Deep Wate - Sarah Epstein Page 0,2

my dad’s punctuality forever. But honestly, she’ll find any excuse to criticise this town; it helps her justify leaving it three years ago.

It occurs to me Dad might have the dates mixed up – the school holidays don’t start until next Friday. The only reason Mum’s letting me have extra time here is because she has a work retreat next week and refuses to leave me home alone. I pull out my phone and dial the office number. It connects almost immediately.

‘Reservoir Motel,’ a female voice chirps. ‘We have vacancies!’

‘Oh, err …’ I’m thrown by the unfamiliar greeting. When did the motel get a name change? ‘Is David there, please?’

‘You just missed him. He’s gone to pick up his daughter from the train station.’

I glance up towards Railway Parade. ‘This is his daughter.’

‘Oh, Chloe! He should be there any moment. It’s Luisa here. Luisa de Souza.’

‘Right,’ I say. ‘Hi.’

Rina de Souza’s mother? She used to teach us jazz ballet down at the Scout hall on Tuesdays after school. Luisa was the only person my mother really befriended during her seven-year stint in this town … if we don’t count Sergeant Homewrecker. And I definitely don’t.

‘David’s running late,’ Luisa continues. ‘He was waiting for the window repairer. We had some trouble last night.’

I want to ask her why she’s using the word ‘we’ and why she’s so attuned to my father’s comings and goings. But I snag on her last few words.

‘What kind of trouble? Is Dad okay?’

My voice sounds small and clipped in contrast to Luisa’s. Her responses have a breathy, theatrical air, emphasised by the musical flow of her Portuguese accent.

‘Oh, yes,’ she says. ‘We’re both fine. It was a bit of a shock, but nobody was injured. Well, except him, of course. He was bleeding before he got here.’

‘Who—’ I start, just as Dad’s white ute appears at the top of the hill. ‘He’s here. I have to go, Luisa.’

‘See you soon!’ She hangs up before I have a chance to ask her why that is.

The ute pulls up alongside the empty ticket office. The driver’s side door pops open and Dad appears, his face weather-worn and silvery with three-day growth.

‘You cut your hair,’ he says.

‘You’re late,’ I reply.

Dad grunts in agreement. He lowers the ute’s tailgate, eyeballing my solitary suitcase. ‘That it?’

‘Same as usual.’

When you alternate between homes, you get pretty good at culling your whole existence into suitcase-sized necessities. Repacking your possessions over and over again is like trying to make peace with bad memories – if you’re not efficient about it, something always gets left behind.

Dad nestles my suitcase between two bags of mulch, then turns to me with open arms. He allows me a longer than normal squeeze, slapping me twice on the back with his sandpapery palm to let me know when the hug is over. My father has a gruff way about him, a bone-dry wit and rough edges that people sometimes mistake for hostility. Truth is, I feel more genuine affection from him than I do from my touchy-feely mother.

‘Okay,’ I say, as I climb into the ute’s cab, with a final glance towards the waiting room. ‘You’d better fill me in about this trouble at the motel last night.’

He gives me a sideways look. ‘You spoke to Luisa?’

‘Yeah. And we’ll revisit that topic later. For now, let’s start with who broke a window.’

* * *

Mason Weaver.

His name and a shrug is all Dad offers when I press for more details. He doesn’t go into what Mason threw at the window, whether he knew what he was doing or if he was so wasted he didn’t know which way was up. I bite my tongue and swallow my I told you so. Dad doesn’t deserve it. For the last few months he’s been keeping Room Fifteen unoccupied in case Henry’s older brother needed a place to crash or cool off.

‘What the hell is that?’ I ask as we pull into the motel driveway. A gaudy concrete fountain has been erected in the middle of the front lawn, a few limp plants scattered around the base in plastic pots. Considering the storm-damaged rain gutters and a large shade sail still in tatters, I’m surprised to see this new addition. I glance at Dad for an explanation, but his gaze is on the opposite side of the driveway, where a police car is parked diagonally across two spaces.

Hope flickers in my chest.

Henry?

But common sense quickly snuffs it out. If Henry had been located,