Read Sliver Moon Bay: The Looking for Free Online

pooled on the threshold. It’s
confronting. It’s —
    Old Drake staggers
backwards.
    ‘You’re sick, son. You need
help.’ He takes himself off, limping down the path, in the wrong
direction, quite away from his property. He disappears round the
bend and soon the sound of him is gone too.
    ‘Don’t tell Mum you saw this.’
Chris turns away from me and walks away, White Sox hanging limply
from his hand like a thin piece of string, trailing its tail on the
ground, all the way to the garbage bin.
    I couldn’t stand to see any
more. I ran inside and slammed the door but I heard him anyway. He
takes the lid off the bin and throws White Sox in there. The bin is
empty cause White Sox hits the bottom and I can hear it. I hear it.
Kitty dead, Starling will say.
     
     

 
    13
     
     
    ‘Are you crazy, Lilian? We
can’t report this!’
    She mutters something. I can’t
hear what cause she’s whispering and there’s a whole lot of
elephants between me and their closed bedroom door. But Chris is
shouting.
    ‘No, Lilian! Don’t interfere!
I’ll deal with it in my own way!’
    —
    ‘You will do no such thing! Do
you understand?’
    —
    ‘I’m telling you I’ll deal with
him! Now leave it alone!’
     
     

 
    14
     
     
    The house goes quiet. The quiet
doesn’t help any; I lie awake half the night, long after they’ve
gone to bed. I’m thinking things are moving now, in the usual
direction, way too fast. But I like it here. Cuckoo Island feels
like home. It isn’t, but if we were to have a home, this would be
it. The town, the harbour, the forest, our beach and us. We fit in
here. I fit in here. As much as I am ever going to fit in anywhere.
I’ve survived 1156 days here so far and that has to mean
something.
    I liked Cuckoo Island right
from the beginning. I counted elephants on the first ride through
town and it took only two hundred and two elephants to get from one
end of Main Street to the other; and at two hundred and three the
houses disappeared and we were alone, on the deserted road, just
the four of us in the truck, gliding along like ghosts. Lilian was
very quiet, thoughtful and she kept looking at Chris like she
wasn’t sure what he got us into. It’ll be alright, love, Chris kept
saying, telling her all kinds of stuff, the usual, to keep her calm
and not too anxious but I could tell that she was scared. We did
not see a soul when we passed through town but it was early in the
morning, way too early for anybody to be about, and Lilian
understood this but still, I knew she would have preferred if she
saw somebody, anybody, even just peeking out from behind their
curtains. But the whole town was asleep and we came and went and
nobody knew.
    One thousand and forty three
elephants later the road stopped half way up this hill where the
trees and bushes so far quite scattered banded together to make a
forest which lasted for five hundred and twelve more elephants
before the cleared track stopped, right in front of our new house.
Chris parked the truck right there and we all just sat as we were,
for a bit, gathering ourselves. I remember it like it was
yesterday.
    So this is where, this is how.
Where we’re going to live and how it’s going to be, I’m thinking.
And it’s up to me to make the best of it.
    Chris gets out of the truck,
takes a picture. Of us, sitting inside, looking through the
windows. Lilian pulls a face. Starling breaks into a gummy smile.
She looks adorable in her bunny outfit, strapped into her baby
seat. I do nothing. It’s best if you ignore him; he’ll go away but
he won’t stop. He takes pictures of everything to do with us.
Houses we live in, places we visit, animals, birds, the landscape
and vehicles that pass by, people we see. He’s good at taking
pictures, has an eye for detail, especially when it comes to
people. He snaps them, without them knowing. How’s that for
sneaky?
    Chris puts his phone away. He’s
walking up to the front door. So it’s time to go see our