Cold Tomorrow

[34]

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

I wake in the morning, tired and confused. Under the light of day, the ghostly events of last night feel dreamlike and fantastical. But the message the ghost gave me remains, a swirling enigmatic remnant of the previous night.

I don't say anything about it to Katherine as we prepare for the day. It rests on the tip of my tongue but never quite manages to push its way past my lips. Instead I suggest we return to the original location of the missing farm.

Katherine looks up from packing her things to offer me a dubious stare.

"I just want to give it one more shot," I persist. "Just to be certain."

She purses her lips, considering. "I suppose that's fair. But afterwards I want to search further south. There's every chance we took a wrong turn on the way up." We both know that's not true, but nonetheless I agree, and we exit the minute motel room.

It's a surprisingly warm day for winter, warm enough that for the smallest of moments I forget I've swapped back; in a blink, I am transported back to a time of unfeeling, my old disease shrugging itself back onto my soul like a person donning a jacket. A second later, I return to the present.

At the bottom of the stairs, my gaze snags on the patio light which had been blinking furiously last night. It's been switched off now, and hangs dormant, refusing to share any of its secrets. I realise I'm subconsciously hoping for concrete proof that last night happened – some physical sign that it wasn't all a dream. But there's none to be found.

We pack up into the car and head back the way we came. The morning sun is covered in a thin, misty layer of clouds and the resulting light is white and muted, like the world itself is still tired, unwilling to subject itself to the harsh shadows and glary shine of morning. It makes the golden landscape almost illusory, as much a dream as last night, and suddenly the events of the past few weeks feel very, very distant.

After a good half hour, we return to the place we started yesterday afternoon. Again we're presented with empty hillside, no property or dirt road in sight.

Katherine pulls off onto the shoulder of the road and puts the car in park. "We'll take a look on foot. It could be behind one of these hills."

I nod in agreement, but secretly I know exactly where the property once was – and its absence is so painfully obvious that her suggestion strikes me as ridiculous.

The clouds have started to thin, and as I cross the tarmac road the sun beats down on us, heating me up like a microwave. I strip off my outer jacket and tie it around my waist. Even then the sunlight is still achingly hot, which makes the cold winter breezes all the more relieving.

We move across the field, our feet taking us to a home that's no longer there. With every step on golden grass, I grow more and more certain of our location. Memories start returning to me – times I ran up that hill or tripped by that pond – and with them, a deeply suppressed longing for this quiet open space.

We've been walking up a gradual incline for several hundred metres, but now we stop, both of us unable to take another step forward. Our bodies know the answer, even if our minds take a while to process it. Not five metres from the tips of our shoes, the front stairs once resided – and beyond that, a quaint wooden patio with white balustrades, a front door the colour of ochre, and a modest but still sizable home that held a family now torn apart.

"Maybe after you sold it, the later owners tore it down."

Katherine looks dead ahead at the ordinary dry grass, which offers not even a hint of what used to live here. "Michael never let us sell," she breathes.