Page 184 of Serenity Falls

I don’t add, too late.

‘Yeah. Well, that’s no comfort to Millie. She’s heartbroken. And that’s not what I wanted for her.’

‘What did you want?’

‘I wanted her to die happy. Like she lived her whole life here. I didn’t want her dream to be shattered. And now it is.’

‘It doesn’t change the life she’s had here. The life she’s had here with you. That’s still real.’

‘Is it, though? You know what she asked me last night? “Did you know, Jerry? How could you not know?” I couldn’t answer her, and I saw the disappointment in her eyes. I just wanted a few more months so I wouldn’t have to see that.’

I felt like telling him that maybe he needed to see it. Maybe he should go take another look at Chris and his family, who were hauled out of the lake in their shiny SUV with their bags all packed in the trunk and neat bullet holes in their foreheads. Because they were a liability.

Or maybe he should look at the piles of yellowed bones still to be identified. People who asked too many questions, who didn’t fit in, who weren’t perfect enough. Innocent people left to rot down there.

But I don’t. Because Jerry knows. He has to live with it. He just didn’t want his wife to die with the knowledge. I get it. We protect those we love. But we protect ourselves too. Like Jerry says, we don’t want to see the disappointment in their eyes. We keep our secrets because we don’t want to lose their love.

It’s why I’ll never be able to tell Sadie about her mum. I suppose it’s also why my mum didn’t tell me about Harold or this place. She didn’t want me to know she’d betrayed Dad; didn’t want me to know that she was the reason he left.

But I also wonder if there was another reason. She knew too much about this place. After all, she worked at the club where Harold and his cronies met. Where, perhaps over whiskies and fat cigars, Harold espoused his plans for Serenity Falls and talked about his arks and the Flood.

The question is what do I do with that knowledge? Serenity might be finished in many ways: the Hub shut down, the Conservators arrested, but if Harold was telling the truth, the Flood is still coming and it’s only a matter of time before something sweeps the globe like the dark, angry waters of the Old Testament and wipes the slate – the ‘slate’ being us, humanity – clean for a fresh go-around.

I’ve been thinking about that. A lot.

Sadie seems to have been thinking a lot too. She’s been subdued, which perhaps isn’t so unusual given everything that has happened. But I would have expected some kind of outburst by now. Some release of the pressure valve. It obviously doesn’t help that we’re still living in the house in Serenity Falls until the final legal documents come through, which means we’re stuck in a kind of limbo.

I tell myself things will be better when we can get away from this place. Like a lot of things I tell myself, I’m not sure it’s true.

A few nights after the salvage teams haul the last of the cars out of the lake, I’m sitting downstairs, drinking coffee and reading an old paperback, when Sadie mooches into the kitchen.

‘Hey.’

‘Hey?’

She grabs a drink out of the fridge and sits down opposite me at the breakfast bar.

‘How’s it going?’ I ask.

She fiddles with the ring pull on her can. ‘D’you think you should always tell people the truth?’

I put my book down. ‘Whoah, that’s a heavy one. I mean, the answer should be yes.’

‘But?’ She looks at me quizzically.

‘But if telling the truth will hurt them or make their life worse, do they really need to know? Are you just telling them to make yourself feel better?’

‘But what if they should know.’

‘Well, that’s not always your call to make.’

I feel my stomach twisting and turning. Is this about Nat? It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask, when she says: ‘Davey went to see Father Miller today.’

‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it? Miller knew his mom, and he saved Davey’s life.’

‘I guess.’

‘But?’