The Serpent's Skin Erina Reddan (affordable ebook reader .TXT) 📖

I slumped back on my heels. Rubbed my finger over Mum’s name, over and over, like it could tell me something and I would get it if I stuck at it long enough.

So Peg was the liar after all. She’d lied to Tessa and me when we called that day and she told us she hadn’t seen Mum.

And then the other thing it meant.

Dad’s been telling the truth. All this time.

I curled forwards, gut punched. I had punished him for nothing. He’d never got over Mum and I’d just made it worse with all my suspicion. Even though I stopped asking questions after the funeral, he’d never been the same. Something back then had broken between us. I clamped my hand to my mouth as if that could stop the sudden urge to vomit. I bent again, the other hand to the newspaper stack to steady me, dry retching contorting through me.

Once it passed, I realised that in among it all something good unfurled. It could even be Mum sending me a message—that I could make things up with Dad. I straightened, a lightness rising up out of the unfurl and working its way across my face.

I looked down to see the proof, after all these years, once more, that Dad hadn’t lied.

But I’d missed something on the calendar further down and smaller.

She’d stayed only twenty-five-and-a-half minutes.

JACK SKIDS AWAY

The steam of the evening heat had Tye and me up on the roof of the boarding house, our legs dangling over the edge. We licked our ice creams looking down on the top of the trees in the park opposite and over the roofs to the city in the distance. The air so still you could have sliced strips out of it. I was down to the cone, but Tye had a cautionary licking approach that made his last longer. When I’d crunched the last bit I stretched long and laid my head in Tye’s lap. He absent-mindedly combed his fingers through my hair. With the stars shimmering above, it should have felt good. But far from fading away, those jackhammers were busy buzzing up my whole nervous system.

‘So,’ Tye said after a long while. ‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing,’ I said too quickly. I rubbed one hand over the other trying to soothe the buzz.

He wound his fingers through my hair, gathered a clump and tugged.

‘Ow,’ I said.

‘Tell the truth, JJ.’

My hand reflexed to my stomach. To cover, I jerked upright, edged back from the edge and circled my arms around my knees. I cleared my throat a couple of times, but the words were glass sharp and stuck in my throat. In the end, I told him about the shock of Peg’s calendar that afternoon.

‘So…?’

‘That’s the thing,’ I said. ‘I run into the same dot points you do.’ I dug into my palm. ‘I mean, it doesn’t change anything. I already knew she hadn’t stayed for long at Peg’s. It’s just weird to see it in black and white. You know, proof that Dad lied.’

‘Proof that Peg lied too.’

‘That she did.’ I pulled out my ciggies and let my knees drop open. I generally didn’t smoke when I was with Tye. He wasn’t a fan. ‘I guess that’s the sticking point. What was so big that those two, who hated each other, came together for a one-time-only alliance?’

He screwed up his face. His lashes long over his angel eyes. ‘Except it’s not a shared lie. Peg lied saying she’d hadn’t seen your mum when she had. But your dad lied saying your mum was staying at Peg’s all along when she wasn’t.’ He widened his eyes. ‘They’re kind of like opposite lies.’

I tapped the cigarette on the ground. Put the filter between my lips. Held it away. ‘And in the middle of all that, why didn’t she stay at Peg’s? Why spend money she didn’t have to stay somewhere else?’

‘Unless she had somewhere else to go.’

Something tugged at a thread in my memory. I narrowed my eyes. Something ferret sized. Then it hit me. ‘There was an address. But Dad destroyed it.’

‘That’s it, then. I think you have to ask your dad.’

‘What?’ I laughed. ‘Because of his excellent track record in telling the truth.’

‘You were kids back then.’ He shrugged. ‘Could be something he can tell you now. Or could be nothing. Your Mrs Tyler might be right, though. Maybe now is the time to figure it all out. This thing has been tugging at you ever since I’ve known you, and you don’t like loose ends.’

I sucked at the end of the cigarette as if I’d already lit up. ‘You may have a point, Watson.’ I blew pretend smoke into the air and shoved the ciggie back in the box.

My enthusiasm for Tye’s calm, rational approach waned the next day, though, when I was in the gloom of Dad’s kitchen. I mean, Tye didn’t know this world. He’d been brought up in a house of reason: lawyer father, academic mother, one child, framed Japanese prints on the wall. I eyeballed the rat in the middle of this room, up on its hind legs, the black glisten of its eyes lasering me straight back. I balled up a tea towel and chucked it at the rat, missing but not by much. The rat did drop to all fours and lumber off, but took its time about it, making sure I knew who was really in charge.

Dad’s kitchen was almost as bad as Peg’s. Only there was something darker here. There was malevolence in the dirty dishes jumbled across the sink. The table was crowded with Vegemite and salt and butter and everything he’d had for breakfast, lunch and dinner in the last few days. I backed away and felt for the door behind me. But then I stopped.

If I was to get Dad to admit anything after all these long, rusty,