Deep Wate - Sarah Epstein Page 0,82

him for a moment and realise we’re sharing the same thought. We both turn to the old oil drum.

Raf already has his phone out and the light on. He holds it over the drum’s circular opening and we peer inside. There are charred blocks of wood, a few charcoaled branches and a thick pile of ashes in the bottom.

‘What’s that?’ I say, pointing. Raf shines the light on a gap between woodblocks where a hint of green is visible among the black.

‘Fire destroys all traces …’ I say, reaching inside the drum and digging around. When I extract my arm, Raf ’s eyes widen at what I’m gripping in my blackened hand. The remains of a charred green baseball cap with the words Lucky-7 embroidered on the front. ‘Except for when it doesn’t.’

One hour before the storm

It was gone. The money was gone.

Mason groped the underside of the drawer and found nothing but timber. He wrenched it out, flipping it over and ignoring the contents spilling out around his feet.

No.

No!

He scoured the floor underneath the desk in case the envelope had fallen loose. He checked the other drawers. He crawled on his hands and knees over every inch of his bedroom floor.

Two thousand dollars. All the money he had in the world. His escape money.

Gone.

Mason’s heart thudded so hard it felt like it would burst through his chest. His hands trembled as he burrowed them deep into his hair, gripping it between his fingers and tugging, scrunching, ripping.

No, no, no.

She’d found it. He was so stupid. Why didn’t he open that bank account? Even if she’d found out about it, she’d have had no way of accessing the money. Ivy hassling him about it would have been preferable to this. Anything would have been preferable to this feeling of helplessness.

Where was his money?

How could he get it back?

Had she already gambled it?

How could he undo this?

How could he rewind?

How, how, how?

She was here, in the kitchen, staring at that goddamn glass cabinet like it was any old Thursday night. Like she hadn’t just kicked the bottom out of his world.

He walked out of his bedroom and into the kitchen, barely registering Henry peering out from behind his bedroom door.

‘Where’s my money?’ Mason demanded, leaning over the table.

Ivy looked him up and down, slow to react. ‘What money?’ She picked up a coffee mug filled with something resembling water. The empty vodka bottle shoved to one side told the real story.

‘You know what money. My money,’ he said, thumping a closed fist against his chest. ‘The savings from my job.’

She snorted in a dismissive way and took a drag of her cigarette. ‘You been hiding money? Knowing how hard we have it around here?’

The vodka had taken the edge off her words but the curl in her lip showed the cruelty lurking beneath. Mean was her default setting. Mean and drunk was usually Mason’s cue to make himself scarce.

This time he couldn’t.

Not without his money.

‘You have no right,’ he said.

‘If you bring money into this house, I have every bloody right to it.’ She slammed the coffee mug down so hard vodka sloshed up the sides. ‘After everything I’ve done for you. You owe me.’

‘I owe you nothing. Nothing. Not anymore,’ he said. ‘This isn’t even about that.’

‘It’s always about that,’ she spat back, standing so quickly the chair banged into the wall. ‘I protected you. I am your mother.’

Mason clenched his fists by his sides, fingernails digging painfully into his palms. His throat ached with the effort of containing the roar inside his chest.

‘A mother doesn’t steal from her children!’ he said. ‘A mother doesn’t gamble away the grocery money and leave her kids to fend for themselves. A mother doesn’t get so wasted she needs her child to scrape her drunk arse off the floor and hose her down. You are not a mother. You are a burden!’

Once the words were purged Mason thought he might feel better, but saying them aloud only filled him with self-loathing. After everything, he couldn’t even manage to get away from her successfully. He was too weak and useless to even do that right.

She flicked her cigarette onto the floor and reached for the empty vodka bottle.

‘Don’t!’ Mason cried. ‘If you throw that I will not hold back—’

It was already spinning through the air. He wasn’t fast enough to dodge it. The base of the bottle bludgeoned him across his lower jaw. Mason heard the meaty smack of glass against his skin, the