Thornwood House Read Free

under a pile of clothes in a bottom drawer, then threw my damp suit into the washing basket. Dragging on soft jeans and an old T-shirt, I wandered out to the lounge room and stood gazing through the window.
    Silvery raindrops cascaded across neighbouring rooftops, making haloes around the streetlamps. Lights shone like beacons from nearby houses, but out over the bay the water was lost beneath a shroud of premature darkness.
    Drawing the curtains, I stood in the centre of the room, hugging my arms. Getting my head around Tony being gone. Wondering, for the millionth time, what had possessed him to load up a gun and end his life in such a violent way. Tony had been many things: a charming and wildly successful artist, a brilliant father to Bronwyn, a sufferer of nightmares . . . and in the end, a selfish two-timing bastard; but I’d never pegged him as a man who’d willingly devastate the people he cared about.
    I wandered out to the dining room. He was gone, I reminded myself. No amount of speculation was going to bring him back. And there was no point feeling abandoned by a man who’d already deserted me years ago. Even so, I could feel my old resentments creeping back. Bronwyn and I were about to be torn from our home, a home that Tony had promised would be ours as long as we wanted. He’d bought it in the early days, after a string of sell-out overseas exhibitions. Later, I hadn’t bothered to argue when he’d suggested it remain in his name. I was just glad tocontinue living in it rent-free. I’d been young, full of pride. Angry at Tony, and stubbornly opposed to feeling indebted to him.
    But now I ached . . . ached for my daughter and the grief she would carry with her for life. Ached for Tony, whose suffering must have run deep; and for Carol, whose world had revolved around him. Ached for my own selfish longings that sometimes whispered in lonely unguarded moments that perhaps – by a miraculous twist of fate – he might one day come back to me. And I ached with the burden of questions he’d left behind. Why had he rushed out that night, then driven for days to some little backwater? What had finally pushed him over the edge?
    Carol said she’d checked the paper, but had been too distraught to properly focus. I remembered that Tony had subscribed religiously to the Courier-Mail . He’d grown up outside Brisbane – one of the few morsels of background info I’d managed to prise from him – and had liked to stay abreast of Queensland news.
    I booted my laptop and went online.
    It took a while to sift through the search results for the Courier-Mail dated just before Tony’s death. Nothing leapt out. My neck started cramping from peering at the screen and I was about to log off, but as a last resort I punched in the name of the town where they’d found Tony’s body, ‘Magpie Creek’.
    A single search result filled the screen.
    DROUGHT SOLVES TWENTY-YEAR-OLD MYSTERY
    BRISBANE, Fri. – For most people, Australia’s current drought – called the worst in a thousand years – has been the cause of deep concern. For the small community of Magpie Creek in south-east Queensland, it has brought an unexpected solution to a mystery that has baffled the town for twenty years.
    On Wednesday last, a group of conservationists were taking water samples from the near-dry Lake Brigalow Dam, 24 kilometres from the town, when they discovered a vehiclesubmerged in the mud. Fire and Rescue Services retrieved the car, only to discover inside it the remains of a human body.
    Magpie Creek Police have linked the car to a local man who was reported missing by his family in November 1986. Positive identification of the remains will necessarily await the results of forensic examinations and post-mortem.
    I sat back and stared at the screen until my eyes blurred. Maybe I was clutching at straws, but I couldn’t help wondering. Had Tony known the missing man, been close to him? Had the man been a one-time friend, a