January

by Gabrielle Lord

  Boges nodded, slightly distracted by a nearby bright yellow Ferrari.

  ‘Some woman rang me earlier,’ I continued. ‘She said she looked after Dad when he was here in the hospice, and that she’s got something to show me. I agreed to meet her tomorrow night in Memorial Park.’

  ‘Tomorrow night? Who is she?’

  ‘Someone called Jennifer Smith.’

  ‘Someone called Jennifer Smith?’ Boges laughed. ‘I don’t know, dude … Are you sure you should go?’

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘Yeah, but it could be a set-up. Don’t forget your dad’s warnings. He mentioned a dangerous woman in his letter, remember?’

  ‘I know. The woman he met at the historical conference in Ireland …’

  ‘That’s the one. What if it’s her? What will you do?’

  ‘Run like hell,’ I joked.

  ‘It sounds dodgy to me. I’d come with you but I’m supposed to be working.’

  When he wasn’t studying or working on electronics, Boges was helping his uncle and his mother, who were cleaning contractors. Sometimes he’d take on jobs instead of his mum, when her back was playing up.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be right,’ I said. I seemed to be making a lot of promises lately that I really wasn’t sure I could keep. ‘Right now I need you to be the outside man, here,’ I said, pointing at the entrance to Rafe’s house. ‘Keep your eyes open. Try to stay out of sight, and message me if I need to get out. OK? I really don’t want anyone catching me.’

  I threw my backpack over the iron gate, then quickly climbed up and over.

  I slipped into the house through the back sliding doors. I’d ‘borrowed’ the key from Mum’s dressing table.

  It felt strange being there, alone in the empty house. It was such an awesome place, I wondered why Rafe would never have made us feel welcome. I’d only been over a couple of times, but the house would have been perfect for Sunday barbecues and backyard cricket, especially when Dad was around.

  The smell of Rafe’s cigars was so thick that it was as if he was there in the next room. You’d have to feel lonely in a big empty house like this, I thought. Doubt started to kick in again. Maybe Rafe really was trying to protect me. But why wouldn’t he talk to me about it? If I was old enough to take up Dad’s work—whatever it was he needed me to do—surely I didn’t need Rafe treating me like a kid. I couldn’t make up my mind about him.

  I started my search through the house, going straight for the kitchen. I was relieved to see the oranges there in a bowl on the table. The canvas bag, now empty, sat on a nearby stool. I opened drawers, felt around above the fridge, looked in all the cupboards … nothing.

  I headed next to the huge office where Rafe worked at his angled drafting board. I looked around at his desk, his computer, the photocopier and the printer perched along the low counter. All I found were files containing receipts, orders for house plans, and drafting paperwork.

  I made a quick check of the piles of paper on his desk, and when I saw the name ‘Ormond’ written in Rafe’s handwriting, on a half-hidden sheet of paper, I immediately pulled it out

  The Ormond Riddle? What was that about? There were so many things in our family that might have been considered riddles. Like the mysterious viral disease that rapidly destroyed my dad, tangling all the connecting lines in his brain. Or like the run of tragedy and bad luck we’d had since his death. The warning about the Ormond Singularity and the fact that someone had deliberately sabotaged the fishing boat. The failure of my life jacket. The break-in …

  More like Ormond Curse.

  I turned my attention to three big red-lidded plastic storage boxes. I rifled through them, but only found old botany books, flagged with notes and diagrams, and more of Rafe’s drafting papers.

  The other downstairs rooms didn’t take long. Under the red lid of another plastic box were Rafe’s personal stuff and more books on flowering plants and ferns. Dad had told me that Rafe studied botany at university, years ago, but I never realised how into it he was.

  I crept upstairs and looked around. Rafe’s bedroom was right at the back of the house, overlooking the garden. Before going in there, I searched the other two bedrooms, without luck. They looked—and smelled—as if they hadn’t been opened in months.

  In Rafe’s room I started with the wardrobe, and found lots of his jackets hanging in an orderly row. All of the pockets were empty.

  Next I checked his chest of drawers but once again, found nothing. There was no sign of the envelope anywhere.

  What could he have done with it? I wondered. What if he still had it with him and this whole sneaking-in thing had been a waste of time?

  I had to keep moving. All that was left to search were his two bedside drawers. One was piled with history books, with some medical bill sitting on top. The drawer beneath revealed only handkerchiefs, a half-used box of cigars and a travel guide. I looked over at the other bedside drawer. My last hope. Once I’d checked that, I’d be out of there.

  GET OUT NOW!

  Was Boges joking?

  Surely Rafe and Mum would still be at the solicitor’s?

  I ran along the hallway and looked out the window.

  Rafe was walking up the driveway!

  Immobilised, I stood still, my mind frantically trying to work out what to do. If I bolted, I might just have made it down and out the back doors before he’d make it upstairs. But if I did that, I’d never know what might lie in the unsearched drawer.

  I ran back down the hall to Rafe’s bedroom. I had to find out.

  I fell to my knees and wrenched the drawer open. And there it was! The envelope was addressed to me—with the name of the hospice in the top left-hand corner.

  I quickly snatched it up. I needed to run, but I stopped, immobilised again, staring at what I had found lying underneath the envelope. I’d never seen one so close before. Carefully, I lifted it out, mesmerised by its blue-black steeliness. It was so much heavier than I’d imagined. The weight of it, and the four-digit serial number punched in its left side, made me pretty damn sure that it was no replica.

  What would Rafe need this for?

  Get a move on, I told myself, and turned back to the envelope, noticing that it had already been opened. It looked thinner than when I’d seen it before. Inside, as I suspected, was the letter from the neurologist. But no drawings.

  There was a noise downstairs.

  Rafe was already in the house!

  I stuffed the letter back into the envelope. I hoped Rafe’d stay in the living room so I could sneak out the front door.

  I strained to listen to his footsteps so that I could tell where he was and what he might be doing. But then I heard his heavy limp coming up the stairs.

  Desperately I looked around. There was no way I could get out. If I ran down the hall, I’d collide with him at the top of the stairs. I had to hide. I shoved the envelope back in the drawer and closed it. The only place that offered some cover for me was the narrow area between the wall and the other side of the bed. I hurtled over and dropped to the floor, trying to squeeze myself under the bed. It was too low and there was no way I was going to fit, so I just lay there flat on the floor, pressed close to the dusty carpet, praying that if he came into his bedroom, he wouldn’t see me …

  I held my breath and tried to calm my pounding heart. Louder and louder his footsteps sounded until I knew he was in the room. Then, through the narrow gap between the base of the bed and the carpet, I saw his black shoe and the bandage on his other foot. I tried to make myself even smaller and flatter. What was he doing?

  A tickle of dust in my nose made me twitch. I couldn’t afford to sneeze. Not now. I pressed my lips together, too scared to breathe. And what I’d seen in Rafe’s bedside drawer a moment ago made my anxiety burn so much stronger.

  Uncle Rafe seemed to just stand there. He was taking something from the bedside table. I hoped it wasn’t my envelope.

  I watched the black shoe and the bandaged foot t
urn away as Rafe walked across the carpet towards the door. As he vanished through it, I heard something small fall on the bed. He’d thrown something back in the room.

  The footsteps descended the staircase.

  I realised I’d been holding my breath and exhaled in relief.

  I waited until I heard the front door open and close again. Slowly I crawled out.

  There was a key on the bed. It had a black tag and looked like the key to a front door. It was familiar but I couldn’t remember why. I picked it up and put it in my pocket, then turned back to check the bedside drawer again.

  The bill that had been sitting on top of the history books was gone. It must have been what Rafe had come back for. I opened the drawer again, expecting to find the envelope gone, too, but it was still there. It was then that I noticed something else was missing …

  ‘Why didn’t you stop him? He nearly found me in there!’ I dragged Boges out from the corner of the garden. He’d been hiding behind a bushy tree.

  ‘He was walking up the path before I even noticed him! You said he’d be gone for ages! What was he doing back here anyway?’

  ‘Must have forgotten a couple of things. Picked them up and went out again. He dropped this.’ I held up the key.

  ‘What does it open?’

  ‘Not sure.’

  ‘Well, he’s gone now,’ said Boges. ‘Heading towards the city again. You look like crap. Did you find the envelope?’

  ‘I found it. Addressed to me. The letter from Dad’s doctor is in there, but the drawings are missing. You won’t believe what else I found in there …’

  I took a deep breath.

  ‘My uncle has a gun.’

  Boges blinked at me. ‘A gun! Why? What would he have a gun for?’

  ‘I don’t know, but he took it with him. I’m telling you, you can’t trust that guy. I’m going back inside. Can you wait here for me?’

  I went straight back to the bedroom, and this time I took the letter from the envelope and hurried downstairs to the photocopier.

  We first met Dr Edmundson when Dad was flown back from Ireland and admitted to the neurological clinic. Later, when they moved Dad to the hospice, Dr Edmundson visited him daily, still hoping to unravel the mystery and diagnose the deadly virus.

  A nurse? Was it Jennifer Smith?

  I looked up from the letter, recalling how the doctor had explained things to us last year.

  ‘Tom can still call on abstract concepts—or ideas that in his mind are related to what he wants to convey—even if we don’t know what the connections are,’ he’d said. ‘He’s lost the usual ways—speaking and writing—and we don’t quite know why this is. Your dad isn’t going crazy. He’s using whatever brain connectors the virus has left him, and it’s like a code that we can’t always understand. Just yesterday, when Tom wanted a book, he drew his reading glasses. It’s like he can’t come directly to what he wants, but he can draw something related to what he’s trying to say—something at least one or two steps removed from the actual object.’

  I had to find those drawings and work out what they meant. I pulled out the key that I’d picked up from the bed and stared at it. I knew I’d seen it somewhere before.

  My sense that Dad needed to tell me something in those last few weeks, returned in full force. In the days before he died, with Mum and Gabbi sitting close by, softly talking to him and holding his hand, I would sometimes climb right up and onto the bed and lie beside him, my head on his chest, listening to his heart beating. In those moments, I had the strongest sense that he was trying to tell me something; trying to tap it out. Something urgent. A warning.

  The words on the page blurred as tears began to fill my eyes. But I had to hold back—I had a job to do.

  I replaced the letter in its envelope and hurried upstairs, putting it back where I found it. I stared again at the space where the gun had been.

  What would Rafe have done with the drawings? And what did he need the gun for? Did he need protection, or did somebody else?

  We wheeled our bikes onto the narrow front verandah of Boges’s old terrace house, leaning them against the wall near the front door. Boges pushed it open and we went inside.

  Today, his gran was asleep in the first bedroom, just visible through the partly open door. She was lying on a sagging bed, snoring softly. She’d never really left the old country, Mrs Michalko used to say. And sometimes I’d hear Boges speaking to her in Ukrainian, like he did with his mum. Boges was the only male in his house, same as me, now.

  Boges opened the freezer and pulled out an ice-block.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, holding out my hand. ‘Where are your manners?’

  He grabbed another and tossed it to me.

  Once in his room, we pushed the old beanbag out of the way.

  Boges read the photocopy of the doctor’s letter. He handed it back to me without saying a word.

  ‘The specialists said that as Dad got worse,’ I explained, ‘the connections in his brain stopped working properly so he couldn’t say or write what he meant—all he could do was draw.’ I paused, wondering whether I should continue. ‘I really think he was trying to tell me something important. He wrote me that other letter I showed you, before he got really sick, back when he was in Ireland. But by the time he came home, his mind was all shot. See, I had this massive feeling, especially at the end when Dad was almost completely paralysed … He’d lock onto me with his eyes and they’d follow me as I moved. Dr Edmundson said it was just a mechanical movement—that Dad’s eyes automatically followed moving objects. I—I don’t know. I think there was more to it.’

  Boges started scratching the back of his head. He wasn’t often lost for words, but the head-scratch had become a dead giveaway.

  ‘Do you think this nurse is the woman that rang you?’ he asked.

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘What exactly was your dad doing in Ireland?’

  ‘He was there for the conference, but he was also researching family history—not just our family—for an upcoming TV series on some Irish families and how they lived from medieval times right up to today.’

  ‘Genealogies,’ Boges nodded. ‘Like how some have been successful while others have kind of died out.’

  ‘Right,’ I said.

  ‘So while he was researching he found out something incredible about your family. But what?’ Boges looked hard at me. ‘The drawings are important,’ he said. ‘They are the way in.’

  ‘The way in? To what?’

  ‘That’s what we’re gonna have to work out. But we have to find them first.’

  I kept thinking about Dad all the way home. It was early Tuesday night, and normally, when Dad was alive, I’d have on my Air Cadet uniform and we’d be driving out to the airfield. I was hoping to have my private licence in a few years. Those days were over. Now, everything had changed—and so had I.

  I went straight down to my room and put the letter and the key away, and then I heard Mum come home.

  I went out to the kitchen.

  ‘How are you feeling, hon?’ she asked.

  ‘OK,’ I said, still thinking about my conversation with Boges. ‘Mum, before he got sick, did Dad tell you anything about discovering something about our family?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I wasn’t sure what I meant really. ‘Something unusual? Something that might—I don’t know—cause a problem?’

  Mum looked puzzled. She shook her head. ‘Not as far as I know. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing. I was just wondering about the time Dad spent in Ireland, doing that family research stuff. What did the solicitor want?’

  Mum sighed. ‘Just more documents to sign. Your dad wasn’t very good at organising his business. It’s a bit of a mess, really.’

  Mum suddenly started crying, holding onto the bench with one hand, pushing tears out of her eyes with the other.

  I put my arms around her. ‘Mum,’ I said, ‘tell me if there’s anything I can
do to help.’

  ‘Oh Cal, some days I’m OK. Other days …’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Me too.’

  She blew her nose and straightened up. ‘I asked Rafe about that envelope you wanted.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He said he could see that it was official paperwork from the hospital, so he just took it. He didn’t want to worry you.’

  ‘Did he say what was in it?’

  ‘Just some medical reports, apparently. Copies of the last tests that Dr Edmundson made. For the UVI—you know, the unknown viral infection, that killed your father.’

  Liar.

  ‘Well, did Dad ever say anything to you about something called the Ormond Riddle?’ I asked.

  ‘Who told you about that?’ Rafe’s voice made me jump. I swung round. He’d crept in behind me, quiet as a cat, and was standing in the doorway, just like Dad used to, wearing Dad’s face as if he’d stolen it and put it on crookedly.

  ‘No-one. I just heard about it.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I dunno.’ I shrugged, trying to look ignorant.

  ‘I want to know where you heard about it!’

  ‘Rafe?’ Mum interrupted. ‘What’s the matter? What’s with the interrogation?’ She tried to make a joke of it but Rafe glared at me. Did he know about me busting into his place?

  ‘I just saw something about it on the net,’ I lied.

  ‘Come on, Rafe,’ Mum said, ‘everyone’s still a bit touchy. Sit down and let me get dinner on.’

  ‘Thanks, Winifred. I don’t mean to sound like an interrogator, but I’m worried about you, Cal.’

  ‘You have been through a lot,’ said Mum putting her hand on mine, while flashing a look of approval at my uncle.

  ‘Uncle Rafe is only trying to be helpful, aren’t you, Rafe?’