The Cottage

"Every instinct I had told me to turn the ute around and go home. I've had a long time since to wonder why I didn't listen to the one part of me that's never once been wrong."

The seal ran out not far past the turn-off, and from there it was dirt — the ute rocking along over a rough mix of gravel and rock and the odd pothole deep enough to feel, the suspension working under me. Native forest came in close on both sides and hemmed the view down to the track ahead, and the tall trees leaned their branches together overhead into a green tunnel, twisted and dim, eerie and a bit lovely with it. Proper bush. But it was ten minutes out of Collinsvale, not the far side of nowhere, and I had to keep telling myself so.

The phone had dropped its last bar a kilometre back. Nothing in that on its own — half the properties in these hills were dead spots and I knew it. But it meant the only record of where I was sat on Luke's phone and mine: a property name and a set of coordinates. Nobody else had even that. I'd been over the red flags a hundred times on the way up — the money, the rush, the cash, the friend with no name — and I went over them again now, and I kept driving.

Then the trees let go all at once and I came out into a clearing, the openness of it almost a jolt after the tunnel, and I knew the place. The name on the stone letterbox settled it. Owen. I'd been here. Four years back, five — a boundary run along the southern line for an older couple. Her I remembered for the insects: a whole case of them pinned up by the kitchen window, Tasmanian this and that, and her walking me through the lot over a cuppa like they were friends of hers she was introducing. Him for the coffee he kept putting in my hand and the garden he wouldn't stop on about — natives he was planting to bring the birds and the bees back, a veg patch, and a pair of geese that carried on at me every time I set foot near the southern line. Good people. A real place. It should have steadied me. Instead it only stood a new question up alongside the others: what was Luke doing bringing me here, to their place, and not his own?

At the far end of the clearing sat the cottage — small, three rooms at a guess, stone and cedar and rustically plain, the green of the forest rising up behind and framing it like it had grown there out of the hillside. Older than anything I'd ever put up. Local dolerite in the lower walls, that grey-blue you only get up here; cedar weatherboards above gone silver; a tin roof rusted but sound; hand-blown glass in the windows, thick and wavy. Built small and solid by people who'd known what a winter did up here and set it down to stand against them. On another morning I'd have pulled up just to look at it.

And there wasn't a sound off it. No smoke from the chimney on a morning cold enough to want a fire lit. No light in a window. No Owens, no Luke, nobody at all — just the cottage sitting there pretty as a postcard and every bit as still, and the stillness was the thing that was wrong.

I got out. The door hinge cracked loud enough to feel rude in all that quiet. The ground took my boots soft — damp, mossed-over, mildewed stuff that gave under me more than ground has any business giving, and I didn't care for the feel of it, though I couldn't have told you why.

Off along the southern edge I could see my own fence still standing — posts plumb, wire still tight, four or five winters on. Good work. It would outlast a lot of things. And looking at it I felt the plain pride of a job done right, and hard on the back of the pride came the question I couldn't get round: if I did work like that — honest work, work worth an honest rate — then why in God's name was this one worth a hundred thousand in cash?

"Hey, Nial." Luke's voice came across the clearing before I'd got three steps toward the cottage — too bright for the morning, too bright for the place.

He was up on the front verandah, the thin light coming through the mist behind him. The first thing I clocked wasn't the voice, it was what he had on. Jeans, a plain tee, sneakers — the light kind you'd wear to a barbecue, not standing out in a Tasmanian winter with the frost still down on the grass. And his breath barely fogged. Mine was hanging in front of my face; his came off him like he'd walked out of a warmer morning than the one I was standing in.

The easy clothes said one thing and the way he stood said another. His weight was forward, up on the balls of his feet, his shoulders set, braced — like a man waiting on a starter's gun. It set my heart going before I'd decided to be worried about anything.

Why am I so nervous? I gave myself a serve over it. He was a bloke on a porch. A former client with work I needed more than I'd own to. It's a chat about a job. Get a grip. It didn't help. The unease sat down low in me and hummed.

I shut the ute door — it went to with a solid thunk that sounded final in a way I didn't like — and walked over. He came clearer as I closed the gap: early thirties, but older round the eyes than the years should have made him, and leaner than I remembered, a wiry, strung-tight leanness that had the look of not sleeping, or not eating, or both.

But it was his hands I kept coming back to. They wouldn't be still — tapping at his thighs, folding across his chest, into his pockets and out of them again, never once settling. The more I watched them the tighter I wound myself, the pair of us feeding it back and forth between us.

By the time I got close I could see the sheen of sweat on him despite the cold, and his eyes going — me, then the track behind me, then the cottage, then back to me, checking, like he was waiting on something to come up that driveway.

"Hi Luke," I said, and put my hand out.

His grip was firm — too firm, and damp with it, and it held on a beat past where a handshake lets go, like he meant to keep hold of me a moment longer than I'd offered.

"I'm glad you came," he said, and his hands went straight back to their tapping the second mine was free. Not good to see you. Not thanks for coming. Glad you came — like he'd not been sure I would, like it sat heavier on him than a job had any call to.

"No worries," I said, reaching for the easy client voice and not quite getting there, the words coming out tight. "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't more than a little curious about the job."

Curious was a soft word for it. Suspicious, desperate, half-sick with hope — nearer the mark, the lot of them. But you don't hand a client that, and I didn't. I kept the wobble off my face and the need out of my voice and let him think I could still walk either way.

"Good," he said. "That's… that's good." The repeat of it was odd, words to put in the air, his eyes still going the whole time, never holding mine longer than a second before sliding off to check some other corner of the clearing.

I had a proper look at him. The jaw was clenched, a muscle jumping in it. This wasn't the bloke from that fencing job years back — that Luke had been all easy talk and terrible jokes, cold drinks pressed on me in the heat, good company on a long job. This one was wound up like a spring, and it was tripping every wire I had.

"Are the Owens home?" I asked, keeping it light, like it was just a thing you'd say, while I fished for where the pair of them had got to.

Something crossed his face — quick, there and gone, but I caught it. Guilt, or fear, or the two of them together. Then it was covered over. He gave my shoulder a slap that was meant to land friendly and didn't, and steered straight past the question. "Oh, I've got the plans lying on the kitchen table. You'll love them!" Too bright again, the words coming off him like he was reading them off a card, working to get me past the thing I'd asked and on to the next.

Everything in my gut had gone to a low growl by then, and I fell into step beside him regardless, walking toward the door. Every part of me was saying stop, ask him straight, get back in the ute while you still can. And I didn't, because the hundred thousand was still sitting there, still real, still the answer to every problem that had been standing on my chest for months.

"So, a hundred thousand?" I said, falling in beside him. I needed to hear it once more, needed it to not be a thing I'd misheard down a bad line.

"Cash," he said. Didn't break stride. Didn't look at me. The one word and nothing round it. Cash was the whole of the tell, and he knew it, and so did I.

"Must be a pretty important job?" It came out more careful than I'd meant, more of my hand shown than I wanted.

"Probably the most important you'll ever do," Luke said, his eyes fixed ahead on the cottage door.

He said it flat, staring at that door, and whatever it was meant to mean it settled over me heavy. I didn't ask him. I kept walking.

My boots came down solid on the wooden steps up to the verandah, loud in all that quiet, every one of them announcing me, going ahead with a thing my whole body was telling me not to do.

The verandah boards were old and still dead solid under me, cedar gone that silver-grey you only get off decades of weather, and I could see the marks of hand tools in them where whoever built this had dressed each board by hand. Careful work. Somebody long gone had cared how this porch went together.

Luke held the screen door for me, his arm out. The mesh was patched here and there and the frame carried I couldn't tell you how many coats of paint, one laid over the next, a lifetime of somebody keeping it up.

"Thank you," I said, and stepped up to it and put my hand to the doorframe — rough-sawn timber, solid and real under my palm — and a wave of sick came up through me out of nowhere. My stomach turned right over, the whole clearing tipped a few degrees off level, and for a second I honestly thought I'd bring my breakfast up on the Owens' verandah.

Am I making a colossal mistake? It came through clean this time. I'd been talking over the top of it for hours and it had finally got a word in edgewise. This was wrong. All of it. The place, the quiet, the empty house, the money, the cash, the rush — every last part of it was a flag, and I'd walked past the whole row of them because I couldn't afford to see a single one.

I stopped, my body hauling one way and the door in front of me the other, and I turned back to him. "Look, Luke, I'm not sure I can do this," I said, and dropped my head, couldn't hold his eye — ashamed to be walking away from the money, and ashamed I'd let it draw me this far up the hill to begin with.

"Oh?" His face went to surprise — and under the surprise, quick, something that looked to have more riding on it than the loss of a contractor. Concern. Fear, even. "What's wrong?"

The forced brightness had gone out of him. It was the most real he'd sounded since I climbed out of the ute, like my pulling up short had put a crack in whatever it was he'd been holding up.

"I dunno. It's just… it's a lot of money. And in cash," I said, and let a breath go that felt like it had the whole morning in it, the whole six months.

"I get it," he said, with a short laugh that didn't quite come off, though I took it kindly enough. His shoulders came down a notch and he leaned into the doorframe, easier than he'd stood since I got there. "I suppose I have been a little mysterious about it all, haven't I?"

"Maybe just a little," I said, and felt something in my own face give a fraction. It should have loosened the thing in me, him owning the strangeness of it. It didn't, not all the way. Because if he knew how it looked, he'd known all along — so why play it out this way at all?

His smile came up wider, and it landed; for a second it was the Luke I remembered. "I promise it's legit. It'll all make sense once you see the plans."

The plans. It all came back round to the plans on the kitchen table, the ones that were going to make the money and the secrecy and the hurry all line up straight. The ones I'd love.

"Are you sure?" I pushed, hope and unease in it both at once.

He nodded, leaning in like a foot closer might get it done, and he finally held my eye and kept hold of it. There was something honest in it. But honest and wrong aren't opposites — I've known blokes believe with their whole hearts in things that should have put them in gaol.

"And the Owens?" I went back to it, couldn't leave it lying. "They're not home?" Their being gone sat worse with me than any of the rest. Their house. Their cottage. And they weren't in it.

"Come, let me show you," Luke said, going round the question a second time, though quieter now, none of the manic left in it, and gestured me on through the door.

The second dodge should have been the end of it — should have been me turning on my heel and getting back in the ute. It wasn't. Because under all the fear the hope was still down there, stubborn, refusing to lie down and die.

They're just plans, I told myself, over the top of a heart going hard enough to feel in my throat. Looking never hurt a soul. I'll look, and then I'll decide, and looking doesn't tie me to anything. It came easy, that kind of talk — I'd worn a smooth path in it these last months. Just one more card. Just one more late payment. Just this one thing, and then I'll get on top of the rest.

"Okay," I said, and heard the surrender in it, and turned back to the door. Luke was holding it open for me. I stepped up to the threshold, my boot coming down on a sill worn hollow by a hundred years of other boots.