Page 11 of Bay of Plenty

“You changed mybedroom?” I acted nonchalant but grasped at the kitchen island where Mum was chopping veggies.

The navy-blue open-plan interior of my childhood home was unchanged—except for the addition of their little black-and-white dog, Fred, who was snoozing on the sofa. So, I expected to see my bedroom still bursting with thumbed-through books, stacks of diaries, and old toys. Instead, I was greeted with white emptiness yawning around a double bed and matching nightstands.

Mum looked up and smiled. “Didn’t Snow do a great job on the remodel? He wanted it open and fresh like that. We’d almost forgotten about the view to the garden because you loved being in there all day with the curtains drawn.”

“Ididn’tlove being in there all day,” I spluttered without thinking. Also,Snow?What? “But it was the only safe place away from those girls.”

“What girls? What do you mean?”

What girls?She really hadn’t noticed anything back then. Didn’t question why I’d hidden in my darkened bedroom day after day. To be fair, I’d hidden the bullying from my parents,ashamed. They’d probably seen me as sullen and withdrawn… but was that any different from other teenagers?

It was too late to have this conversation. It wouldn’t help anything. I shook my head as if I’d misspoken and reached down to pet Fred, who’d woken up. “B-but why was Snow doing up my bedroom?”

Slow as a time-lapse photo, she rinsed her bowl under the tap.

“Snow lived with us that year you left for London. Or maybe it was two years. Anyway.” She scraped the veggies into the bowl. I had been nineteen, so that meant Snow would have been twenty-three. “His father chucked him out. His dad had been beating him all his life, and if we’d known that, we’d have taken him in much earlier. You could tell he’d never had a proper family, never been supported in any way. Snow did up your bedroom to earn his keep.”

That was how they’d gotten to know him and why they were so close. The thought pulled at my gut like a spiked hook.

Mum asked me to set the table on the back deck. Laying the cutlery in place, I thought about what she’d said, that Snow had been beaten by his father. Awful, and it might explain why he was a bully. But still, it didn’t excuse what he’d done to me, or that he’d never apologized.

The scent of salt spray and lemonwood blossoms turned sour in my throat. Like he never admitted he was the last to see Janey alive. He’d been eighteen when that happened, and he could have been tried as a legal adult.

From the deck I watched Mum at the kitchen island, her head stiff, her shoulders tensed. Her body language told me I needed to change tactics.

I joined her in the kitchen, and my hand touched hers as she scrubbed out the sink.

“Mum, that’s terrible about Snow. I’m so sad to hear that. I… well, you and Dad never mentioned it, so you can understand why I was so shocked to see him today. To know that he’d changed my old room…”

She looked up at me with grateful eyes.

“Yes. We haven’t mentioned him, and at times that hasn’t felt right, but we knew you didn’t like him.”

My torso seized. But I didn’t react to that. I knew I couldn’t.

“It must have meant so much to Snow to finally have a stable home,” I said, easing into it. “And that you helped him with the winery, especially since he knows you guys don’t have a lot of money.”

Flicking off the tap, she snatched a tea towel from the drawer. “Money wasn’t an issue.” Chin up, she dried her hands. “We did a reverse mortgage on the house.”

“What? No, no, no.” My pulse racing, I grabbed her arm. “Mum, you realize you could lose your home if he decides not to pay you back. You’ll be penniless with nowhere to live. Believe me, I’ve done loads of stories on this.”

Her arm stiffened under my hand, and the air in the room shifted. I’d been able to strategize my interviews in London because I kept my emotions out of it. Back here, I let resentment and shame trip me up.

“No fear of that.” Mum snapped the tea towel over her shoulder. “He makes the payments, good as gold.”

“Mum, don’t you see?” I shot forward. “I’m worried about you.” My mind twisted and torqued, conflicted. It was so hard not to look her straight in the eye and say, “Mum, the police are asking questions. What are you and Dad involvedin?” But I was worried about tipping off my parents, who would tip off Snow.

She glared through the window at the umbrellas cracking shut on the beach. “No need for you to worry. Snow has it under control.”

My fists trembled at her naivete, accepting Snow’s word for something so important.

In London, hundreds of thousands of readers had considered me an expert on financial products like this.Hadconsidered. Past tense. How did they think of me after my last story? Their expert, their advocate, who had crashed and burned? Maybe that had even affected Mum and Dad’s decision.

Mum pressed her lips into a tight, hard line. “The girls are arriving in thirty minutes.”

I returned to my room and calmed myself with a shower, changing into a black linen dress, and adding red lipstick to lift my pale skin and dark hair.

“Black?” Mum said when I reappeared on the back deck.

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