listen—’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t have to listen to you anymore, Abby. I am all shades of fucked up because I listened to you. I’ve had nightmares since I was a kid because I listened to you. Annabel Stemple died never knowing the truth, because I fucking listened to you.’

  At the mention of Annabel’s name, Abby was briefly transported back in time. She remembered the woman who bought cigarettes from her at the Buy & Bye, and she remembered her son, the boy with the luminol-blue eyes.

  ‘Ray told me you went to see him,’ Abby said, gr
asping for some kind of control. ‘Did he mention he was up for parole? He’ll be out soon, John. This is nearly over.’

  ‘It’ll never be over,’ he said. ‘And honestly, I can’t understand how you can’t see that. We made a mistake, Abby. We have to fix it. We have to come clean. The three of us. You, me and Eddie.’

  ‘It wouldn’t change anything,’ she whispered.

  ‘It’ll change everything.’

  A sudden gale rolled off the bay.

  ‘Ninety-eight-sixty,’ Abby said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s how much you owe.’

  He glared at her a moment, then shook his head slowly. He paid in cash, then took a pen from his breast pocket and scribbled his phone number and address on the back of his receipt. He handed it to Abby.

  ‘Come by the house tonight at eight o’clock,’ he said. ‘You and Eddie. The three of us can plan how we’re going to move forward. But you need to understand something, Abby. This isn’t up for discussion. I’m not asking for your permission and I don’t need Eddie’s either. I need to do this, and it can be with or without you.’

  He picked up his groceries and walked out. He didn’t look back once. When he was gone, Abby braced herself on her register and started to cry.

  * * *

  The last time she drove out to South Hallston to see Ray, they’d sat together at a steel table in the visitor hall and ate lunch from the vending machines.

  ‘How are the kids?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, you know,’ Abby said. ‘Angels and devils.’

  ‘Has Lori called?’

  ‘Not for a while, but she’s like a sea turtle, that one. She has to come up for air eventually, and when she does, I’ll strangle her with my love.’

  ‘Give her an extra choke for me,’ Ray said. ‘And Eddie?’

  ‘Ed is, well. Ed.’

  ‘Is he seeing anyone?’

  ‘If he is, he hasn’t told me about it.’

  ‘You look great.’