Deep Wate - Sarah Epstein Page 0,92

…’

‘What are you doing tonight?’

She gives me a nervous laugh. ‘I have a feeling you’re about to tell me.’

I glance towards the hallway and lower my voice. ‘We’re going to find out what Mason has buried in his backyard.’

The storm

‘So this is the Turners’ place?’ Tom said above the howling wind. He stepped inside the stone mausoleum. His hooded jacket was slick with rain as he peeled it off and let it drop to the floor. Outside the narrow wooden doors the downpour had begun, water spilling off the mausoleum’s roof in a heavy stream. Both doors had windows with vertical bars and Mason was thankful the glass in each was still intact. The rain was coming in sideways when Mason ushered Tom inside. Tom said it had started pouring about five minutes into the fifteen-minute walk over from his grandparents’ house.

‘Jonathan, Polly and Oswald,’ Mason said, shining his phone light at the wall on one side where three horizontal crypts were stacked one on top of the other. There was nothing to see except slabs of marble with names carved into them. The other wall of the mausoleum was blank.

‘How the hell did you get in here?’

‘Lock’s busted,’ Mason said, bumping into the wall. Now that Tom was in here with him, he realised how cramped it was. The width and height of a standard door, and only as deep as it was high. Mason swayed slightly, his back finding the cool marble. He bent his knees and let himself slide down until his backside met the concrete floor.

The wind rattled the doors and a flare of lightning glowed white through the windows. But the structure was sturdy. Solid. It had been here for over a hundred years. Tom studied the graveyard, probably to assess how far away Mason’s car was. He sighed, as though realising the storm had really set in.

‘Pull up a pew,’ Mason said, patting the concrete floor beside him. He placed his phone down with the light on and held up the whisky bottle. ‘Sounds like we’ll be here for a while.’

Tom brought his hands to his hips and gave Mason the once over. Mason tried to appear more sober than he felt, and knew he was failing.

‘You actually going to talk about it this time?’ Tom asked. ‘Or am I merely a glorified babysitter?’

Mason lifted the bottle to his lips. He’d asked Tom for a favour but hadn’t specified what it was. He was hoping Tom would see the predicament he was in and suggest Mason could crash with him and his grandparents for a few days. Maybe longer. This meant Mason would have to explain what had happened. In detail.

‘You’re gonna want to sit down,’ Mason said.

Tom did as instructed, lowering himself to the floor beside Mason, so close their elbows touched. Mason offered him the whisky but Tom declined. Keeping his eyes on Polly Turner’s name etched into the marble wall, Mason talked Tom through the events of the evening.

‘Why does your mother say you owe her?’ Tom asked. ‘What exactly is she holding over you?’

Mason confessed about what happened when Henry was six months old, how he’d slipped in the bath when Mason wasn’t watching.

‘That’s ridiculous,’ Tom said. ‘You were five years old! Where did she disappear to while you were watching her baby? Henry was her responsibility, not yours.’

‘I’m afraid I’m like her, Tommy.’

‘You’re not.’

‘What’s that saying about inheriting the sins of our parents?’

Tom scoffed. ‘Then I’m screwed as well.’

‘No, you’re not.’ Mason smiled, then quickly grew serious as he turned to take in Tom’s profile. ‘I look up to you, man.’

Tom smirked, shaking his head a little. ‘Come on …’

‘No, seriously, I do. I admire you. Your circumstances have been cruddy too, but you’ve managed to keep your head down and work hard, and now you’ve earned yourself a ticket out of here. I’m never getting out.’

Tom shifted to look at Mason, the seat of his jeans scraping on the dusty floor. ‘How is that possibly true? You can do anything you want. You could leave tomorrow.’

‘Where the hell would I go?’

‘You could travel around. Find work.’

‘I have no money. And I failed my HSC.’ Mason picked at the label of the whisky bottle. ‘Who’d want to hire me?’

‘Heaps of places. You could work in retail, or find another mechanic who’d be willing to take you on. Stu Macleod would write you a reference.’

‘Where would I live?’

Tom made a small growling noise, half amused, half exasperated. ‘God, I don’t