Huntress

“Di? I’m home…”

Dad’s yell later that night made me jump. I had been examining the box’s contents, reading letters mostly, in my room and didn’t expect him home until late.

Firm footsteps up the hallway made me panic and I hurriedly shoved everything back in, including the gun, and then practically threw it under my bed. I was still kneeling on the floor with an arm under the bedframe when Dad’s head appeared in the doorway.

“Di? Are you – oh, there you are. Lost something?”

I scrambled back and stood up. “Just a sock. Why home so early?”

“I didn’t have a night shift in theatre,” he yawned. “Fancy Indian for dinner?”

I’m up for Indian food anytime so I agreed enthusiastically. He then left, presumably to dump his work stuff on the dining table and look for a takeaway menu. I sagged onto my bed, relieved.

Dad might know about the box, but for now I’m going on the assumption he doesn’t.

I’d been looking through it all day; in particular the small section under the box had raised a million questions that I had no idea how to answer. This was different to the gun, different to the letters and jewellery.

Hidden, laid in a soft fabric sheath between the false bottom and the actual base of the strongbox, were five flat, lethal looking knives.

Not just a plain kitchen knives, either – a deadly, intricately designed blades obviously meant for violence. There were two pairs – all perfectly smooth and almost sensuously curvaceous, one set larger than the other. The handles were delicately wrought and embossed metal. The smaller pair had ribbons attached.

What the hell, I wondered for the millionth time.

The last knife was even tinier and thinner than the others, with a handle jewelled as well as metallic. It had three duller blades in a sai-type arrangement, and was easily the prettiest.

Each knife was also perfectly balanced, which led me to think maybe they were meant for throwing. Either way, these were dangerous.

They’d have to stay in the sheath. And the box.

So would the gun, another item that I had been examining again. I loaded it, unloaded and reloaded it a few times, feeling fairly badass. Eventually I put it back, slightly scared by the way I started to like the feel of it in my hand.

In fact, I’d been so enthralled by the sinister weapon and the almost beautifully lethal blades that time sort of ran away. I wanted to read the letters again, especially the one from Dad.

But the irony was that I was too scared to get them out while he was here.

Instead of stewing over the box I decided to go out into the kitchen and ‘help with dinner’ – that is, pick out what I wanted from a takeaway menu.

Dad was having a drink, which meant he wasn’t on call.

“Should you be driving to get dinner and drinking?” I asked, getting myself a drink of water.

He looked up from the piece of paper he was reading and dug in a pocket. “No. That’s why you’re going.”

I threw a hand up to catch the car keys he tossed to me and rolled my eyes. “I am, am I?”

“Mhmm. My wallet’s in the car. I already ordered.”

As much as I sort of resented having to go and put something more presentable on than my baggy band shirt and dirty sweatpants, I got to drive – something that didn’t happen very often. I went and quickly put some jeans on, found my shoes and my wallet.

“Back later,” I called unnecessarily on my way out the door. I didn’t get an answer, but then I didn’t expect one.

The ride there and back was as uneventful as it was short. Our food was ready when I got there, so I paid the thirty-seven dollars to the bored, chubby white guy out the front and left. He went back to playing minesweeper and I returned to find my dad cooking rice and humming to himself in the kitchen.

“Back,” I announced, and he spun around guiltily. “Oh no, I didn’t catch you humming, did I?”

His face relaxed and he smiled. “Never.”

Dad actually has a fairly nice voice, in an olden-day, Sinatra sort of way. I remember one day when I was ten and obsessed with Sleeping Beauty, I came home and heard him singing ‘Once Upon A Dream’ in the bathroom.

For a minute I excitedly thought the Prince happened to be taking a shower in our house. Then I realised who it was and was mildly disappointed.

He stopped singing long enough for us to dish out the food and settle comfortably in front of the TV. We ate for a little while in companionable silence.

Then, between programs, an ad came on which featured a dejected looking guy in a huge sandwich costume trying to attract customers into a shop. Dad grimaced, swallowed, and said, “Poor guy.”

“You do know it’s just an ad, right…?”

“He’ll be feeling ridiculous and humiliated anyway. It’s a job requirement for those outsize novelty suits.”

I took this in for a second and then a thought came to me. “Speaking from experience?”

He shovelled another mouthful of lamb korma in and nodded. “How do you think I paid for my medicine degree?”

The image of my dad in a novelty chicken suit was a fairly funny one.

“I always thought you had a normal job.”

“Nope.”

Another thirty seconds of silence and then another thought struck me. Maybe Dad could answer all my questions right now.

“What… what did Mum do? Before me, I mean.”

Luckily he didn’t seem to think the question was at all out of the blue. A split-second of pain crossed his features and he replied, “She was a factory worker.”

It was more or less the last thing I had expected him to say.

“A factory worker?”

He nodded. “She worked in a sock factory. Night shifts mostly. It closed down a few months after you were born.”

“A sock factory,” I repeated. “How the hell did you guys meet again?”

A little smile tugged at his mouth for a second. “She came into the ED when I was working a night shift. She had a few fairly serious slashing wounds that she said came from machinery. I remember being scared that she’d bleed to death.”

Slashing wounds. Machinery. Right. I failed to see how that was in any way cause to smile. “So you fell in love at first sight?”

He shook his head. “Not quite. She was fairly messed up, physically I mean. But… she refused anaesthetic when I was cleaning and stitching her wounds, something I couldn’t figure out but admired her for, for some reason. And…”

“And…”

The smile grew a little into something almost resembling a smirk. “She was wearing the most outrageous underwear under her factory uniform.”

I rolled my eyes but also smiled a little. Knowing that sort of thing is a lot less disgusting when you never knew your parent.

“Then she started to wait for me. I nearly always had a night shift too, so I’d leave the hospital and she would be waiting for me, usually holding a doughnut or something. It was about the third time that happened that I really noticed how beautiful she was.”

His voice was growing softer and dangerously sad so I thought a change of pace would be appropriate.

“She had it right from the start then. Lingerie and sugar – the way to a man’s heart.”

Suspicious Dad took over from Grieving Husband. “And how would you know that?”

I sighed. “Dad, I’m nineteen, not a baby. I pick things up from the world around me – doesn’t mean I put them into practice.”

“So who was that boy I saw exiting the front gate at three in the morning?”

Shit. He wasn’t meant to see Tris leaving.

Especially seeing as we hadn’t even done anything. He was always going to assume the worst. “That would be… my boyfriend.”

The word sounded odd on my tongue and had the expected effect. Dad raised his eyebrows at me and I thought now would be a great time to go and rinse my plate.

“Does this boyfriend have a name?” he called sternly from the living room.

“No,” I called back, turning the tap on.

“Liar.”

Dad exited the lounge room with his own plate. “Tristan,” I conceded.

“Tristan what?”

“Gilchrist.”

A brief pause as Dad tried to figure out if he knew him – or anyone, for that matter, with the same last name.

“Any relation to Adam?”

I shook my head, probably crushing a dream or two. Dad is a big cricket fan.

“Relax, ok?” I said. “Me having a boyfriend isn’t that big a deal.”

With that I tried escaping to my room. Dad’s story about the ‘factory girl’ did anything but tally with that box. I had some more questions to ask it.

Dad, however, was having none of it.

“Just wait a second, Di,” he said, seemingly grappling with the next sentence. For the love of God, please don’t let it be – “Please… promise me you’ll, uh, well… you know… be responsible… if you know what I mean.”

Oh, Discomfort. How you love father-daughter conversations.

I knew exactly what he meant and it made me cringe. “Yeah, ok, please - we really don’t need to have this talk, I already had it with Chloe’s mum like three years ago…”

He looked as relieved as I felt that he didn’t have to take it any further. This time I really did escape, and practically locked myself in my room. Well, put a chair under the door handle. It’s as locked as my room gets.

Dragging the box out from under the bed, I set it on my desk again and contemplated the new information I had. Quite quickly I came to two conclusions: either Dad was lying, or he had no idea about this box.

It seemed out of character for him to lie, especially about Mum, I thought. Why would he keep a secret from me now? I’m hardly in need of protection from harsh truths.

That left just one more option: that he was totally unaware of the strongbox and its contents.

But how? How had she managed to dig a hole and cover it up? Why had she dug a hole and covered it up?

I suppose that was what the pot was for. It wouldn’t have split when she first dug there, and there would have been no tree.

But why had she had this box in the first place? And why a gun? This isn’t America, we don’t all keep one for self-defence.

More importantly, I decided, where did those knives come from?

Their presence was the most intriguing thing of all because nothing I could think of would explain it away. Nothing that fit with what I’d been told, anyway.

There was nothing but an endless stream of questions. All I knew was one thing: I had to know.

I had to find out everything.