December

by Gabrielle Lord

  But was it true?

  Rafe had admitted knowing I had come to his ‘rescue’ at Chapel-by-the-Sea, and he also knew so much more about the DMO than I ever realised.

  I cleared the space on the floor beside the shelf, kicking some loose papers out of the way. I knelt down and pulled out a couple of the fattest albums and began turning their pages, all the while listening carefully for the sound of a returning car.

  The first album was filled with photos from Uncle Rafe’s wedding. There were mostly pictures of him with Aunty Klara, posing together. Rafe was smiling in the pictures, but I could almost see something like sadness in his eyes.

  I didn’t know Aunty Klara that well before she died. From what I remembered, she was pretty quiet and kept to herself, even though she seemed nice enough. I never really thought about how lonely Rafe must have been after he lost her.

  I slotted the wedding album back into place on the shelf.

  The next album I opened was older and dustier. Straightaway I recognised Rafe and Dad together when they were young, probably about my age. I frowned, looking at them more closely.

  In almost every photo, Dad had his arm over Rafe’s shoulder, or the other way around. They both wore wide grins. They looked identical. They looked happy.

  I pulled the album closer and flicked through it, eager to see more. Photo after photo showed the pair together; pulling silly faces and poses, blowing out candles on shared birthday cakes, dressed up in matching powder-blue suits at friends’ parties, proudly holding their surfboards. There must have been hundreds of photos of the pair.

  Rafe’s words returned to me; ‘a special bond’ he’d said, about being a twin. I sat back on my heels.

  I frowned over pages of baby photos I recognised were of me, hauling myself up by a chair leg and standing up. My dad and Rafe stood side-by-side in the background. I wondered for a second about the discoloured squares in the album, where pictures had been removed … before realising that Rafe must have taken out all the shots of Samuel.

  There wasn’t much more to see after that. There were a few random shots of plants and buildings, but it seemed like Rafe had lost interest in tracking his life.

  As I placed the last of the albums back on the shelf, an unopened envelope fell out from one of the film negative pockets.

  Curious, I read who it was addressed to.

  Tom Ormond.

  On the back was Rafe’s name and old address. Why had it been returned? Why had Dad never read it?

  Carefully, I prised it open.

  28 days to go…

  My hands were shaking as I held Rafe’s rejected letter. Dad was the one who’d walked away from his relationship with Rafe? I couldn’t believe it. I always thought Dad was the one who was being shut out, not the other way around.

  I’d looked through Rafe’s wedding photos pretty closely and Dad had not been in any of them–he definitely wasn’t standing by his twin as the best man. He must have ended up letting his brother down. Maybe that was why Rafe didn’t look as happy as he should have … Dad must have found it too painful to be around his twin, after the loss of one of his twin sons. It didn’t make complete sense to me, but I knew from my experience that grief can do weird things to people. It can change them.

  Like what was happening to Mum.

  I refolded the letter and put it back in its envelope.

  I thought again of all the things Rafe had done for us since Dad died. He’d given Mum a home when she was losing her own. He’d provided Gabbi with the best medical attention possible when she was in a coma, even changing the structure of his house for her. He’d taken Gabbi and Mum under his wing at a time when they needed protection most.

  Maybe this was how involved in our family he’d wanted to be all along.

  The coast was still clear outside, but I needed to get going. I figured Rafe would have made it to Marjorie’s by now, and would be back here any second.

  I had a quick final glance around the room and noticed Mum’s red leather handbag on the floor near the dining table, half spilling out. She must have been really upset to have left that behind–it was usually glued to her.

  Her bag seemed much heavier than it should have been. Inside was a bulging padded envelope. I pulled it out.

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing printed on the top left-hand corner of the large envelope. ‘Rathbone and Associates’.

  What?

  My head was spinning. What was Mum doing with a thick, bulky envelope from Sheldrake Rathbone?

  There had to be an innocent explanation. Right?

  The sound of a car in the street snapped me into action. I pocketed Dad’s unread letter, shoved the heavy envelope from Mum’s bag into my backpack and bolted out the back door.

  Sure enough, Rafe had returned. He’d just pulled up on the driveway and already I could hear Gabbi’s voice as she climbed out of the car, alongside Mum.

  While they trundled into the house, I ran out onto the road.

  As my feet pounded the ground, on my way to Memorial Park, my thoughts whirled like a tornado; Dad had been responsible for the split from Rafe, not the other way round, and now it seemed as if Mum had been dealing with Rathbone. What was going on? Everything I thought I knew had been turned upside down.

  Boges and Winter emerged from the shadows as I ran up the steps and into the circular enclosure, where dead leaves skittered over the mosaic floor.

  The moon was shining brilliantly through the stained glass window above, while the Ormond Angel seemed to look down sternly on us.

  ‘What is it?’ Winter asked. ‘You’re so pale.’

  ‘It’s just the moonlight,’ I replied. ‘Let’s sit down,’ I suggested as the pair scrutinised my face.

  After I’d filled them in on my trip to Dolphin Point, I handed them Dad’s unread letter from Rafe. They both skimmed over it, eagerly.

  ‘Rafe was telling the truth,’ said Boges. ‘He and your dad were really close until…’

  ‘… until the kidnapping,’ Winter whispered.

  ‘Didn’t see that coming,’ added Boges.

  ‘Me neither,’ I said, pulling the padded envelope out of my backpack. ‘This is what I found in my mum’s bag.’

  Winter eyed it closely.

  ‘Well go on,’ she said. ‘Open it!’

  I did so, reluctantly, afraid of what I was about to find. Boges and Winter jostled around me to see.

  I tipped the contents out.

  None of us could speak at first.

  It wasn’t a fat wad of documents. There, gleaming in the moonlight, beneath the radiant Angel above us, glowed the Ormond Jewel on top of the Ormond Riddle!

  Winter took the Jewel in her hand. ‘Amor et suevre tosjors celer,’ she whispered eerily, reciting the inscription inside, as her forefinger traced the almost invisible letters. ‘A love whose works must always be kept secret.’ She looked up at me and asked the question that was in all of our minds. ‘Why would your mum have these?’

  I could see my own shocked expression mirrored on the faces of Boges and Winter. We should have felt fantastic. We should have felt like leaping over the cenotaph in a single bound. Instead, dark questions had taken over.

  ‘Your mum?’ Boges asked slowly. ‘Your mum is Deep Water or Double Trouble?’

  ‘It can’t be right.’ I shook my head, refusing to accept it. ‘There must be an explanation.’

  ‘That scent that you almost identified back there at the undertakers’ … Maybe you’re repressing the memory,’ Boges continued, hinting at my reaction to the scent of Mum’s perfume the last time we snuck into Rafe’s house. ‘Maybe you know exactly who it belongs to but can’t bear to face the truth, and that’s why you can’t bring yourself to recall it. It’s your heart stopping you.’ Boges shook his head and ran his hands through his hair. ‘I can’t believe your mum is in on this … Mrs O,’ he said in disbelief.

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ I said defensively. ‘You don’t know that’s true. Sh
e could–’

  ‘Oh wow! What is that?’ a voice interrupted us.

  I swung round.

  ‘What are you doing here, Gabbi?’

  ‘You said you were coming here so as soon as Uncle Rafe and Mum went to bed, I snuck out. Don’t worry, they don’t have a clue I’m gone!’

  My little sister didn’t look the least bit sorry about breaking the rules. In fact, she looked pretty proud of herself for wandering out alone to find me.

  She’d been kidnapped before, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her off, especially not right now when I was sick with suspicions about Mum.

  She ran over to hug Boges and Winter.

  ‘That’s the Ormond Jewel,’ I said, finally answering Gabbi’s question, ‘and that is the Ormond Riddle. These are the two things everyone’s been after.’

  ‘Where did you find them?’ she asked.

  Winter looked down, avoiding the question, and fiddled with the laces on her sneakers, while Boges remained gobsmacked, the two frown lines on his forehead forging together in a deep trough.

  ‘Is that a real emerald?’ she said, coming closer.

  ‘You bet,’ Boges replied, finally speaking up for all of us. ‘It’s the real thing. “Big as a pigeon’s egg”,’ he quoted.

  While Gabbi and Boges talked, Winter pulled me aside against the dark, curving wall of the cenotaph.

  ‘Your mum had these? From Rathbone? In her bag?’ she whispered, her worried eyes searching mine.

  I nodded.

  ‘Mum had them?’ asked Gabbi, swinging around from Boges. ‘How come Mum had these things if everyone’s been after them? I thought you said she didn’t know anything about this.’

  I was lost for words. As I shrugged my shoulders, things seemed to slowly come into place. My mum must have always known more than she’d let on. After all, she’d seen the transparency and the empty jewel box, and she’d heard Rafe questioning me about the Ormond Riddle–she’d been there all along. I recalled her staring at Dad’s drawing of the Angel up on my bedroom wall before this mess began …

  The cenotaph started to spin around me like I was trapped inside one of those anti-gravity carnival rides. Mum? Could Mum have been the person who–I tried to stop my brain from going there, but it was determined. My mum had been acting like a stranger to me almost all year. If she was capable of turning her back on her son, could she also have been capable of … attacking me? Locking me in a coffin and leaving me to die underground?

  ‘Somebody say something!’ cried Gabbi, walking over to me and tugging on my jacket. She slipped her hands into my pockets and I brushed her away.

  ‘My hands are cold,’ she whined. ‘What’s wrong with you guys?’

  ‘There has to be an explanation,’ I said.

  ‘Hello?’ said Gabbi. ‘Am I invisible? Why are you ignoring me?’

  ‘Sorry Gabs,’ said Boges. ‘We’re just a little distracted right now with some new … umm … developments. Look, Cal,’ he said. ‘Let’s just focus on the fact that we have them back. That’s good news. Let’s worry about the other things later, huh?’

  ‘Boges is right,’ said Winter, with an arm around Gabbi. ‘There could be a perfectly reasonable explanation.’

  She hugged my sister, who was turning the Jewel over in her hands.

  ‘We’d better get you back home,’ said Boges, tugging on one of Gabbi’s plaits.

  My sister groaned and brushed Boges away. ‘I can help you guys,’ she said. ‘I’m not a kid any more. Why can’t you see that?’

  ‘We know,’ said Winter, ‘but it’s just too dangerous right now. You need to stay home … and keep an eye on your mum and Rafe. We need someone to make sure they’re OK. OK?’

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Boges to Gab. ‘I’ll walk you home.’

  Back at the treehouse I charged up my phone and realised I had a couple of missed calls from Sharkey. Winter and I listened carefully to his voicemail message, hopeful for news on our trip.

  ‘Cal, it’s Nelson,’ he’d said. ‘I have the tickets. The four of us are booked to fly out on the twenty-third. Do yourselves a favour and stay out of strife until then.’

  ‘Wow, it’s all happening!’ said Winter, excitedly. ‘Can you believe we finally have a date, plus the Jewel and the Riddle in our possession?’

  ‘Crazy stuff,’ I said, relieved, but unable to shake off the bad feelings I had about Mum.

  A tiny spider crawled up Winter’s arm. She yawned and shook it off gently.

  ‘Until we fly out, I’m going to have to find better accommodation, Cal. A girl like me can only live up a tree for so long. I might give Sharkey a buzz back and see if he can hook me up with a place to stay. Somewhere Sligo will never find me.’

  23 days to go…

  Boges, Winter and I sat on upturned crates out the back of the gym. We were meeting up with Sharkey to go over our travel plans, and were waiting for him to return from the showers.

  I’d missed Winter’s company in the last few days. Sharkey had set her up in a motel that was run by a retired cop he knew. She’d tried to convince me to join her there, but I felt safer up the tree on Luke Lovett’s property. I also didn’t want to risk bringing any attention to her. We couldn’t let Sligo find her.

  ‘I have something for you,’ said Boges proudly. He passed me some sort of diving watch. ‘It works like a regular watch but it’s also a radio beacon.’

  ‘Another distress beacon?’

  ‘Yep. Consider it an early Christmas present. I’ve adapted the winder so that if you press it like so,’ Boges leaned over and depressed the tiny button, which lit the watch-face up with a strange, blue pulsing light, ‘you’ll activate the emergency radio signal. I have the receiver here,’ he said, holding out a similar watch on his wrist. ‘This watch picks up the signal and gives me the GPS coordinates of where you are.’

  I tightened the watch around my wrist, while Winter shuffled forward to get a closer look at it.

  ‘Awesome, Boges,’ she said. ‘Hopefully he won’t need to use it like last time.’

  ‘Better safe than sorry,’ he said. ‘I was hoping it would soften some other news I have,’ Boges began.

  I groaned. ‘Spit it out.’

  ‘I read a report online this morning that the authorities believe you’re a flight risk.’

  ‘A flight risk? How do they know?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but they’re upping security at all the major airports until you’re detained.’

  ‘They’ll have to catch you first,’ said Winter.

  ‘OK,’ said Sharkey, stepping out of the back door with a clap of his hands. He pulled a crate over to us and sat down on it. His dark hair was wet and slicked back. ‘I figured it would be a good idea to make a basic plan and start getting used to our stories ahead of time. So here’s the deal. We’re travelling as a school group, OK? I’m your teacher.’

  ‘Cool,’ said Boges. ‘Our history teacher? You kinda look like you could be a history teacher.’

  ‘Suits me,’ Sharkey replied. ‘I suggest we all drive together to the airport. I’m happy to leave my car in one of the parking stations. You’ll be safer, Cal, as part of a group. Have you heard about the airport alerts?’

  ‘Boges just told me.’

  ‘The authorities will be on the alert for an individual, not a group.’

  ‘We might be travelling as a group,’ I said, ‘but everyone still has to go through security as an individual … I hope I make it through OK.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m not so sure I’ll be OK either,’ said Boges. ‘I’m known to the police, as they say. I could be on their radar. Do you think they’ll pull me up?’ he asked Sharkey. ‘Do you think my name’s on some sort of watch list?’

  ‘Won’t be a problem,’ he replied, patting Boges on the shoulder.

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ Boges asked, puzzled.

  Sharkey dug into his gym bag and pulled out a brown paper bag. He tossed it to Boges.

  ‘What�
�s this?’ Boges said, as he pulled out a dark blue passport.

  ‘Open it.’

  Boges leafed through the pages. ‘Hey, that’s my picture! Joshua Stern?’ he read.

  ‘That’s your new name, buddy,’ said Sharkey.

  Boges started shaking his head. ‘Nelson,’ he said, with a worried look, ‘this would be great, but it was hard enough us getting the money together for Cal’s passport and our tickets. We don’t have enough left over for this one.’

  ‘Don’t worry about the money,’ said Nelson. ‘I bargained with the forger and convinced him to do another two for me.’

  ‘Two?’ I asked.

  Sharkey promptly produced another brown bag and tossed it to Winter.

  Winter caught it with the excitement of a kid at Christmas.

  ‘Grace Lee?’ she read.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Sharkey. ‘With Vulkan Sligo’s connections, we don’t want your name alerting the authorities to our presence at the airport, either.’

  I reached out to shake Sharkey’s hand. ‘Thanks so much,’ I told him. ‘You must have done some sweet talking to get three passports for us. Ireland would be nothing but a pipedream if we didn’t have you to help us out.’

  ‘Forget about it. The thing you guys really need to do now,’ he said, ‘is to practise your new names until you respond to them just like you do to your real names. Like you, Matt Marlow,’ he added, eyeballing me.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘Maybe you could all call me Matt from now on?’

  ‘Sure thing, Matty,’ said Winter.

  ‘Thanks, Grace. You, too, Josh,’ I added.

  ‘No problem, Matt,’ Boges replied.