‘What do you mean?’

‘Go see for yourself.’

Abby went to the window and looked out. In the rear left corner of their property line, wedged between the fence and a drooping she-oak, was Eddie’s cubby house. In truth, it was less of a cubby and more of a lean-to: a sheet of corrugated iron for a roof, a strip of carpet for a floor and a few scattered milk crates as furniture.

Eddie hadn’t used the cubby since he was twelve, and Ray had talked about dismantling it. He called it an eyesore and he was right, but Abby couldn’t bring herself to allow it to come down. It was one of the final relics of Eddie’s childhood, and she hadn’t been ready to see it go. Now, she saw Eddie might not have been ready to see it go, either. He was sitting on one of the milk crates, socked feet on damp earth, reading an X-Men comic book.

Abby went out into the yard and joined him.

‘Mind if I pull up a crate?’ she asked.

Eddie looked up, shrugged, then looked back down at his comic book. Abby joined him, doing her best to ignore the stale smell of mould in the air.

‘Did you see Dad?’ Eddie asked.

‘Yeah. He’s okay. He misses you and Lori.’

‘Will he be coming home soon?’

‘I don’t know, Eddie. I don’t think so.’

‘He didn’t hurt that man, Mum. Everyone’s saying he hurt that man, but he didn’t do it. He wouldn’t.’

‘Your father confessed, Eddie.’

‘He’s lying.’

‘I know this is hard, but we need to—’

‘Why couldn’t you just leave it alone?’

‘Eddie.’

He glared at her. ‘This is your fault.’

From somewhere just beyond the garden, she heard the pounding sound of surf against sand. Order and certainty and control were shifting like the tides. She felt sick and tired. ‘… That’s not fair.’

But it wasn’t a lie, either.

Eddie stood. Then, in a sudden rage that seemed to sweep up from nowhere, he flung his comic book hard into the trunk of the she-oak. The comic slapped facedown against the wet grass, pages splayed like the wings of a dead bird. It made Abby flinch, and for a moment she saw Ray’s face on Eddie’s.

What have you left us with, Ray? she thought.