EverythingLiane Moriartytouches turns to gold.
In this excerpt fromApples Never Fall, you’ll meet the Delaneys.
They’re a seemingly impeccable group of tennis-playing suburbanites, the envy of all their neighbors.
NIGEL BUCHANAN
“I think they’re brothers and sisters,” said the waitress to her boss.
The waitress was an only child and intrigued by siblings.
“They look really similar.”
After last week’s violent hailstorm, there had been blessed rain for nearly a week.
“They said they haven’t had a chance to look at the menus.”
“Ask them again.”
“Excuse me?”
They didn’t hear her.
They were all talking at once, their voices overlapping.
They were definitely related.
They even sounded similar: low, deep, husky-edged voices.
People with sore throats and secrets.
“She’s not technically missing.
She sent us that text.”
“I just can’t believe she’s not answering her phone.
She always answers.”
“Dad mentioned her new bike is gone.”
That’s bizarre."
“So…she just cycled off down the street and into the sunset?”
“But she didn’t take her helmet.
Which I find very weird.”
“I think it’s time we reported her missing.”
“It’s over a week now.
That’s too long.”
The waitress raised her voice to a point that was perilously close to rude.
“Are you ready to order yet?”
They didn’t hear her.
“Has anyone been over to the house yet?”
“Dad told me just don’t come over.
He said he’s ‘very busy.’
"
“Very busy?
What’s he so busy doing?”
“You know what could happen if we reported her missing?”
The better looking of the two men spoke.
He wore a long-sleeved linen shirt rolled up to the elbows, shorts, and shoes without socks.
“They’d suspect Dad.”
“Suspect Dad of what?”
asked the other man, a shabbier, chunkier, cheaper version of the first.
Instead of a goatee, he just needed a shave.
“That he…you know.”
The expensive-version brother drew his finger across his neck.
The waitress went very still.
This was the best conversation she’d overheard since she’d started waitressing.
“Jesus, Troy.”
The cheaper-version brother exhaled.
“That’s not funny.”
The other man shrugged.
“The police will ask if they argued.
Dad said they did argue.”
“Maybe he snapped.
Maybe he finally snapped.”
Her name was Brooke.
She paid with a five-dollar note and always left the fifty-cent piece in the tip jar.
She wore the same thing every day: a navy polo shirt, shorts, and sneakers with socks.
“Dad would never hurt Mum,” she said to her sister.
“Oh my God, of course he wouldn’t.
I’m not serious!”
She was a middle-aged person in disguise.
From a distance you’d guess twenty; from close up, you’d think maybe forty.
It felt like a trick.
The better-looking brother gave her a quizzical look.
“Did we grow up in the same house?”
“I don’t know.
Because I never saw any signs of violence…I mean, God!”
“Anyway, I’m not the one suggesting it.
I’m saying other people might suggest it.”
The blue-haired woman looked up and caught sight of the waitress.
We still haven’t looked!”
She picked up the laminated menu.
“That’s okay,” said the waitress.
She wanted to hear more.
“Also, we’re all a bit distracted.
Our mother is missing.”
That’s…worrying?"
The waitress couldn’t quite work out how to react.
They didn’t seem that worried.
These people were, like, all a lot older than herwouldn’t their mother therefore be properly old?
Like a little old lady?
How did a little old lady go missing?
Brooke with an e winced.
She said to her sister, “Don’t tell people that.”
Our mother is possibly missing," amended the blue-haired woman.
“We have temporarily mislaid our mother.”
“you better retrace your steps.”
The waitress went along with the joke.
“Where did you see her last?”
There was an awkward pause.
They all looked at her with identical liquid brown eyes and sober expressions.
They all had the sort of eyelashes that were so dark they looked like they were wearing eyeliner.
“You know, you’re right.
That’s exactly what we need to do.”
The blue-haired woman nodded slowly as if she were taking the flippant remark seriously.
“Retrace our steps.”
“We’ll all try the apple crumble with cream,” interrupted the expensive version brother.
“And then we’ll let you know what we think.”
“Good one.”
The cheaper-version brother tapped the edge of his menu on the side of the table.
“For breakfast?”
The waitress wrote 4 x App Crum on her notepad, and straightened the pile of menus.
“Listen,” said the cheaper-version brother.
“Has anyone called her?”
“Of course we’ve called her.
Haven’t you?”
“So four long blacks?”
“Okay, so four long blacks.”
The cheaper-version brother put his elbows on the table and pressed his fingertips to his temples.
Has anyone tried to get in contact with her?"
The waitress had no more excuses to linger and eavesdrop.
Was Savannah another sibling?
Why wasn’t she here today?
Was she the family outcast?
Is that why her name seemed to land between them with such portentousness?
And had anyone called her?
Last September
It was close to eleven on a chilly, breezy Tuesday night.
A ring-tailed possum scuttled across a sandstone fence, caught in the taxi’s headlights.
A small dog yelped once and went quiet.
The air smelled of woodsmoke, cut grass, and slow-cooked lamb.
Most of the houses were dark except for the vigilant winking of security cameras.
Joy was a tiny, trim, energetic woman with shiny shoulder-length white hair.
(She was sixty-nine.)
Right now she wore jeans and a black cardigan over a striped T-shirt, with woolly socks.
She supposedly looked “great for her age.”
Young people in shops often told her this.
Joy knew her giant headphones made her resemble an alien, but she didn’t care.
After years of begging her children for quiet, she now couldn’t endure it.
The silence howled through her so-called empty nest.
In her search for noise, she’d become addicted to podcasts.
Joy didn’t want to write a memoir but Caro did, so she was keeping her company.
Caro was widowed and shy and didn’t want to go on her own.
“Is it?”
“It’s tennis.
Your theme is tennis.”
“That’s not a theme,” said Joy.
“But that’s…we’re not tennis stars,” said Joy.
“We just ran a tennis school, and a local tennis club.
We’re not the Williams family.”
For some reason she found Caro’s comment annoying.
Joy had changed the subject.
“Ooh, sacrilege!”
“You don’t hate tennis,” Joy had told him.
It was an order.
She had meant: you’re able to’t hate tennis, Troy.
She’d meant: I don’t have the time or the strength to let you hate tennis.
After years of begging her children for quiet, she now couldn’t endure it.
The silence howled through her so-called empty nest.
Some of their happiest family memories were on the court.
Most of their happiest memories.
Some of their worst memories were on the court too, but come on now, Troy still played.
If he’d really hated tennis he wouldn’t still be playing in his thirties.
Was tennis her life’stheme?
Maybe Caro was right.
She and Stan might never have met if not for tennis.
More than half a century ago now.
A birthday party in a small, crowded house.
Heads bounced in time to “Popcorn” by Hot Butter.
“Where’s Joy?
You should meet Joy.
She just won some big tournament.”
Athletic boys could still smoke like chimneys in the seventies.
He had a dimple that only made an appearance when he saw Joy.
“We should have a hit sometime,” he said.
She’d never heard a voice like it, not from a boy of her own generation.
It was a voice so deep and slow, people made fun of it and tried to imitate it.
They said Stan sounded like Johnny Cash.
He didn’t do it on purpose.
It was just the way he spoke.He didn’t speak much, but everything he said sounded important.
They weren’t the only tennis players at that party, just the only champions.
It was destiny, as inevitable as a fairy tale.
If they hadn’t met that night they would have met eventually.
Tennis was a small world.
They played their first match that weekend.
(Her daughters shrieked when they heard that phrase.)
Joy told Stan she only went to bed with him because of his serve.
It was a magnificent serve.
“…this causes the release of neurotransmitters…”
She looked at the grater.
It was covered in carrot, which the dishwasher wouldn’t wash off.
She rinsed it in the sink.
“Why am I doing your job for you?”
Her past kept bumping up against her present lately.
The Migraine Guy spoke seductively into Joy ’s ears, “Let’s talk about magnesium.”
Let’s do that," said Joy.
There was no way for the frying pan and grater to fit together.
There was no solution.
The grater would have to miss out.
It was clean anyway.
“Jesusbloodywhat the?”
She pushed her headphones down onto her neck and put her hand to her thumping heart.
“Don’t creep up on me like that!”
“Why is someone knocking on the door?”
Stan’s lips were orange from the chili crackers.
There were damp circles on the knees of his jeans from the melting ice packs.
Joy’s eyes went to the clock on the kitchen wall.
It was far too late for a delivery or a market researcher.
Joy considered her husband.
Maybe he was the one with dementia.
She knew from her research that the spouse must be patient and kind.
“I didn’t hear anything,” she said, patiently and kindly.
But then Joy heard it too: thump, thump, thump.
Like someone banging a closed fist on their front door.
Steffi trotted along beside them, panting with excitement.
There must be a crisis of some sort.
We are The Fixers.
Bang, bang, bang.“Coming!”
He did this for years every time he came to a door, thought he was so funny.
Stan got there ahead of her.
He click clacked the deadlock with an efficient twist of his wrist and threw initiate the door.
Copyright 2021by Liane Moriarty.
