Despite her fluttering mind, she must have fallen asleep with her head on Kurt’s lap, because later Mother shook her awake. The doctor had come back to talk to them. Miki was so tired she barely heard him say the operation to save Father’s fingers had failed. While Mother cried and Kurt sat in silence, Miki looked around at the new people who had arrived. A fat man who smelled of cigarettes and looked like a frog. A little girl with a snotty nose and a doll like a real baby. A boy with a noisy toy that jingled and talked.

Miki knew she should feel guilty and sad because those fingers were gone. She should be asking forgiveness from God. Instead, she was caught up in the world.

Her senses in overdrive. A disaster unfolding in front of her. Opportunity riding on the crest of that disaster. Her mind tingling with thoughts of what might lie ahead.

There she was: then and now. A young person waiting for the world.

PART III GROWTH

PART III

Growth

21

21

Max didn’t know how the kids at school found out about the pups, but at the start of the week it was all they could talk about.

‘What happened? Did your dad kill them?’

‘Lily Moon says your dad drowned them.’

‘Why is your dad living at Mooney’s?’

‘Why is he sleeping on Lily Moon’s couch?’

‘Because Mum wants to kill him,’ Max yelled. ‘And I want to kill him too.’

He made himself sound tough on the outside, but inside he was crying. He didn’t want to think about the pups. He didn’t want to think of their little faces and how they must have looked when Dad was pushing them under the water.

Max knew now that Rosie had never been a bad mum. Dad must have drowned her other pups too, when they were just born. That was why Max never saw them. In the school toilets, he cried his eyes out. He hoped Dad stayed living at Mooney’s forever, because Max would never forgive him.

Everyone was sad for Max—except Jaden, who had a big smirk on his face as if he’d been hoping the pups would die all along. ‘Poor Maxie. Can’t stop blubbering over the little puppies. Big pussy cry-baby. Now they’re all dead.’

Not all of them, Max thought.

He didn’t want Jaden to know about Bonnie. She was living with Leon, and that was the next best thing to Max keeping her himself. Every day before school, he went over to see how she was going. In the afternoons he fed her and played with her till Leon came home. Her training wasn’t going too well, but Mum said he had to keep working at it. Bonnie was as good at concentrating as Max in the classroom. He figured they were almost the same.