and lavender and thyme, beds of young, fist-size lettuces set out in patterns of pale green alternating with dark greenish-red, orange-flowered marigolds like sentinels at the end of each row. Shade cloth stretched overhead protected some of the beds from the harshness of the midday sun, while brushwood screens kept out the dusty wind.
The soil looked rich and dark, nothing like the red- and ocher-hued earth of the surrounding country, so it must have been trucked in from elsewhere. Beyond the garden there was a chicken run, and she could see several rusty-brown and glossy black birds scratching happily, watched over by a magnificent rooster. Carly would love a newly-laid egg each morning.
Jac whooshed out a preparatory breath, knowing she couldn’t spend the next hour admiring plants and hens. “Where to begin,” she said.
“You had a bad divorce,” Callan prompted. “But I thought that was over. Property settlement, custody, all set.”
“So did I, but Kurt has other ideas. He wants Carly.” Did he really? She still wasn’t sure what game he was playing. “Or he wants to terrorize me with the idea that he wants Carly,” she revised. “Which is working, by the way. I’m terrorized. His actions have gone beyond industry power games.”
Kurt had always loved to play those, too.
“Yeah?” Callan studied her face for a moment with his piercing blue gaze, then seemed to realize it might be easier if they both looked away, that she wouldn’t want her emotions under a microscope while she talked. He picked up some bits of gravel from under the bench and started tossing them lazily, as if they both had all the time in the world for this. Somewhere overhead, a crow cawed.
“Can I copy you with the rock-throwing thing?” Jac asked, and he grinned and deposited half his handful into her open palm. They threw gravel together for a minute in silence before she could work out how to begin. Decided in the end just to tell the story as straight as she could. “Last week, a woman that Carly didn’t know, a complete stranger, tried to collect her from preschool. And she looked just like me.”
The memory was still very fresh, and the words came tumbling out as she told Callan the full story. She’d seen the woman herself. Hadn’t thought anything of it, had just idly registered that a slender female with long dark hair was getting into the same make, model and color of car as her own, fifty yards down the block from the preschool gate.
Maybe, yes, she’d had some idea in the back of her mind that Kurt himself might try to pick up Carly one day, even though he wasn’t supposed to and the preschool staff knew it. She’d started coming ten minutes earlier than usual because of her suspicion, but she hadn’t imagined a strategy as devious as this.
She had gone inside and found the head teacher, Helen Franz, sitting at her desk pale and shaking and unable to pick up the phone to call the police. The stranger had known Carly’s name, her best friend’s name, the teachers’ names.
“This woman, this … this … me look-alike, comes past Helen toward Carly,” Jac told Callan. “She says to Helen, ‘Hi, Mrs. Franz, I’m a touch early, I signed her out on my way through,’ and Helen says that’s fine—because, you know, I have been coming early, the past few weeks—and that Carly is right here. ‘Here’s your mom, honey.’ And she doesn’t really look closely at this woman, but she has no suspicions at all and she’s all set to let Carly go. That was what made Helen start shaking, afterward, when she realized what she’d almost done. I started shaking, too, as soon as she started telling me. So Helen’s actually ready to let Carly go. ‘That’s fine, Jacinda,’ she tells this woman. No suspicions.
“Except that Carly knows it’s not me. She won’t budge. Digs in her heels. Throws a tantrum, which isn’t like her. The woman says, ‘Sweetheart, you don’t have time to finish your game.’ And she has my mannerisms. My voice. Carly starts screaming. Helen comes closer to see what the problem is. Carly screams out, ‘That’s not my real mommy. It’s an alien!’ She’s terrified. Completely terrified. Partly because the deception is so neat and close. It would have been less frightening for her, I think, if the woman hadn’t looked anything like me at all.”
“I can understand that,” Callan muttered. He stretched his arm along the garden bench. He’d finished with the gravel. He looked skeptical, but interested. “Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It’s … yeah … scary if someone looks right and wrong at the same time. It really gets to you.”
“Meanwhile, Helen’s still one step behind, at this stage. She looks up to find the woman heading out of there, just quietly slipping away. But fast. As if she’s been given instructions to abort the mission the moment she’s seriously challenged. She had my style of sunglasses, an outfit like one of mine, my hairstyle. She was really well rehearsed. Coached, Callan.”
He looked at her, eyes narrowed in the bright light, and she saw the doubt still in place. Dropped her bits of gravel. Grabbed his arm with dusty fingers. “Yes, I know it sounds paranoid … crazy. But my ex-husband is a big-time TV producer. He has access to desperate actresses, expert makeup artists, wardrobe people, acting and movement coaches. He could pull it off like that.” She snapped her fingers. “I can put you in touch with Helen Franz if you want to hear it from her. We never called the police, in the end, because nothing actually happened, but she wrote up a full report. There were two other teachers in the room who witnessed the whole thing from a distance. It did happen, Callan!”
“I—I guess I’m not doubting it. But who would have gone along with something like that? It was a kidnapping attempt!”
“Kurt wouldn’t have called it that when he hired the actress. He would have called it a reality TV show with hidden cameras, or a method-acting audition for a big movie role. He would have paid in five figures. And he’s Kurt Beale. So people listen. Desperate actresses sure listen! They listen to anything! And they believe him. And they do what he says. He has the power, he has the control. He loves to use it. He’s Kurt Beale,” she repeated.
“Yeah?” Callan said. Then he gave a slow grin. “Well, I’ve never heard of him.”
She closed her eyes. “I know. That’s exactly why I’m here.”
She told him about not being able to write anymore, about being scared the inspiration might never come back, about resigning from Heartbreak Hotel for Elaine’s sake, about fleeing to Sydney and getting all those hang-up calls at Lucy’s.
“And panicking,” she added. “I know I’m panicking. I do know it. Overreacting, obsessing over worst-case scenarios. Do you know what a curse it can be, a writer’s imagination? But there’s no place I can draw the line, Callan. If you seriously asked me, is Kurt capable of taking Carly and hiding her somewhere so I’d never see her again? Is he capable of stalking me in the entertainment industry so that I’ll never write again? Is he capable of murder, that kind of if-I-can’t-have-her-then-no-one-can awful thing that some men do? There’s no place I could draw the line and say, “No, I know Kurt, and I know he wouldn’t do that.” He could do it. Any of it. I know it.”
“Hey … hey.”
“Yeah, enough about me, right?” she tried to joke. “You look like you’re thinking six hundred thousand acres isn’t going to be big enough for both of us.”
“No, no, the opposite. I wanted to tell you that six hundred thousand acres is big. We’re isolated. You’re safe here. For—well, for—”
He wanted the bottom line. How long did she want to stay?
“A
