Don’t answer that. “You killed my father,” I said. Nothing felt real in this lilac dimness, sweet with dust and rank with smoke, between the shed and our old house. Nothing except me. In this light, I convinced myself I could speak without consequences. “You buried him under the lemon tree and—maybe you ate his heart, I don’t know, but whatever you got out of that, it wasn’t enough to save yourself. Not without my help, telling you you’re beautiful and loved and strong, over and over, so it would stay true. I won’t give you that this time.”

“Then I will take it,” she said. She sprang; I did not step aside. Her fine, sharp fingers clung and tore at the cut on my chest.

I’d been holding the knife, still open.

I remember the scent, the weight of flowers. And then only air.

THE PATHS BY WHICH WE REACH THE WORLD

Rose, lemon, lily, rosella. Lace and etiquette, tea and honey.

Nothing of Nerida Scott, nothing she loved, was from Runagate. All came from across one ocean or another. Yet she belonged to Inglewell entirely. She never left. She could not. She’d been planted as surely as the lemon tree on her husband’s grave. Tethered as securely as any story left there, as the memories of people vanished between the trees.

Is that a dingo crying in the night, or a child? Is that a bird calling as the light falls? Are those the bones of a horse glinting white in the paddock? Is that the body of a woman, or merely falling flowers?

The schoolchildren of Woodwild, David Spicer, Linda Aberdeen, all who went before and alongside and after them: they are trapped by the stories that made them and dragged them in; they are caught and held by town and road and lantern-bush and trees.

Chapter 9: Home Again

CHAPTER NINE

HOME AGAIN

Sergeant Aberdeen took the knife, but what else could he do? There was no other evidence, no one to believe him. He turned the knife over and over, as if he could unwind a secret, until Trish stopped him. “Dad,” she said. Gary had given her a jacket from his truck, but she was shivering. “Dad, let’s go.”

“Trish,” said Gary, helplessly.

She looked back. Her mascara had run, and in the harsh headlights, it made her eyes huge. “Gary, I’m fucking unravelling,” she said. “This whole place—Runagate, Inglewell. I can’t get away. Just—”

“Tomorrow,” I said. “We’ll talk in town.” Her dad, I thought, would need her as much as she needed him. At least they had each other.

Sergeant Aberdeen pulled his attention back to us. “Get back to Runagate and stay there,” he said, as if he would think of something to ask us. “Are you in any state to drive, Gary Damson?”