The Serpent's Skin by Erina Reddan (top 5 books to read .txt) 📕

keeping a firm boot on the back of the red, keeping it down.

He dropped papers on the bench I’d just cleared. I buttoned my lips against the violation. He headed for the laundry.

‘Working you hard?’ he asked.

‘Pays the bills.’

‘Reckon it might.’ He came out of the laundry and threw the towel on the back of the chair beside him as he sat.

‘What’s this, then?’ He jerked his head at the photo.

‘Keeping her to yourself,’ I said.

‘Only found it a while back.’

‘Why didn’t you show us? You know we don’t have photos of her.’

‘JJ.’ His voice strained, he dropped his fist helplessly to the table. ‘You’re never here to show it to.’

‘Tessa seen it?’

‘Always pushing.’

‘Has she?’

‘Might have.’ He raised his voice.

‘If she happened to be cleaning up in that particular drawer, you mean?’

‘So now that’s wrong, too, is it?’ He took a sip of tea. Straightened. ‘Your mother’s dead. A man needs somebody to tidy up a bit and your sister is kind enough to do it. It’s none of your bleedin business.’

‘A man?’

‘I look up to women.’ His voice was weedy with emotion and crescendoing. ‘Put them on a pedestal where they belong. That’s one thing you bloody feminists make sure you miss.’

I lifted that firm boot and the red was back on its feet in a second. ‘Do they skin their knees getting down off that pedestal to clean up after you?’

‘Get out of here.’ He flung his hand toward the door, but only half-hearted. ‘You’re no good unless you’re making trouble.’

I folded my arms on the table, my eyes daring him.

He sipped at his tea, his eyes out through the window and on all that dry out there.

I sipped from the teacup, reminding myself what I was there to do. I followed the lines deepening into craters in his face. I let the clock do more of its work.

‘Peg’s funeral was good,’ I said. ‘People asked after you.’

‘Many there?’ He uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way.

‘More than I thought there would be.’

‘Nosy Nancy?’

‘Yep. Mrs Nolan did the eulogy.’

He took another sip. Cleared his throat. Rubbed his face. The sandpaper rough of it competed with the clock.

‘That so?’ His voice wary.

‘Funny how people are at funerals,’ I said. ‘Everything rosy.’

‘What’d she say?’

‘Said Peg was a great dancer.’

‘So she was.’

‘Mrs Nolan said you cut a dash yourself.’

‘When I was young,’ he said, like it was a peace offering. ‘I hear she wants to talk to you. Did she?’

‘What does she want?’

‘How would I know? I don’t give her the time of day.’ He pursed his lips. ‘So she didn’t speak to you, then?’

‘Like father like daughter. Doesn’t get the time of day from me, either.’

A small, satisfied almost smile flashed up on his face for a microsecond. ‘What else was said at the funeral?’

‘She said Mum and Aunty Peg called themselves Arthur and Martha they were that close.’

He clammed straight up, realising his mistake in leaving the gate open for me. I jammed up a piece of bread for him and poured cream on top. I pushed it in his direction. He was only pretending to look through that window. I should have remembered the thing he did with silence, building sharp corners in it so there was no seeing around them. I should have been prepared.

He wolfed down the bread just like when we were kids. His thick farmer fingers rough with calluses. There was fresh blood on his knuckle. I frowned.

He followed my look. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘Did Tessa tell you she’s decided to go through all the stuff at Aunty Peg’s with a fine-tooth comb?’

He sat up, a charge in the air.

‘Yep,’ I said. ‘She changed her mind when Mrs Tyler said Aunty Peg didn’t just hoard, she “collected”.’

‘Bloody waste of time.’ It blasted out of him and even he seemed surprised by the force. ‘Find anything?’ he asked in a voice he’d deliberately cranked down a gear.

‘Not the treasure Tessa was hoping for yet,’ I said, moving slowly into position. I tapped the table. ‘Did find a calendar.’

He barked out a laugh. ‘Plenty of them over at Mad Peg’s.’

‘Dated 26 June, 1968.’

A look slid out from the corner of his eyes at me before he could stop it. ‘Would have been hard for you,’ he said. ‘Taking you back.’ He scratched at his head and bit off another wolf-chunk of his jammed-up bread.

‘Not hard, more…’

‘Got another cuppa there, love?’ He was quick to fill my slight pause.

I poured hot water into his mug.

‘Needs to be boiled again first.’

‘So they tell me.’ I kept pouring.

He grunted, shook his head in disgust and stirred the teabag.

‘You told the truth,’ I said. ‘Mum did go to Peg’s that day.’

His look was all out in the open this time. He got himself forwards to the table, pulled another slice of white bead from the plastic and knifed the jam right to the crust. ‘How’d you finally work that one out?’

‘On the calendar.’

‘There you are, then. All these years of bellyaching and you’ve finally got the proof your old man was on the up and up.’

‘I’ve never said a word since Mum’s funeral.’ I could hear the whine in my protest.

‘You didn’t have to.’ He gave me the ghost of a smile, one like he used to give me back before Mum died. ‘Put it behind us, then? Hey?’ He shoved the crust in past his teeth, chewing and nodding. Then he sat back, relax running along his muscles as he hummed a tune I didn’t know.

‘Funny thing, though.’

He stopped humming.

‘You also lied.’

The stillness in him shivered like it was the black of night and there was a spotlight dead on him.

‘She went to Peg’s all right, but she didn’t stay. She was there for exactly twenty-five-and-a-half minutes,’ I said. ‘Where did she get to after that, Dad?’

‘Not this again, JJ.’ He ramrodded straight. ‘How the hell did you come up with twenty-five minutes?’

I worked hard not to react. ‘The calendar.’

‘You can’t rely on that bloody thing.’

‘I’m not relying, that’s