Page 29 of The Family Across the Street
Another text comes in and he looks down at his phone to see a message from his mother.
Just thought you should know that what happened to her is on the internet.
Logan doesn’t reply. He looks up a news site and straight away sees an article about Maddy.
‘Neighbours heard arguing and a woman begging someone to stop,’ he reads. Pinpricks run up and down his arms. They heard her begging. He can hear his sister’s voice, her tears, her cries for help, and the bite of meat pie threatens to come up again. He rubs his hands together; the desire to hit something, hurt something, hurt himself in place of hurting Patrick is overwhelming. When he lived at home, he did his best to protect her, stepping in front of a careless slap for no reason from their mother or a more deliberate hit from their father. He took the beatings for her, because he could. But then she was too far away for his protection. He holds his hands up to his eyes, pushing against them, trying to focus on the darkness he creates, but the chaos of his thoughts will not be calmed, even as he tries deep breathing and counting.
Maddy, Maddy, Maddy.
When he gets to Melbourne tonight, he will visit his sister and then he knows that at some point he will leave the hospital and search for the man who hurt her and then… he doesn’t want to think about it. Once he gets there, he will call the number again and again until Patrick answers. Or until someone else does. It has to be from the same man who hurt Maddy – it has to be.
He looks at the article again, sickened by the bare reciting of facts. He reads articles like this every day, but it is different when it’s your sister being written about. The neighbours heard her screaming and begging and they did nothing? What kind of people live next door to Maddy? Who hears a woman asking for help and does nothing?
He rubs his hands through his hair, damp with sweat. It’s killing him that he wasn’t close enough for her to call.
There’s a chance it wasn’t Patrick who hurt her, but his mother is right – it’s always the husband or the boyfriend. Logan met quite a few of them in prison. That’s where Patrick belongs, although Logan would prefer him dead. He clenches his fist, imagines the feel of it smacking into Patrick’s cheek, imagines pummelling the flesh on the young man’s face.
‘Stop it, stop it, stop it,’ he growls, trying to rein in his own rage.
His thoughts return to the neighbours who heard something and did nothing. What is wrong with people? If he thought someone was in trouble, he wants to believe he would help, that he would step in. All it would have taken was a knock on the door. A call to the police would have been even better.
The woman from this morning comes back to him, and he feels a wave of shame. He thinks something is going on in that house but he’s done nothing. How would he feel if tomorrow he read about her on the internet – and he could have stopped it?
On impulse he decides to swing by her house again. It’s out of his way but it doesn’t matter.
The drive takes fifteen minutes, and when he gets to the house he sits in his van for a moment, watching the waves of heat shimmer off the asphalt.
This is not a good idea. But I’m here now.
As he walks up the path to the front door, he notes that the house is still silent, no noise coming from inside. He rings the bell again, clutches the computer in his hand, holding it up, covering his face, when he hears what sounds like a chair being dragged and then the sound of the peephole sliding open again.
‘Thought I would just see if you can accept this now,’ he says, clearing his throat, knowing that this is not standard procedure, knowing that there is no way he should have done this and that if the woman complains, he will lose his job. But he’s made the decision and so he waits for a reply from whoever is looking at him through the peephole.
‘There’s a real gun,’ whispers a child’s voice.
‘What?’ Logan says, straining to hear better.
‘No wait, ow…’ yells the child. Logan hears a short scuffle and the chair being dragged away.
‘Look, mate,’ comes a male voice, low and menacing, ‘she doesn’t want it today. Don’t come back here or I’m calling the police.’
The peephole closes and Logan stands on the front step, debating what to do.
Outside in the street, emptied garbage bins – some of their lids left open, some lying on their side where the truck has dropped them – contribute to the rotting heat smell. Sweat beads on his upper lip. He runs his hand through his hair and it comes away wet.
The door remains resolutely closed. He looks around anxiously. He shouldn’t be here. The last thing he wants is for the police to be called on him. He knows that they’ll see him for who he is and what he’s done.
‘No one saw,’ he mutters as he makes his way out of the front garden.
He has kept repeating that mantra to himself ever since that last time. The time he doesn’t want to think about. It was months ago, before he went to Mack for a job. Months before and one desperate night, one desperate moment, but thankfully, mercifully, he stopped himself.
It was still cold that night, the wind biting as he stood in front of the house. It was so easy to get inside. It took no time at all. Even now he can still see the sleek black laptop, light and expensive, in his grip. The house was empty. He had the laptop and some diamond earrings abandoned carelessly on the side table in the main bedroom. He cat-walked through the rest of the house, picking up small things – a digital camera, an iPad, some loose cash in a drawer – and then he made his way back to the broken back door, where the lock had given way with a small shove. And then he stood there as his heart thumped and his lungs seemed unable to inflate. The caged-in feeling of his small cell hung over him and he felt himself begin to shake in the cold night air. Debbie’s disbelief, Maddy’s disappointment and his father’s smug, ‘Told you so,’ assaulted him, one after another.
And then he put everything down on the kitchen table and left, closing the door behind him.
It woke him up at night, the horror of what he had almost done to his life, all over again. Did he leave a print, some DNA, some evidence? He was wearing gloves and he’s sure he kept them on, but he can’t remember. He is on the database for life. Did he leave a clue that it was him? Would the owners have reported it if nothing was taken? When the nightmare wakes him, he prays to a god he’s not sure he fully believes in that he will be forgiven and that one terrible, desperate act won’t come back to get him. So far, it hasn’t.
But can he let his fears over repercussions from that one night stop him from helping this family?
