Two Wolves (10 page)

‘Apricots?' Mum asked, offering Ben an open tin of No Name fruit with a spoon in it.

Ben shook his head.

‘Cream?' Dad said.

Ben looked at his father and took the can of whipped cream, spraying some into the middle of a green plastic bowl.

They sat and ate quietly to the sound of Olive sleep-breathing and the wild noises from outside.

‘What's wrong with you?' Dad asked.

‘Cat got your tongue?' Mum said.

Ben felt as though he had been transported into an alternative universe. How could they be talking about apricots and cream and cats' tongues, knowing what they knew, what Ben now knew?

Mum had come out of the cabin soon after Ben discovered the news article. He had thrown the phone back into the dash compartment and moved quickly to meet her halfway across the clearing, trying to stop her from seeing the smashed window.

‘Come back to the cabin. Have some dessert, get some sleep. We're going in a few hours,' she had said. So Ben, guilty, mind roaring, floated back to the cabin.

‘Are you over your little performance now?' Dad asked, serving himself another bowl of spray cream. ‘Storming off to the car like a three-year-old.'

Ben tasted a small spoonful of cream. It felt thick in his throat. He rested the spoon back on the table.

‘It'll work out,' Dad said.

‘Maybe we'll go somewhere with a pool. And room service,' Mum added.

Ben stared at her, the pores of her skin, that terrible selfie haircut. He almost didn't recognise his own mother. It's a weird day when you realise that your parents aren't who you think they are. Ben wondered if there would come a time when he realised that he, himself, was not who he thought he was, that he was someone totally different. Someone capable of doing what his parents had done.

Bank Error in Your Favour.
That's what the news headline had said on Mum's phone. Then the story . . .
bank mistakenly deposited the funds into Silver's account
 . . .
Silver transferred the money.

‘I'd like to tell Ben where we're going,' Mum said.

Dad looked at her, small trickles of cream gathering at the corners of his mouth. ‘It's a surprise,' he said, straight-faced. Something caught his eye and he tipped his head to the right, looking out the window and up the hill.

‘What?' Mum asked, alert.

‘Nothing.' But Dad continued to look as they waited, holding their breath. ‘It's nothing,' he said, finally, turning back to his dessert. He took the last scoop and stood, dumping the bowl in the plastic wash tub, then looked in the esky. He searched around as Mum and Ben sat quietly, looking at each other.

‘Who ate my chocolate?' he asked, looking up at Ben. ‘Did you?'

Ben nodded. He wasn't scared any more.

‘Why did you do that?'

Ben did not answer.

‘You can clean up the dishes, chuck them into that garbage bag. And you can replace my chocolate when we get to a shop,' Dad said. ‘I should be able to trust you.' He stood and gave Ben a little whack on the back of the head.

Offshore account
 . . . Ben remembered what the article had said . . .
Ray and April Silver
 . . .
police asking for witnesses.
He had read this before he had thrown the phone back into the empty cavity on the dashboard.
Offshore.
Overseas.

‘
Let's go,' Dad said. ‘Ben, clean up. Now.'

Ben gathered the plates together and his mind crunched through the contents of the article.
One fragment of a line turned over and over in his mind more than any other.

. . .
$7.2 million
 . . .

He couldn't get that number out of his head. Seven point two million dollars. The amount they had stolen.
Offshore account
– where the rest of the money must be.

‘Seven point two million dollars.' He said the words as he threw the plates into the bag. Not loud, but loud enough for them to hear.

Mum and Dad stopped what they were doing.

‘What'd you just say?'

‘I said . . . seven point two million dollars,' Ben repeated.

Dad flew across the room and grabbed him by the neck of his t-shirt, pressing him against the rough log wall.

‘You're a real little smart alec,' he said into Ben's face, too close to focus.

‘Ray!' Mum barked.

‘Why did you do it?' Ben asked. ‘Why didn't you tell us? Are you going to give it back?'

‘Shut up,' Dad said, stabbing a finger at him. ‘Don't say another word. No more questions.'

Ben wanted to ask another question so bad. He didn't even know what he wanted to ask but he still wanted to ask it. Dad pressed him harder into the wall. Ben heard the cotton stitching on his t-shirt tear. Dad maintained his grip, staring into Ben's face for the longest time. His watery eyes seemed to swim with a thousand disturbing thoughts.

But Ben said nothing.

‘Useless. Come back when you're a man.' Dad released his grip and walked out of the cabin, shouting into the night like a crazed beast.

‘Everything will be okay. I promise,' Mum whispered. She was running her fingers through Ben's hair, tears falling hot and heavy down her cheeks.

Ben was tucked in bed, eyes closed but wide awake, fully clothed. It was after midnight. Dad snored. Olive made sweet thumb-sucking sounds from time to time. Mum sat on the edge of Ben's air mattress. Ben wanted to open his eyes and tell her about the hole that he had sawed, ask her to come with him, but she would stop him. He knew that. There was no way she would let him run alone. Her tears fell on his face when she pressed close.

‘It'll be good when we leave here. It was a mistake to come. We'll go someplace better. I promise.'

Ben listened.

‘Things will be different from now on but we need to stick together.'

Stick together.

‘You must trust me, okay?' Mum whispered into the darkness. ‘It'll be all good.'

Trust.

‘Why are you doing this?' Ben asked.

She was silent for a long time. Then she said, ‘It's like having a Lotto ticket where you know you can't lose. But you know you can't win either. I don't know what else to do.'

‘Yes, you do. Don't listen to him. Listen to yourself.'

She cried in short, painful sobs that shook Ben's air mattress. ‘I don't think I know how.'

Ben turned over, away from her. It felt like a terrible thing to do but he had heard enough. His decision was made.

Soon she stopped stroking his hair. She stood awkwardly, stumbling, almost falling on him. She lay down on her own bed.

Someplace better.

Trust me.

It'll be all good.

Ben didn't like it when people said ‘it's all good'. People only said it when things were not good at all.

$7.2 million.

You could do a lot with seven million dollars. You could buy lots of stuff. Maybe they would buy him whatever he wanted, to keep him quiet.
Offshore account.
That's what the article had said. Wherever the offshore account was, that was where they were going, Ben was certain. He didn't want to go anywhere. Only home. Maybe they would live in Switzerland. Or the Cayman Islands. In movies, wasn't that where people hid money that wasn't theirs? . . .
Mistakenly deposited the funds
 . . . If the bank put it into their account by accident, even though Mum and Dad transferred it out, wasn't it theirs? Didn't it belong to them now?
Wasn't that just bad luck for the bank? Finders keepers. Maybe Ben's parents could keep it. Was Ben a millionaire? Technically, he was. Could life on the run with millions of dollars be good?

Maybe.

Sure.

Yes.

But if your parents were criminals, did that mean that you were more likely to become a criminal too?

What would Sam Gribley do? The kid in the book. Sam Gribley would run into the mountains and live in a hollowed-out tree and survive off the land. Sam Gribley would eat tubers and weird berries and make a fishing hook out of a twig and train a falcon. Ben wanted to do these things too. Even though he didn't know what a tuber was. Sam Gribley would do what was right, Ben was sure of it. Sam Gribley would run.

And that is what Ben would do. He would do what was right. He would run, and he would tell someone what he knew. He didn't want to leave Mum but she had made this choice, not him. The choice to take the money. And Dad. They chose this.

His decision made him feel sick. His breathing was tight, measured, silent. He waited like this in the darkness, every muscle tensed. Fifteen or twenty minutes passed.

If he was going to get away it needed to be soon. Before Dad woke up and made them get in the car. Dad was a faster runner than him. He had leg-length. He could take Ben down like a wolf chasing a rabbit. Eat him alive. Black and crispy on the outside, raw in the middle.

Ben could hear his mother sleep-breathing now, deep and slow. Dad began to snore again. This was his chance. He carefully, quietly peeled back the sleeping bag. He tried to mould it into a human shape, which might buy him a few precious moments if they woke.

Ben rolled off the end of his bed and reached around to pick up a small bag of snacks and water that he had hidden behind the metal trunk. The bag rustled. He got up on his knees and looked at it in the soft light from the moon. Plastic. How could he have been so stupid? Ben looked over at the mattress with the two sleeping lumps. And to Olive's bed next to his.

Olive.

He couldn't take her with him. It would be dangerous.

But leaving her behind could be too. Ben's parents were wanted criminals.

She looked so innocent, her face calm and open. Ben felt bad for all the horrible things he had ever done to her. He wished he had been more kind. But he would leave her. He couldn't take care of her. And he could not face telling her the very bad thing that their parents had done. They would have to tell her.

He reached down for the plastic bag of food with both hands. It hissed at him. Ben prayed for it to be quiet but it crinkled with every move, a burglar alarm that he had set himself.

Ben let go of the bag, thinking. He could leave it here but he was already hungry. He could open the bag and remove the contents and pocket them. That's what he would do. He carefully peeled the bag open but every tiny rustle sounded like an explosion. When the bag was halfway open Dad's snoring halted. Ben stopped. He heard a guttural throat sound, like a plughole letting out a small amount of water, then two snorts and a rollover.

Ben was going to have to leave it. His stomach stirred and groaned deep down but he couldn't risk everything on a few scraps of food. He stood and a floorboard creaked. Why had he not noticed that sound in the day?

Pale moonlight rubbed the edge off the darkness. He could see vague shapes of things – the shadow of the workbench, the table, the cupboard at the back, always hanging open. Ben was sure that something was watching him from that cupboard but there was no time for fear.

He took a step back. Another board creaked and Mum made a sound. He waited, mid-step, one foot in the air, balanced, too scared to lay the foot down. Three minutes on one foot. He felt like one of his own clay stop-motion figures, waiting for someone to take a still frame and move his leg. He wondered if this was the longest that anybody had ever balanced on one leg. Ben felt great compassion and admiration for seagulls. Eventually he dared lower his foot. Silently.

He bent down and tried to lift the metal chest that covered his hole. It felt heavier in the dark. His right hand squealed with pain from the sawing he had done. His shoulder ached. Ben squeezed his fingers beneath the green metal chest and lifted one end of it a few centimetres off the ground, then swung it aside. He put the chest down but the tip of one finger was jammed underneath – his left pinkie. It pinched him so hard he had to let out a quiet, breathy scream, then he grabbed the handle on the side of the chest and lifted, releasing the trapped finger. The trunk banged to the floor.

Mum sat up straight in bed. Ben lay low. His blood stopped flowing.