Filed To Story: Wild Dark Shore Book PDF Free by Charlotte McConaghy
“For when we go back. It’s the diversity of the vegetation,” he explains. “The
Lomatia tasmanica is a clone plant that only propagates by dropping branches and creating genetically identical plants, and it’s been doing this for forty-three thousand and six hundred years.”
I stare at him. “So?”
“Don’t you want to live near that? It’s incredible!”
I can’t help laughing. “Yeah, sure. Wherever you want, mate.”
“There’s loads more interesting things, too. The mountain ash is one of the world’s tallest trees. There are forests of seaweeds in the reefs. Heathlands and moors, ancient rainforests-“
“I believe you,” I tell him. My eyes are on Rowan. She’s not listening, she’s worrying about something, and her face is cold like I’ve never seen it.
She stands abruptly. “Going for a walk.”
“Where?” I ask.
She gives me this look like it’s none of your damn business, which it’s not, only it makes me nervous, her roaming around the island.
“Can I come?” Orly asks her.
She shrugs, heads off.
Orly looks at me for permission. I nod, because if he goes with her then he can report back later, and I do feel guilty about turning my child into a spy, but he’s happy, he bounds off after her.
Raff and I sit quietly, finishing our breakfast. He is on his third bowl of cereal, a bottomless pit. I remember that feeling. An aching hole you could never fill no matter how much you ate.
He looks at me. “Are we really not gonna tell her?”
I don’t know what to say. He has such a leveling gaze. A dismantling one.
“There’s bad, and then there’s bad,” he says. “I think not telling her is
bad.”
“We don’t know her,” I say simply. “We don’t know what she might do.” Or what kind of threat she could become.
I run my fingers over the smooth finish of the tabletop. It feels like silk. The hours she must have spent to transform the rough, chipped timber into
this
… I am breathless anew, as I am each time I walk into this room and see this work of art sitting so casually in our old kitchen. I’m a handyman, I slap things together, bash in a few nails, hope they hold. Rowan is a craftswoman. And it’s true, we don’t know her, but there is surely a clue in this table to the truth of her.
Raff finishes his breakfast by drinking the remaining milk straight from the bowl. I should tell him it’s bad manners but I don’t have the energy.
He says, “Maybe we’d better get to know her then,” and he is right; he is much cleverer than I am.
Rowan
I have an idea, based on the fact that there’s a lab at the base. When you have watched a million hours of TV you know what luminol is. I
don’t know if there’s likely to be any in this remote lab but I’m hoping the attitude to stocking it was the same as for the warehouse: prepare for anything.
Orly chats while we walk, babbling on about the plants in Tasmania, while I stay focused. Try to stay focused. I must be cold. Because if I am right, there can be no more of this chat, no more laughter. I can’t enjoy his knowledge or his passion, his sweetness, his tiny hands, I can’t enjoy him. I can’t be warmed by Fen’s open smile or her courage or her freckles. I can’t feel worried about Raff’s temper or moved by his violin. I can’t think about the salt on Dom’s neck or the way his beard might feel against my cheek or his secret gruff kindness or the way he loves lighthouses. I can’t do any of that anyway-I have always prided myself on being loyal. But if I’m right about them having caused harm to my husband, then I really can’t do any of it.
I feel quite sick as we walk, actually, and the pain seems to have returned to my body.
“Are you okay?” Orly asks on a rare break from his litany. I think maybe he is anxious about something and it’s why he can’t stop talking.
I nod, but my teeth are gritted.
“Are you gonna leave?” he asks me suddenly.
The question annoys me. “How am I meant to do that, Orly?”
“But would you, if you could?”
I look at him, wondering if he’s lost his mind. “Yes. Of course.”
“Oh.” His eyes drop to the ground as he walks.
Don’t console him, I tell myself. Don’t explain it or make excuses. It will be easier on him in the end if he doesn’t start to hope.
I try to figure out how to ask him something without scaring him. I shouldn’t be asking him anything, he’s nine years old and there’s that common sense to be remembering, I ask anyway, I’m desperate. “Hey, you know how your dad and Hank didn’t get along?”
“Yes they did.”
“You told me they didn’t. That Dom saw through him, remember?”
“Oh, well. Yeah. But Dad doesn’t really make friends.”
“Okay.” I try to reframe my question. I get the feeling he’s been told not to talk to me about any of this. “Do you think your dad might have been angry with Hank, for any reason?”
There is a look of genuine panic on his face. “No, why?”
“Is your dad an angry man?”
Orly stops walking. “Why are you asking that?”