The Parable of the Mustard Seed Read online

  “Big party in Timor Avenue tonight,” Liz said. “It’s all over Facebook.”

  “Great.” John frowned. “Timor runs off Bryant, right?”

  “Yep.”

  Nice and close to the Hyperdome shopping centre. The party would be overrun with gatecrashing teens full of alcohol and wanting to fight.

  “The uniforms are keeping an eye on it,” Liz said. She checked her text messages, her face illuminated by the screen. “Craig says it’s no problem now, but there are about seventy kids there already.”

  John hoped to hell that Jess was still at David’s, and hadn’t sneaked out.

  “Is Harry with Craig’s parents?”

  “Yeah. I thought one benefit of being an acting senior sergeant would be fewer night shifts. More fool me.”

  “The money’s alright though.” John’s attention was caught by a group of four kids wandering along the road—hoodies, baggy shorts and backpacks.

  “Our first customers of the night,” Liz said, brightening.

  John pulled the car over to the side of the road and watched the kids approaching in the rear-view mirror. It was hard to tell in the darkness, but he thought he recognised one of the faces.

  They got out of the car.

  “Reggie!” John called out as the kids began to veer away. “Reggie, get over here.”

  The boys exchanged glances.

  “Reggie Noble,” John said. “You still living at your uncle’s place?”

  The boy in question sighed, rolled his eyes, and walked toward them. His friends followed, muttering.

  “What’s in the backpack, Reggie?” John asked, pulling on some gloves.

  Reggie scowled and handed it over.

  A bottle of Bundaberg Rum, and another of vodka. An iPod, and —bingo!—a screwdriver.

  “What’s this for?” John held it up.

  Reggie mumbled something.

  “Where’d you get the iPod?”

  “Some kid.”

  “Some kid? Some pretty generous kid, hey?”

  Reggie shuffled his feet and shrugged his skinny shoulders.

  “Did he give you the alcohol as well?” The seals on the bottles were already cracked. John unscrewed the lid of the rum and turned the bottle up. Rum poured out onto the road.

  “Fuck, man!” Reggie said. “That was for the party!”

  John did the same with the vodka, all four boys groaning in disappointment.

  “Uncool, man, uncool!”

  Fourteen years old, and they thought they could drink alcohol straight from the bottle. Not that any of them would be thanking John for saving them from alcohol poisoning—not once the other boys’ backpacks turned up a pretty good collection of house breaking tools, a set of car keys that belonged to an Audi, and an iPhone in a glittery pink case.

  “Either you can tell us where you’ve broken in,” Liz told the scrawny little redhead who’d been carrying the phone, “because you know we’ll find out in a few hours anyway, or you can stick to the story that this pink sparkly Barbie phone is yours.”

  The boy blustered for a second, then wilted under Liz’s scrutiny and gave them the street name.

  John kept an eye on the boys while Liz called for a van to transport them all back to the station. He checked his watch. It was just past eleven, and they’d already made four arrests.

  That was okay. The busy nights went the fastest.

  It took two hours to get the four boys processed. A uniform crew took the complaint for the break and enter, leaving John and Liz to deal with the boys. All of them except Reggie were released into the custody of their parents. Reggie’s uncle wasn’t answering his phone. In the end they drove to his address, pounded on the door until he woke up, and told him to get to the station to collect his nephew.

  “So, Jess has run away again,” John said as they were driving away from the address. “She’s at David’s.”

  “You mother must be pretty upset.”

  “Yeah.” John sighed. “She’s probably still up, worrying.”

  Liz looked at him for a moment, then she smiled. “Does she still make that slice with coconut on the top?”

  John couldn’t stop his smile. “That won’t help you get your pre-pregnancy body back, will it?”

  “Fuck you,” Liz said, jabbing a finger into her belly. “This is my pre-pregnancy body.”

  John laughed and took the exit for Woodridge.

  It was one-thirty when they pulled up outside the modest brick house. The light in the lounge was on, glowing from behind the closed curtains. It still amazed John how his parents had raised four kids in the tiny two-bedroom place that had been all they could afford when they’d arrived in Australia from Samoa. It had been a point of pride for his dad that they’d never gone on welfare. Never on the dole and never in prison, unlike most of their neighbours.

  “That’s all we need, more fucking Māoris!” the man next door had said when the family had moved in. Bad teeth, bad mullet, and he couldn’t tell the difference between Māori and Samoan, but he’d only been there a few months before Housing threw him out.

  Mr. and Mrs. Nguyen had been there ever since, and they were good people. Mrs. Nguyen and John’s mother went to the same church. Mr. Nguyen slept in on Sundays and ignored his wife’s harassment on the subject.

  The Nguyens’ house was dark.

  The wire gate squeaked as John pushed it open. Liz followed him up the path. They didn’t even make it to the front door before his mother opened it.

  “You’re late.”

  John held up his hands. “I’m working, Ma.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Faimu,” Liz said. “How are you?”

  “Liz!” Sepela Faimu’s face split with a smile. “Come in, and show me some pictures of that sweet little baby of yours.”

  John made a face as they went inside.

  It was a small house, but it felt too large without his dad’s presence. John glanced into the living room as they passed: his dad’s recliner was still in front of the television. John would bet everything he had that his mother didn’t sit in it. He wondered if they should have got rid of it when his dad’s clothes went to charity. Maybe that would have been better than to have it just sitting there, conspicuous, drawing every gaze to its emptiness.

  They went into the kitchen.

  Liz sat at the table. John leaned in the doorway, watching his mother fill the kettle and rattle around with mugs. She was wearing the maroon dressing gown he’d bought for her last Mother’s Day. Her dark hair, shot through with twists of gray, hung in a thick braid down her back.

  “David said Jessie’s okay staying at his place tonight,” John said.

  Her back stiffened. “She should be here at home!”

  “She’s sixteen, Ma,” John reminded her.

  Ma huffed and turned around to face him. “You can make her come home! You’re her brother, and a policeman!”

  At six-foot-two John towered over his mother these days, but as soon as she got that determined expression on her face he felt like he was a little kid again. “Shit, Ma, that’s exactly why I can’t make her!”

  “Language!” Ma said.

  John looked to Liz for backup. She shook her head at him, as though she was deeply disappointed. Hypocrite.

  The boiling kettle saved him from having to make any reply. His mother turned back around to the bench, and John took the opportunity to mouth a rude word in Liz’s direction before he crossed the floor to help his mother.

  “There’s chocolate cake in the orange container in the pantry,” she told him.

  By the time John had found it, his mother was sitting beside Liz at the kitchen table scrolling through photographs of baby Harry on her phone.

  “Such a fat little baby!”

  Nothing wrong with fat babies according to John’s Samoan mother. Fat babies were healthy babies.

  Liz knew it. She laughed. “Look, in this one he’s got at least four knees!”

  John ate his cake and li
stened to them talk about Harry for a while, knowing that sooner or later the conversation would turn back to Jessie. It was sooner.

  “Will you go and talk to her, John?” Ma asked. “Just talk?”

  Lucky for Jessie she wasn’t in the room right now, because if she had been John would have frogmarched her to her bedroom and stood guard to make she never left again. The grief that passed over his mother’s face was only a shadow, but it was so genuine that John’s throat ached.

  He’d seen it on her face too often lately.

  He reached his hand across the table and closed it over hers. “Yes, Ma, I’ll go and talk to her tomorrow.”

  Ma didn’t reply. She pressed her lips together tightly for a moment, and then nodded. She was close to tears, John realised.

  Fucking Jessie.

  Jess was their dad’s little princess. She’d been born when Mary was already at university and the boys were both in high school. And their parents, who should have been looking forward to a time when all the kids were out from underfoot, were suddenly elbow-deep in nappies and tiny, tiny socks. It was crazy. They loved it.

  Their dad had spoiled Jess. And Jess had worshipped him.

  You couldn’t calculate grief, John knew, couldn’t put a value on it. Couldn’t say her grief is worse than mine because our circumstances are different. Jessie didn’t hurt more than John—couldn’t—but she hurt in a different way. John was thirty-one. He had a job, his own place, knew where he was in life. Questioned the hell out of it sometimes, but he knew. Jess was sixteen, and she’d lost the ground underneath her feet.

  John knew that. He also knew she needed to get her shit together. Yeah, life wasn’t fair. That wasn’t an excuse to put their mother through hell.

  Liz’s phone began to ring, some catchy pop song that John didn’t know. Neither did Liz, probably. She and Craig often stole one another’s phones and sabotaged the settings.

  “Sorry,” she said, standing up. She walked out into the hallway to answer the call.

  “Thank you for coming,” Ma whispered.

  He squeezed her hand, and smiled. “I couldn’t stop Liz. She wanted some of that raspberry jam slice with the coconut on top.”

  Ma put her free hand on her breast. “I don’t have any made!”

  “It doesn’t matter, Ma.”

  Ma fixed him with a stern gaze. “You come by and visit tomorrow night, and I’ll make sure there’s enough for you both to take some back into work, ioe?”

  “Ioe, Ma,” John agreed. He looked up again as Liz stepped back into the kitchen. “Was it work?”

  Liz nodded. “Comms has been calling you.”

  Jessie, he thought, fumbling at his belt for his phone. He’d left it on silent. Shit. What trouble had she gotten herself into?

  Liz read the expression on his face and shook her head. “Darren Fletcher has been trying to get through to you,” she said. “Caleb’s in hospital.”

  Chapter Two

  A hospital. A locked room.

  “My name’s John,” John said to the kid. “What’s yours?”

  The kid swiped his tongue over his cracked lips. “Caleb.”

  John wrote that down. “What’s your last name, Caleb?”

  “Gray,” the kid said, his dark eyes large.

  John wrote that down as well. Then he looked at it, anger burning low in his gut, and crossed it out roughly.

  John hated hospitals. He’d spent too much time in them. He hated the cold air, the florescent lights, the scuffmarks on the floors, and the pervasive stink of antiseptic. He hated it when the staff didn’t pull the curtains around the patients’ beds in the emergency room. He hated it more when they did.

  John flashed his badge at triage. “Where’s Caleb Fletcher?”

  The nurse raised her weary gaze from her computer screen. She frowned. “I think there’s been a mistake. The paramedics did the E.E.A.”

  John ignored her, pushing through the doors into the emergency room and leaving Liz to explain, or apologise, or whatever.

  He found Caleb in the fourth bed from the door, lying there fully dressed with his eyes closed. His dark lashes rested on his pale cheeks. His arms were bandaged wrists to elbows. His shirt was stained with dried blood.

  John’s guts twisted, and he didn’t know if it was anger, fear, or if it was relief: He’s okay. This time, he’s okay.

  Except there would always be a next time with Caleb.

  John had stopped believing there was a power in the universe that could prevent it.

  A doctor—young, probably too young—was bending over Caleb’s bed. She straightened as John approached, her eyes widening at the Glock on his belt, at the badge. “Can I help you?”

  “How is he?” John asked.

  The doctor might have been young, but she was no pushover. “Who called you? This isn’t a police matter.”

  “I’m a friend of the family,” John said. Even after eight years it sounded wrong. Friendships weren’t made like that, but he didn’t know what else to call it. “How is he?”

  The doctor eyed him for a moment before she relented. “Most of the cuts are superficial.”

  Attention-seeking, one of Caleb’s first therapists had called his attempts once. A cry for help, another one had said. John had never doubted the intent behind them. John had long ago stopped questioning what sometimes drove Caleb to this point. He just thanked fuck that something had so far held him back.

  Caleb wanted to live. He was a fighter but, like all fighters, sometimes he took a hit.

  The doctor’s expression softened. “The paramedics did an Emergency Examination Application. We’re just waiting for the psych registrar.”

  John nodded. A weekend in the Mental Health Unit wasn’t ideal, but at least they could medicate Caleb there, keep him too doped up to think about cutting. Keep him treading water until he could go back to his regular psychiatrist on Monday.

  “He was doing okay,” John said. “Was he drinking tonight?”

  The doctor nodded.

  “Shit.” John sat in the chair beside the bed.

  “Do you know where the coffee machine is?” the doctor asked.

  “Yeah, thanks.” John checked his watch. Almost three in the morning. He’d stay until Darren got here, which shouldn’t be too long. Darren was in the Gold Coast hinterland, but the traffic would be light at this hour.

  He’d called Darren on the way here and they’d talked. No, not talked. That implied conversation, an exchange of ideas. The only thing they’d exchanged were the basics: Where is he? How is he? How far away are you? Everything else went unsaid, because it was unnecessary. They were practised at this.

  John looked at the screen of Caleb’s monitor, but the readings meant nothing to him. In the next bed over, a woman was crying.

  Fucking hospitals.

  John scrubbed his knuckles over his scalp. He felt more tired now than he had for a long time, and it wasn’t just the shift work. It was Caleb, and this place, and the knowledge that they’d been here before and they would be here again. Different hospitals, different beds, different scratchy blankets and too-cold air conditioning, but all of them stuck in the same old cycle.

  Eight years of this.

  It wasn’t always this dramatic. Most of the time it didn’t end in a hospital. Most of the time it was increasingly erratic behaviour. It was risk-taking. It was subtle and pervasive, but John knew how to read the signs. He’d talked Caleb down from plenty of metaphorical high places before. Enough to wonder every time if he was only delaying the inevitable. If Darren was, and the psychiatrists and psychologists were, and the pharmacists.

  John sighed.

  Of course it felt hopeless. It was almost three in the morning and he was sitting in a fucking hospital. Shit always felt dire in the middle of the night.

  John reached out and brushed his fingertips against the back of Caleb’s right hand. His skin was cold to the touch, his fingers white and bloodless. Several of his knuckles were
grazed. The wounds weren’t fresh.

  Darren had said last week that Caleb had punched a wall. Out of nowhere. No warnings signs, no meltdown, just a sudden, furious burst of anger that had broken over him. And afterward, Darren said, when Caleb was sitting on the floor nursing an icepack, he’d refused to talk about it.

  Sometimes even Caleb didn’t know what the fuck was happening in his head.

  John’s fingertips brushed the wrinkled edge of the tape that held the canula in the back of Caleb’s hand. The plastic tape was dry and rough.

  “I bleed and you’re here.”

  Fuck.

  John straightened and turned his face toward Caleb’s. His face was pale, his lips colourless. Dark circles carved out hollows under his eyes.

  “Your dad called me,” John said. “He’s on his way.”

  Caleb’s gaze dropped away.

  John leaned closer and frowned. “What the fuck are you doing, mate?”

  “Bad night.” Caleb pressed his lips into a thin white line.

  “Were you clubbing?” John gestured at his clothes: dark jeans, a tight shirt, and—what were the kids calling them these days?—expensive kicks.

  Caleb inspected the bandages on his arm. “Yeah.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Caleb.” John was always there to pick up the pieces, but he didn’t coddle Caleb. He never had, not even at the start. “You think I drove all the way here to listen to you lie to me?”

  “I was with a guy.” Caleb flinched as he said it.

  “Were you safe?”

  Caleb’s gaze faltered. “I was with a guy.”

  “So you said.” John wondered what reaction Caleb had been expecting. “Were you safe?”

  Caleb nodded, turning his face away.

  John studied him for a moment, unsure how to react. A part of him was afraid to react at all in case any reaction was an overreaction. Caleb wasn’t coming out as gay—he’d done that at nineteen—but by admitting to a sexual encounter he was coming out in another way: Caleb was coming out as human being who wanted to be touched. A human being with sexual needs. This was a big step. The biggest in a long time. Nobody had expected him to remain celibate forever; nobody thought that was remotely healthy. But fuck, this big step had turned into a hell of a stumble, hadn’t it? Caleb was in freefall.