Blackbird by Tom Wright

originality and skill at colouring outside the lines.
    Then came Jordan Jillian, who turned out to be a kind of anti-Casey, as she grew older becoming more and more like a little female Mr Spock minus the pointy ears –logical, focused and even-tempered, with no nonsense in her. If anybody was ever born an engineer, or maybe a physicist, it was Jordan. She understood everything mathematical or mechanical without even trying. Her favourite force of nature was gravity, and she drove Jana and Casey nuts by dropping ping-pong balls, paper clips and buttons on them or the cat from the top loft of the A-frame and timing the fall with her little pink wristwatch. She was also tidy and green-minded – a rain-forest-and-public-radio girl.
    ‘I think I’m gonna have this,’ Casey pronounced. ‘A virgin strawberry daiquiri.’ She absent-mindedly pushed her hair back from her cheek in a way that was so exactly like Jana that it twisted my heart.
    Jordan was disgusted. ‘Five dollars for a six-ounce slushy,’ she said. ‘Good thinking.’
    For some reason Casey let this go as she watched a grey-bearded man in a tan jumpsuit and faded camouflage boonie hat idling his green johnboat past us through the no-wake zone, a stack of bream tackle propped carelessly in the bow. Casey waved to him and he waved back.
    I said, ‘How are you guys really doing?’
    Casey shrugged, and Jordan said, ‘With what?’
    ‘I mean sleeping okay, keeping up with schoolwork, no morale problems, that kind of stuff.’
    Jordan looked off across the water, saying, ‘Everything’s okay.’
    Casey selected a corn chip from the basket and bit off a corner. ‘That’s not really true, Dad,’ she said. ‘It’s no good without you there. A house with only females in it is just so bogus, like a zoo without a gorilla. Everything’s organised and quiet, and there’s nobody to check out the garagemonsters at night – all we can do is hunker down and hope that was just a possum we heard out there . . . ’
    ‘When did you hear a possum out there?’
    ‘Night before last,’ Casey said.
    ‘How do you know that’s what it was?’
    ‘He left his card, Dad – how else?’
    Jordan shook her head. I watched Casey.
    ‘Anyway, Mom’s always taking care of us now, fussing around about our clothes and stuff,’ said Casey. ‘I mean, it was better when she’d make us do our homework and then chase us off to our rooms so she could sit on your lap.’
    I fiddled with my iced tea. ‘I think so too, Case,’ I said. ‘But things are a little complicated.’
    A couple of small frown lines appeared between Jordan’s eyebrows, and she shook her head again. ‘It’s hard, but it’s pretty simple. Mom is sick of you being a cop but you can’t give it up.’
    Casey crunched the rest of her chip. ‘A gift for stating the obvious,’ she said.
    ‘You got that line from the movie we watched last week,’ said Jordan. ‘A good memory is no substitute for really thinking.’
    ‘Hey, guys,’ I said. ‘It’s not your job to worry about me, or your mom. She and I need to get this worked out, but – ’
    Casey said, ‘Mom’s like, you’ve lost your centre or something, Dad.’
    Jordan snorted.
    ‘She told you that?’ I said.
    ‘Not me. Grandma. They were on the phone, and I eavesdropped. Mom was talking like it was some kind of karma deal.’
    ‘There’s no such thing,’ Jordan said. ‘It’s a murder deal. Dad can’t leave his job when people are doing that kind of stuff. What if all the cops did?’
    ‘Yeah, Dad, what’s happening with that?’ asked Casey, already on the next page. ‘Everybody at school is like, what’s going on, y’all? Even the teachers. Like I’d know anything.’
    Our plates came, and Casey picked up a shrimp, twisted the tail off and tossed it into the water, watching until a bream drifted up and grabbed it. She popped the shrimp into her mouth while Jordan stirred coleslaw around with her fork. I realised I wasn’t