“I’m the same way. I barely let anyone except the babysitter over.”
Babysitter was a light term. She was actually a nanny. No, actually, she even had a degree in childcare. Locke had hired her for me, and he hadn’t held back. He said I’d concentrate better if I knew Penny was in capable hands, and he was right.
The woman was such a guru, she put Mary Poppins to shame.
“I’d be happy to have Ember and Lily over,” he voiced with a light shrug.
“I can have them over whenever you want.”
“How are they doing?”
I kept my face clear of emotion. “Good.”
He eyed me with amusement. “Do I want to know?”
It was so hard to keep my face clear. “Ember’s…quaint.”
He smiled broadly. Wow, he looked good. “Surely something’s changed in almost a decade with that girl.”
Face was cracking. “Uh, yep.”
He smelled my bullshit from a mile away. It wasn’t my place to tell him Ember still bounced from guy to guy, still couldn’t keep a job down to save her life, still left Lily in Megan’s care every weekend to go out and do who knows what. The truth wasn’t pretty, and Conor had a track history for messing with Ember’s boyfriend of the month. He wouldn’t be happy with the calibre of man she was still hanging around.
“I want to see her,” he said softly. “I want to see my little Lily too.”
This time, my face did break, but with a warm smile. “Conor,” I said quietly, “Lily’s not a little girl anymore.”
I saw a fleeting look of sadness in him. He hid it away promptly, nodding slowly. “Sometimes I forget the world kept turning when I was away.”
I traced my thumb over his lips, softly responding, “Not for us, babe.”
The Hole
Thunder boomed overhead.
The storm had arrived, blanketing the skies with darkness.
The wind pulsed around Conor as he tread through the bush, desperate and pleading.
This was the one place he hadn’t looked. The one place he couldn’t believe Max might wade in.
“Max!” he screamed. “Max!”
Dominic raced through the bush in the opposite direction, pleading in a panicked voice, “MAAAAAX!”
Jem stood still, staring up at the swaying trees, the branches like twisted arms reaching out for him. His face blanched, and his lips were blue from the cold. “It’s my fault,” he cried. “It’s my fault.”
“It’s not your fault!” Conor screamed, turning to look at him. “Help us look, Jem!”
But Jem was shaking his head. He had gone into shock.
Looking terrified and sick, he chanted over and over again, “I pushed him, I pushed him.”
Conor left him behind as he bushwhacked under the rumbling sky. It was dense in here, with random little clearings. Branches whipped his body, and he felt blood trickling down his cheek. His breathing picked up, the panic in him was rising. There was a lump in his throat, and if he slowed down, he might collapse from the weight of the fear coursing through him.
Where did he go?
“Max!” he carried on, lips trembling.
What if he was hurt? What if he needed Conor?
The bushes shook near him. He turned his head in time to see Dominic cutting through them, the same frightened expression on his face. But Dominic was resolute. He was better at bottling it all in and ploughing through.
In sync, they moved together, shouting Max’s name, looking in places his bony little body might have crawled into. They heard the sound of the rushing river and went to it, shuddering as the wind blew through them, sucking the warmth out of their limbs. The rain started to fall, growing heavier and heavier, coating them head to toe, plastering their clothes to their bodies.
There was a rock face all along here just before the river. Worried, Conor ran alongside the cleared trail, peering over the edge and at the rocks below.
It was a nasty fall. If Max had gone over, his bones might have shattered on impact. The rocks were sizeable, some of them large as boulders and spiky. Oh God, what if he had run and not seen the river coming? He might have sailed over the edge and dropped four metres below.
Or he might have landed in the river if he’d jumped far enough ahead, but the river was flowing fast and turbulently. If Max had landed in the rapids, he would have been carried off, and Conor didn’t even know if the kid knew how to swim. Max had always seemed so sheltered.
The same thoughts blazed through Dominic. He started to shake harder as