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“So, Theo hasn’t been back here?” Mac asked as Gus bristled.
Athol looked sharply at Gus. “Doesn’t he know—what happened here? Why you stabbed that lowlife?”
“Yes, I do,” Mac interjected firmly, lest Athol feel the need to go into detail.
“Then you’d have to know this is the last place Theodosia would want to revisit.” Athol became agitated. “We failed her. We let a monster live among us, and he stole her light.”
Maura grabbed his hand. “Athol, we didn’t know.”
“We tended his wounds,” Athol spat. “We saved his life.”
“What else could we do?”
“We should have let him bleed to death!” The old man was shaking now.
Mac placed his hand on Gus’s shoulder. “We should go.”
Gus nodded. He handed Athol a card. “If she does come back here, would you call me somehow? You can reverse the charges.”
“We have no need of phones, Augustus. You know that.”
Gus reached inside his jacket and extracted a mobile phone complete with charger. One of Mac’s burners. “My number is already programmed into this. All you have to do is call. If Theo turns up, for fuck’s sake, call! You owe us that.”
“They seem to have no idea about what happened in Lawrence,” Mac observed as they pulled away from Harmony. The Australian connection to the Lawrence murders had been splashed across Australian papers.
“They wouldn’t. They don’t use phones or computers; they don’t even buy the paper. They’d only know if someone told them, and they don’t really encourage talk of the outside world and its troubles in the community.”
“Geez…”
“Don’t get me wrong, Mac. We were like pigs in mud here before Jacob Curtis… It was a kind of idyllic Little-House-on-the-Prairie existence. A little boring, but aside from that, we weren’t unhappy.”
“Do you think Theo would come back here?”
“No.”
“Do you think they would call if she did?”
Gus thought about that. He sighed. “I don’t know. They’d probably do what Theo wanted.”
Mac frowned. “What if they use that phone to call the police instead?”
“That, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t do.” He rubbed his shoulder. “It’s not the way Harmony handles things.”
They talked a bit after that. About Harmony, Gus’s exile to the U.S., life, and reformation under the rule of his grandfather.
“Mum and Dad kept telling me Theo was fine, that she’d forgotten what happened… I wanted to believe it, I guess.” Gus shrugged. “I came back when she graduated from that school they packed her off to, and she seemed fine. A little shy, a little dreamy, but fine…happy. Looking forward to university and law school.” He laughed. “Poor bloody kid—all those rich princesses in high-end formal gowns, and Theo in some hideous frock Mum had made and dyed with onion skin and rhubarb.”
“And she never mentioned what had happened at Harmony?” Mac asked.
“Not then. I take her back to New York with me for the summer—buy her some decent clothes, take her to a couple of shows. She was fun. A normal, slightly naïve eighteen-year-old. An old soul in some ways, innocent in others.” Gus paused. “I remember feeling relieved. We only have one fight, just before she returns to Australia.” He shook his head as he remembered. “We’re out one night, and some loser hits on her. I tell him to take a hike. Theo’s furious.”
“She liked him?”
“No—I think she just wanted to tell him to buzz off herself. She said I was treating her like a child, like she was damaged. It was the closest we ever came to talking about Jacob Curtis. I knew then that she hadn’t forgotten anything, and that maybe she’s right. That she might just be stronger and more resilient than I think…than I was. So when she comes to Lawrence, I am so determined not to be overprotective, not to treat like she’s a child…” He paused to curse. “I should have paid more attention to her relationship with Murdoch… I should have known—”
“How could you have known, Gus? And, to be fair, he didn’t hurt her in any way…”
“He was old.”
