Page 150 of Serenity Falls

Sadie stares at him. ‘We can’t leave now.’

‘I thought you were the one who wanted to get away from here.’

‘We need to find out what’s going on.’

‘No. We don’t. Look, I’ll talk to Lockhart in the morning. Explain the situation. And I think you should let me take all this stuff to Jerry—’

She stares at him in alarm. ‘No. Dad – he’s obviously part of this, and I promised my friends I’d keep this stuff safe.’

Her dad rolls his eyes. ‘They’re not your friends, Sadie. They’re Ellis’s friends. You barely know them, and you certainly can’t trust everything they tell you. This is not our problem. We need to look out for ourselves here.’

Her cheeks burn. She feels tears brimming behind her eyes. ‘Is this what you were like when Mum disappeared? You just gave up?’

‘What?’

‘I mean, did you really care about finding her, or did you just run away?’

He shakes his head, eyes full of hurt. ‘That is not fair, Sadie.’

‘No? We moved after Mum left. We ran away to fucking Florida because of that shit with Decker and his dad. When do we actually stay and face things?’

‘That’s enough.’

‘I just—’

‘I said – enough!’ His voice is hard. He never snaps at her like that … and then she realizes. She can hear something, faint but distinctive: tinkling, slightly discordant chimes.

Their eyes meet. Her dad strides across the hall to the front door. He yanks it open. The sun is just dipping below the houses. Across the street, in the milky twilight, the ice-cream van sits, idling, playing another old but familiar tune: ‘Daydream Believer’.

The street is empty. No children running out eagerly for cones. The serving window is closed and blacked out.

‘What the fuck?’ her dad murmurs.

‘I told you,’ Sadie says.

‘Stay here.’

He walks down the front path, pausing halfway to pick up a couple of ornamental rocks from around a small palm. The van starts to pull off. Dad reaches the gate. ‘Hey!’

The van moves faster down the street. Dad jogs after it.

‘Hey!’

He throws a rock after the van. It bounces off the back. He launches a second rock, and this one hits the rear window, leaving a large spiderweb crack.

‘And don’t come back!’

The van turns the corner and disappears. Dad marches back up the street, dark hair dishevelled, Bermuda shorts flapping around his calves.

Sadie stares at him. ‘Did you just attack an ice-cream van?’

He blinks. ‘I think I did.’ He takes a deep breath, puts his hands on his hips ‘Fuck. I whacked a Mr Whippy.’

They look at each other. She starts to laugh. She can’t help it. Her dad smiles.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I shouldn’t have said—’

‘It’s okay.’ He runs a hand through his hair. ‘Look. I’ll make you a deal. Tomorrow morning I will talk to Father Miller.’