54. Norah

NOW

It was just so unexpected, so out of left field. For a moment, Norah couldn't see how it fit. Everyone glanced at one another. Hando kept blinking, then shaking his head, then blinking again. Rhiannon and Bianca were open-mouthed. Miss Fairchild looked as if she were having a mild stroke.

It was Patel who broke the silence.

"You have six toes?" she said to Zara.

"Hold up." Patel looked utterly lost. "You're Zara, right?"

Hando stepped in. "I interviewed Zara. She wasn't on our list. She read about the body in the newspaper."

"I didn't know you had a list until I arrived and bumped into Rhiannon and Bianca," Zara chipped in.

"But how did you know that you'd been at Wild Meadows?" Patel asked.

"When I was adopted, my parents were told that I'd come from a foster home in Port Agatha. When I turned eighteen, I tried to get in touch with the person who facilitated the adoption, but his contact details were old. So I came back to Port Agatha with my parents and we asked around. That's where I heard Miss Fairchild's name. But of course, you were in Melbourne by then." Zara looked at her. "I've tried to get in touch for years. I emailed and phoned. You never got back to me."

Miss Fairchild had been silent through all of this. Her chest rose and fell with what looked like deep, anxious breaths.

"I kept tabs on Port Agatha. I saw that the home had been sold. Then I saw the news about the body underneath. I decided to drive up here to see what I could find out."

"And you have six toes?" Norah said, still stuck on that important fact.

"I did have," she said. "One was removed just after my third birthday, when I'd been living with my adopted family for nearly a year. Which meant I was at Wild Meadows around the time I was two."

As she spoke, Zara was undoing her shoelaces. It sent Norah back to the day they met Amy, on the floor of the living room in Wild Meadows. Miss Fairchild removing her little sock. Now, Zara removed her own sock, showing a tiny silver scar between her pinkie toe and the next one. A tiny telltale bump, in the exact spot where Amy's toe had been. "Am I Amy?"

Norah looked at her closely.

"Do you have any pictures of yourself soon after you were adopted?" Alicia asked.

Zara got out her phone. "Here's one from my first Christmas with my family. I use it as my profile pic on Facebook. I would have been about two and a half."

Zara thumbed her phone for a moment, then handed it to Alicia, who only looked at it for a second before lowering the phone. She closed her eyes; her hand found her heart. She lifted the phone again for another look.

"Oh my God," she whispered, handing the phone to Norah. "Oh. My. God."

Norah took the phone. Stared at it.

"Amy," she said to the phone. Then she looked up at Zara. "You're Amy."

"Which adoption agency did your parents use?" Alicia asked her.

"Are you police detectives now?" Miss Fairchild said, finding her voice suddenly. She looked at Patel beseechingly.

"It wasn't an agency," Zara replied, ignoring her. "It was a man. Scott something. Mitchell or Maxwell or—"

"Scott?" Norah cried.

"Scott Michaels?" Patel said, ignoring Miss Fairchild.

"Who is Scott Michaels?" Meera whispered to Alicia.

"That's it!" Zara said. "Scott Michaels. Do you know him?"

"Scott was our social worker," Norah said. "He and Miss Fairchild were friends."

Everyone looked at Miss Fairchild then. She rolled her eyes and looked away, as if this were a stupid conversation that didn't interest her. She'd pulled her phone out and started typing something into it.

"But if you are Amy…" Norah said, looking at Zara. "whose is the body under the house?"

There was a short silence that made it clear that no one knew the answer. Then the silence was broken by Miss Fairchild, who suddenly began to wail.