Page 33 of The Family Across the Street
‘See what happens?’ he says casually and then he goes to stand by the window. ‘It’s hot in here. Why haven’t you got this air conditioner fixed?’
‘I should have, I know.’ Katherine takes a deep breath and tries to calm herself, to slow her beating heart.
He pushes open the window and hot air from outside rushes in so he closes it again.
‘Can I get Mum an ice pack?’ George asks quietly.
‘What?’ he says.
‘When I fell down and hurt my knee, Mum put an ice pack on it and it felt better. Can I get one from the kitchen for her?’ A carefully asked question, uncertainty in every word.
‘It’s okay, George,’ she says. The air in the room feels thicker, heavier and harder to breathe in and out. Pain in her wrist ricochets around her whole body as she trembles in an effort to stay upright when all she wants to do is lie down.
‘Can I?’ George repeats, determined to do this one thing. George is a thinker, a planner, and as she watches him, she understands that her son is the key to the children being saved. She cannot see how she can make it out of this alive but if she can figure something out and somehow communicate it to George, then that is all that matters.
‘Fine, whatever,’ he says, bored with anyone else’s pain.
George darts from the room and returns quickly with a soft ice pack that he drapes over her swelling wrist and hand with delicate care.
‘Thank you, sweetheart,’ she says and he nods.
‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ he says.
‘It’s not your fault, baby,’ she replies as tears begin to course down his cheeks.
‘But it is,’ says George.
‘No, George,’ he says, his voice soft, almost kind, but his teeth are clenched, his top lip curled, ‘it’s not your fault. In fact, if it’s anyone’s fault at all, it’s hers. She’s the one to blame for everything that’s happened here today. Blame her, blame Mumma.’
17
Logan
Logan
It’s the most innocuous-looking police station Logan has ever seen. It reminds him of the foyer of an office building, with its white melamine counter and some fake leather benches against a light blue wall, a vibrant potted plant in the corner. Everything about it tells whoever walks in that this is not a threatening place. There are no drunks asleep on the couches and no jittery junkies waiting for their ride home, just an empty space and one policewoman standing behind the counter, looking at a computer, engaged in what Logan thinks may actually be a game of Solitaire. It’s a suburban police station in a suburb where cats go missing and sometimes parties run past midnight and the neighbours can’t get to sleep on time. The only smell is of a pine-scented disinfectant mixed with a sweet fragrance from the flowers blooming in pots outside the door.
Logan wonders if the police who work here have ever seen anything scarier than a domestic disturbance over who parked over whose driveway. But then he thinks about the woman in the nice house in the nice street quite close to here. There is something scary going on over there. He knows that sometimes the nicest houses belonging to people with the widest smiles conceal the worst horrors. He met some people in prison who had all the manners of the private-school-educated, who were sharp and clever, and who were in prison for murder and rape.
He shivers a little as he walks inside, as much from the cranked-up air conditioning as from an old learned fear about the nature of police stations and their life-changing sinister magic. Six years ago, he walked into one a worried man with a bandaged hand and was driven away a charged criminal, and his life will never be the same. He loiters in the front for a minute without approaching the counter, fighting the urge to turn and just run. I didn’t leave any prints. No one knows.
The woman in the big house is not his problem, she really isn’t. His fear over having to deal with the police tells him to just leave it alone – but instinct will not let go. The woman in the big house is in trouble and he knows it. Why would the kid have mentioned a gun? What made him or her say ‘ow’ and who is the man who told him to go away? He feels like he’s playing one of those detective games, piecing together clues, but this is not a game. Even if he could dismiss the woman, he can’t dismiss the kids. Maybe if one of the neighbours in his suburb or one of his teachers had noticed something off about him – had spotted a bruise or two, had clicked that his loner behaviour was not normal and stepped in – he would have grown up an entirely different human being. Someone has to look out for the kids.
He keeps thinking about Maddy in her hospital bed. He asked Debbie to get her friend to send him a picture. ‘Why would you want to see that?’ Debbie asked over text. ‘I need to,’ was the best he could do.
The shock of her bandaged head and the tube coming out of her mouth had stolen the air from his lungs. There was no real way to tell it was his sister in the bed but he knew it was. In his van only minutes ago he had dropped his head and closed his eyes. Please let her survive this.
Now he pushes his shoulders back and strides up to the counter. He’s done his time and he’s trying to help. And no one saw his one last sad desperate act. No one saw it and no one knows about it and he’s not going to let that prevent him from getting someone help.
The policewoman is dressed in a uniform with a tactical vest and a gun at her side. Logan is sure that without the air conditioning she would be sweating buckets. It’s a lot of weight to have to carry, and the short, blonde-haired policewoman doesn’t look like she weighs much.
‘Can I help you?’ she asks, her face neutral as her eyes dart up and down assessing him, his size and the coloured edges of his tattoos peeking out of his sleeves at his wrists, the words on his hands, the words on his face. He watches her lips move slightly as she reads the tiny letters under one cheekbone that spell out: I refuse to sink.
He imagines she think he’s lost.
‘Um yeah… it’s kind of strange… I’m not really sure how to explain it.’
The policewoman’s hand goes to her side, rests on her gun. ‘Start at the beginning?’ she suggests.
