Southern Storm (44 South Book 2) Read online

  “What are you doing here?” Zach asked from the kitchen table, his eyes on the newspaper spread before him and little else.

  “I live here.”

  “Not in the homestead you don’t.”

  I took another sip of my drink.

  “Crime rate’s up,” he said when he didn’t get a bite out of me.

  “Nothing new there,” I commented mildly.

  “Someone graffitied the library building. Bet Helen chewed their balls off.”

  “Could have been a girl.”

  “Drawing a penis ejaculating?”

  “It was a small penis.”

  Zach snorted.

  “Found a job yet?” I asked.

  “Doing some stuff around the place for Luke.” He shut the paper with a disgruntled thump. “Might as well be cleaning the fucking latrines.”

  “You’re the one who left the army.”

  His eyes finally met mine. “It seemed like the right time to come home.”

  He meant because of me. I stared down into my coffee and didn’t comment.

  “You just missed Luke.”

  “Where’s he gone?” I forced myself to ask. Why was it so hard to talk to Zach?

  Fuck. I knew why. So did he. Missy.

  “Officially? Into town to pick up some shit from PGG Wrightson’s. Unofficially? He’s gone to see Maggie.”

  “Maggie’s working the Pukaki stretch today,” I pointed out.

  “Luke knows how to drive,” Zach shot back sarcastically.

  I scrubbed a hand over my face and turned to rinse out my cup.

  “I like her,” my brother offered. “She’s got spunk.”

  “She’s Luke’s.”

  Zach’s chair pushed back with a piercing screech. I spun around and faced him. He looked riled.

  “I know who she belongs to,” he said between gritted teeth.

  “You always know, Zach,” I replied before I could stop myself. “But that doesn’t mean you care.”

  “Fuck you.”

  He stormed out of the house and stalked to his Ranger. The engine revved loudly. Throwing it into gear, he shot out of the return, spraying gravel. Several pieces hit my police car. I leant against the kitchen bench, hands spread, fingers grasping granite, and lowered my head.

  He hadn’t deserved that. My body started to tremble. My throat felt bone dry. I pushed myself upright and walked into the lounge, opening up the drinks cabinet. I stood there for far too fucking long looking at the whisky. Staring the fucking thing down.

  The trembling became a full body shake. Sweat rolled down under my shirt collar. I licked my lips, my hand reaching out before I could stop it. The bottle in my grip before I could think to shut the cabinet door.

  I held it before me and read the label. Every single word. I read it again for good measure and then I slowly leant forward and placed the bottle back on the shelf, closing the door.

  My cell phone ringing broke the heavy silence in the room, allowing me to draw breath for the first time in what had to have been minutes. I reached into my pocket and withdrew the phone, swiping the screen and bringing it to my ear.

  “Drake,” I said in way of greeting.

  “Son, where are you?” Dad’s voice came down the line. “It’s almost one. She’ll be here any minute.”

  I closed my eyes and tipped back my head, praying for this to be over.

  “Work,” I said, my voice sounding distant.

  “Your mother and I are happy to keep her entertained, Matt,” Dad offered. “But the woman really needs to see you before she accepts the position.”

  “She needs to see the girls,” I countered. “I’m irrelevant.”

  “Hardly,” Dad muttered. “Get your arse over here.”

  “Joshua!” Mum called out in the background. “Mind your tongue.”

  “Sorry, love,” Dad mumbled. “Matt,” he said, voice lowered. “If you don’t pull your sh… self together and get involved in these girls’ rehabilitation then I’ll have you cut out of Red Tussock.”

  “You can’t do that, Dad,” I pointed out with forced patience.

  “I am still the head of this family, Matt. I can and I will. Get over here.”

  The phone went dead, along with any hope of avoiding reality.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to spend every second of every day with Rachel and Dani. It was just that they reminded me of her. And it’s not as though they looked exactly like Missy. No. It was darker and more twisted than that.

  The longer they didn’t talk, the harder it was not to imagine what happened. Not to think up a multitude of reasons for them to have withdrawn into themselves. We still didn’t know what Marinkovich did that day. We knew he’d been there; he admitted as much himself. But we didn’t know why or what happened. How it had all happened.

  But we did know, though, how it ended. Missy dead. The girls mute. And Ivan Fucking Marinkovich on a lynching.

  If he weren't already dead, I’d kill him all over again. Those thoughts haunted me late at night, too. Darker than the others. More twisted. I imagined the knife I’d use. The rope. The bloody knuckles. I could smell the taint of blood on the air. Feel the sting of each pummel. Taste his fear.

  But in truth, I sometimes wondered if it was my fear I tasted in the middle of the night when I woke up sweating. The sheets tangled, my chest heaving. I’d wander down the hallway, trying to get my breaths to even, and peer into the girls’ room.

  Then I’d cross the hallway and peer into the master bedroom.

  I hadn’t slept in there since Missy died. Since it all came out and my life was torn apart like a piece of soggy paper. I hadn’t crossed the threshold once. I’d stare at that bed and the throw pillows she loved so fucking much, and I’d wonder if I could ever get past this.

  This hurt. This anger. This… devastation.

  And then I’d remind myself I had two beautiful daughters and I’d face the day all over again.

  What a hero. Breathing. Existing. Craving another mouthful of oblivion.

  This had to fucking stop. Please. Just let it stop.

  Chapter 3

  I Can Do This

  Liv

  The property was a good half hour out of town. If you could call Twizel a town, that is. I guess it was big enough. It had a supermarket. Kind of. A petrol station. A café and library.

  A police station.

  I’d made sure I knew where that was. The detectives in Auckland had told me to learn the lay of the land as soon as I got here. So, yesterday was spent driving down each street, surprisingly getting lost, and mapping out escape routes.

  I laughed sharply at my life now as I slowed my car and parked it behind an oversized black ute in front of the small weatherboard house. It looked tidy and neat, the grass trimmed, the fence painted. A swing seat hanging under an old oak tree in the front yard. Rust-gold leaves offering up a canopy to sit under.

  But there was something hopelessly sad about the picture before me. I couldn’t quite place it at first. And then it came to me in a blinding flash of light.

  There wasn’t a single flower in the flower beds.

  It was autumn. Flowers still bloomed in autumn. But every single flower bed in front of the house was barren. As if it had been dug over at the beginning of last winter and never tended to again. There were no weeds to be seen, so someone cared enough to stay on top of the gardening.

  But there were no flowers and the absence of them said more than if they had been there.

  I climbed out of the Volvo and looked up at the porch, the front screen opening as soon as I closed my car’s door.

  “Hello,” I called out. “Is this the Drake house?”

  “One of ‘em,” an older man said. “You must be Olivia Smith.” Smith, it was cringeworthy. But the detectives assured me ‘Smith’ was a viable option. Changing my first name, they said, would be harder to remember.

  They clearly didn’t realise I held three degrees and a higher than average capacity for retaining information.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m Olivia.” I walked toward the older gentleman and offered my hand. He had to be in his seventies. I was sure the man I had spoken to on the telephone had been younger.

  And then I remembered the girls.

  “You must be Rachel and Dani’s grandfather,” I said.

  “Guilty as charged,” the man said. “Joshua Drake.” He shook my hand with enthusiasm. I could feel the roughness to his palms, the callouses on his fingers. I glanced down at the barren garden beside us.

  Thankfully, Joshua didn’t see the question undoubtedly in my eyes.

  “Come on inside,” he said, jovially. “The wife’s just pulling out some baking from the oven, and Rachel and Dani are keen as mustard to meet you.”

  “And their father?” I asked.

  Joshua’s shoulders hunched. Just slightly. You wouldn’t have noticed if it wasn’t your job to assess every little nuance of a person’s behaviour.

  “He’s on his way. Had to work,” Joshua offered. I wondered if ‘work’ was a euphemism for something else.

  I followed the older man into a surprisingly feminine kitchen, noting the rooster theme interspersed with cherry blossoms on damn near every surface. The combination boggled the mind.

  “There you are,” a grandmotherly figure exclaimed. “Just in time for lunch.”

  The smell of bacon and egg pie met my nostrils, and I smiled. I’d always had a soft spot for pies.

  “It smells delicious,” I remarked.

  “It is delicious,” Joshua offered, smiling proudly at, I was guessing, his wife.

  “Go get the girls, Joshua,” the woman said, beaming back at him. “Mrs Smith, please sit down.”

  “It’s Miss,” I said, catchi
ng myself before I said ‘doctor’. “Miss Smith,” I added, to hear how it sounded.

  Strangely, I didn’t mind it. The absence of ‘doctor’ said a lot as well.

  “Miss Smith,” the woman said softly. “I’m Catherine Drake. Matt’s mother.”

  Matt was the girls’ father. The one ‘working’.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, just as two small girls entered the kitchen behind Joshua.

  Their utter quiet stole all sound from the room. Not just the fact that they weren’t talking - I’d expected that - but because they also didn’t stomp as children so often do. Didn’t take up space by simply breathing loudly. Didn’t scrape the chairs or thump an elbow down on the table or sigh out loud.

  They were a void in the air. An empty hollow of space where something once had existed.

  I stared at them and felt a part of me crumble. These children needed help.

  “Hello,” I said, my voice neutral. “You must be Rachel and Dani.”

  Predictably, they said nothing.

  “This is Rachel,” Joshua started, placing a hand on the girl with slightly longer hair’s shoulder.

  I held my palm up to stall him. My eyes dragging off their emotionless faces to his startled one.

  “Don’t speak for them,” I said.

  “But they can’t speak for themselves,” Catherine argued; a little affronted, I think.

  “They don’t need to,” I reassured her. “Not yet, anyhow. But they do need to know they are expected to answer.”

  Catherine glanced toward Joshua. He had a hard look in his eyes.

  “Have you dealt with this sort of thing before, Miss Smith?” he asked.

  I met his eyes and let him see the confidence in mine. “Yes, Mr Drake. I have.”

  “And your qualifications?” he pressed.

  More than he knew. I reached into my handbag and pulled out the résumé the detectives had compiled. Heavy on education. Light on psychiatry. An exact opposite of my actual qualifications.

  “If I’m to do this,” I said softly, “I need to do this my way. You understand?”

  “Not really,” Catherine said from beside her husband. Beside the girls, too, I noted.

  It was me against them. A table between us. I suddenly wanted this to work. For them to trust me. Which was ironic, considering I was here under false pretences, sporting a false identity and false qualifications, as well.

  But I was not the wrong person for this job. Despite the lack of paediatric psychiatry to my credit, I did know a thing or two about post-traumatic stress.

  “Who else have you interviewed?” I asked, going with my gut.

  The adults looked uncomfortable. The children looked a million miles away, but I was betting they heard every word.

  “What are your options?” I pressed. I thought they had very few. In bumfuck Twizel.

  I needed them to know I was their best bet.

  “Nothing is more important than these girls,” I stressed. “Than allowing them to feel safe and nurtured, while addressing their illness.”

  “Illness?” Joshua demanded.

  “What would you call it, Mr Drake? A phase?” I asked.

  He shook his head. The movement looked uncertain.

  I glanced toward Rachel and Dani, their eyes downcast, their bodies immobile.

  “It’s called a mental illness,” I murmured. “A psychiatric disorder. It’s a name, not a label. It represents a behavioural or mental pattern that may cause suffering or a poor ability to function in life. It’s treatable,” I added. “I can treat it,” I promised, aware I might have been biting off more than I could chew.

  “By using tough love?” Joshua asked.

  “No,” I said gently. “By setting some boundaries. Making sure the girls are aware of certain expectations.”

  “They can’t talk,” Catherine argued.

  “From what their father said on the phone, there is no physical reason why not.”

  Both grandparents looked down at the girls.

  “Then why haven’t they yet?” Catherine asked, sadness lacing her tone.

  “That’s what I aim to find out, Mrs Drake,” I offered in return. “I can do this,” I said. “I’m very good at it in fact.”

  “And entirely too full of yourself,” a gruff voice said from over my shoulder.

  Chapter 4

  How Long’s A Piece Of String?

  Matt

  Damn it, I didn’t want to do this. I especially did not want to do this with an upstart JAFA. I had no idea if she was actually from Auckland, I think she mentioned Wellington on the phone. But Wellington, like Auckland, was in the North Island.

  And she was in my territory now.

  “Mr Drake?” she asked, moving to stand from her seat. I waved her back down and walked around the table, pressing a kiss to the head of both girls.

  “Matt,” I said. “If we’re to do this,” I added, using her turn of phrase, “then we do it my way. First name basis only.”

  She studied me for a long moment and then nodded her head. She had the most vibrant red hair I’d ever seen. Like a candle flame, flickering. It hung down her back in shiny waves. Bright blue eyes studied me out of a porcelain white face.

  She was a china doll and wouldn’t last five minutes in Mackenzie Country.

  “Bacon and egg?” I said, taking a seat at the head of the table.

  “Your favourite,” Mum offered, fussing over the girls’ plates like the mother hen that she was.

  “So,” I said, sitting back in my seat and studying the teacher in return. “You think you’re the right one for the job.” It wasn’t a question. But most people answer when challenged.

  She just smiled.

  Interesting.

  “Have you worked in someone’s home before?” I asked, nodding my head in thanks to Mum as she served up a portion of pie on my plate.

  “No,” she said, succinctly.

  “Does it bother you?” I asked, scooping salad out onto the side of the plate. “Driving out here every day?”

  “Does it bother you driving into town every day?”

  I smiled. Little doll had sharp teeth. I picked up the mayo and slathered my lettuce.

  The teacher watched my every move.

  “They’ve fallen behind a little in their studies,” I said, forking a bite of pie and shoving it in my mouth. I chewed, waiting for her to comment. She said nothing.

  I was getting a confused signal from this female. Was she or was she not interested?

  “They’re hard workers,” I added. “Love reading stories. I like them to be outside at least part of the day.”

  “And their special needs?” she asked. “What cognitive therapy are you currently doing?”

  “They visit a shrink once a month in Timaru,” I said between mouthfuls. “His instructions are to act as if there’s nothing wrong in their behaviour.”

  “Gareth Turner,” the teacher said. “I’m familiar with his approach.”

  I blinked. Was she now? Outstanding.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “What do you think you can bring to the equation?”

  She paused as if weighing her words carefully, and then something flashed in her eyes. Determination. That’s what it was. She had teeth, and she wanted to bite.

  “Naturally, I’ll focus on their studies,” she said. She was lying. “I’m particularly well versed in tailoring my approach to the individual needs of my students. I’ve dealt with PTSD before, Mr Drake.”

  “Matt,” I said, watching her lips as she talked.

  “Matt,” she said, and my mind stalled. “But,” she added, making me force my attention up to her eyes, “the girls need to know they are expected to talk.”

  Hold on just a god damn minute.

  “So, you think you know more than a psychiatrist?”

  She smiled. Her lips were thin, and the smile forced.

  “I think I can add an alternate perspective,” she said slowly.

  “We’ve managed OK with Turner’s approach.”

  “Have you?” She purposely looked at Rachel and Dani. “Girls,” she said. They both looked up at the sound of her authoritative voice. “Please bring me your workbooks.”

  “Which ones?” Mum asked. The teacher held up her palm to silence her.