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“I hoped it was you.”

I dropped my wettie on the floor, vowing to rinse it out later, and peeled off my boardies, throwing them on top of it. Standing there, buck naked, her eyes were all over me. I put my hands on my hips and raised an amused eyebrow. She’d mentioned yesterday, at the river, that when I looked at her, she saw herself through my eyes. I knew exactly what she meant. When she looked at me like that, I felt ten feet tall and bulletproof. Combine that with a sunrise surf, and I was pretty sure I was one hundred percent invincible.

“Do I meet with your approval?” I asked.

She grinned, still holding the shower curtain so I could only see her head and shoulders. “I think you’ll do.”

“Glad to hear it. Now move that shower curtain before I rip it down.”

She giggled, and I climbed into the shower with her. She was wet and silky, and it was therefore impossible to keep my hands off her. I backed her up against the wall as she wrapped her arms around me, the warm water cascading down over both of us. If felt like the water was blending us into one body, and I wasn’t sure where mine ended and hers began. I just knew that I wanted her to stay in there with me until we had turned into wrinkly prunes and there was no hot water left. The rest of the day was going to be hell. It was only Friday. We both had work. A whole day apart. How the hell would we cope?

I was taking my time towelling her off when I heard a knock at the door.

“A bit early for visitors isn’t it?”

I shrugged, frowning. I wasn’t expecting anyone. “Maybe its Vinnie – he might’ve left something in the truck. He’s got a memory like a sieve.”

I draped the towel around her shoulders, pulled it tighter to draw her close, then kissed her quickly on the lips. I grabbed a dry towel for myself and wrapped it around my waist as I headed out of the bathroom for the front door. When I opened it, it wasn’t Vinnie but Alex who stood there.

Something was wrong. I knew it deep down in my soul, the way you know bad news is coming. It’s a vibe in the air, a collection of observations that you calculate in a mere heartbeat.

I couldn’t remember the last time Alex had been to my house.

His face was red, and he’d been crying.

It was too early for a social call.

“You have to come,” he croaked, not bothering to hide it. “Now. She needs you.”

“What? Who?”

“Mum!”

My heart slammed to a halt, hitting the wall of my ribcage. “What’s happened? Is she okay?”

“She needs you,” he said again, wiping the back of his hand across his nose.

If Alex was here, and Bridget was in trouble, it was bad. Really bad. My heart jump-started, rocketing up through my chest and into my throat. I lunged at him, grabbing him by the shirt and shoving him up against the wall of the house.

“What the fuck did you do!” I hissed, mere centimetres from his face.

I could smell his breath from there, but there was no hint of alcohol on it. Nothing was adding up.

“I didn’t do anything!”

“Bullshit! What’s going on? What happened?” I didn’t even give him a chance to answer, my mind spinning out of control, possibilities raining down on me. “If you’ve hurt her again, I swear to God, I’ll – “

“It’s Pop!”

It felt exactly like he’d punched me in the stomach. Everything drew in on itself. “Henry?”

“He’s dead,” he croaked.

The sound of my own heartbeat was all I could hear, reverberating inside my body, filling up all the cavities and bursting out of them. I felt sick. I wanted to call him a liar, but I could tell from the look on his face that he wasn’t lying.

He was sober and he was telling the truth.

I let him go and he stood there, trying not to cry. I’d never seen him look so vulnerable. Not even when Em disappeared. He kept himself busy then, doing stuff. Then he started drinking and he was still busy. But now, he wasn’t. He wasn’t doing anything, because there was nothing to be done. It was too late.

My knees buckled and I sank down onto the front step. It couldn’t be true. We were just there, we just saw him yesterday.

Maia’s arms encircled me from behind, but I barely felt them. Alex sat down on the step beside me.

“What happened?” I managed to ask, without turning to him. I didn’t seem to be able to move. Breathing was taking up all my energy.

“Mum went around this morning, to drop something off to him on her way in to work,” he sniffed. “He was sitting in his chair in the living room. She thought he was asleep.”

Jesus. He never even made it to bed. How long had he been sitting there? Since we left? Had he been there all night?

“You need to come over. She won’t let me call anyone. She’s just… she’s just sitting there with him. She won’t leave him. I didn’t know what else to do.”

Through the haze of the fog that would eventually become grief, I heard the helplessness in his voice. He was lost. He didn’t know who to turn to. Somewhere in the back of my brain, I knew that it must’ve taken a lot for him to come to me.

“Come on,” Maia murmured in my ear. “Come and get dressed. We need to go over there. Bridget needs you.”

I stood, my knees trembling as if they might not be up to the task. I heard Maia invite Alex inside. He was reluctant, but she insisted, ushering me into the bedroom as she made him wait in the living room. She closed the door behind us and I stood there, in the middle of the room, with no idea of what to do.

“You need to get dressed,” she said gently, opening drawers and pulling out a clean pair of boxers, boardies and a t-shirt and handing them to me. I stared at them blankly.

Clothes. They were clothes, and I had to put them on. But Henry was dead. How was I supposed to just get dressed when Henry was dead?

I looked up at her as the tears finally came. Her face crumpled and she wrapped her arms around me. I wanted to hold her, but my arms wouldn’t move. My body didn’t seem connected to my brain anymore. My brain was busy trying to process information, and any signals it should have been sending to my body were going astray.

Slowly, the signals seemed to find their way, and I reached up to put my arms around her.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered into my shoulder.

I didn’t know what to say to that. I’d never known what to say to that, and people had said it to me often enough over the years.

“Come on,” she said, rubbing my back gently and pulling back to look me in the eye. “Bridget needs you. You need to get dressed.”

I nodded, blinking back more tears. Bridget. Yes, Bridget needed me. I needed to get over there. I had no idea what I was going to do when I got there, but she needed me.

Maia handed me my clothes again and I took them this time.

We drove over to Henry’s in Alex’s car, which was a Godsend. I didn’t think I was capable of driving. I was barely capable of breathing. I spent the whole time holding Maia’s hand in the back seat, while Alex kept checking us out in the mirror. The silence in the car was thick and heavy. I felt like I was getting dumped by wave after wave, barely able to take a breath in between times.

When we got to Henry’s, Bridget’s car was parked outside. I didn’t want to go in there. I tried to think of a logical excuse as to why I couldn’t, but nothing would come. The truth of it was, I just didn’t want to see Henry like that, and I didn’t know if I could stand to see Bridget in pain again.

None of this was fair. We’d just been here a handful of hours ago and he seemed fine. How the hell could any of this be happening?

Maia draped her arm around my waist and practically led me up the driveway. We lingered behind Alex, like some sort of advance funeral procession. When Alex opened the front door, I expected to hear sobbing, or wailing – something. But there was nothing. It was eerie.

I followed Alex up the hallway and into the living room. That’s when my legs forgot what to do. I sagged against the doorframe, Maia’s arm still around my waist. The room was still shrouded in darkness, the curtains still drawn. It took my eyes a few seconds to focus.

I tried not to see him, but I couldn’t help it. He was sitting in his armchair, like he was taking a nap. He had his old brown chequered woollen rug over his legs, his brown leather slippers peeking out from beneath it. His mouth hung open, as if he was in mid-snore. At first glance, he actually looked peaceful.

Bridget was sitting on the floor next to him, holding his hand. I don’t think she saw us. She had her back to us, and I wondered if she’d even heard us come in.

“Mum,” Alex said gently, putting his hand on her shoulder and sitting down beside her on the floor. “Heath’s here.”

My heart was pounding. The room felt empty. Henry was gone and Bridget was a shell. I felt the weight of responsibility bearing down on me, as I’d never felt it before. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to help.

I forced myself to cross the room, and I knelt down in front of Henry’s chair. I made myself look up at him, although I didn’t want to. I didn’t want this to be the last memory I had of him. He deserved more than that. I wanted to scrub the picture out of my mind, but even at that moment, I knew it would be a long time before I’d be able to do that.

Up close like this, he looked old. Unlike in life, he looked his age. He was so still. The only time I’d known him to be this still was when he was giving me a piece of his mind. Then he would be very still, his blue eyes piercing mine. But his eyes were closed now, and he wasn’t talking. He wasn’t breathing.

I missed him already.

“He’s cold,” Bridget murmured, staring at his hand in hers. “I put a blanket on him, to try and keep him warm, but I don’t think it’s helping.”

My throat closed up so I could barely breathe. I nodded, quickly swiping away tears. I needed to stay strong for her.

I glanced over at Alex. He looked completely lost. Gone was the cocky demeanour and the general sulkiness. He looked miserable, but it was a different kind of misery. He looked back at me hopefully, like he expected me to say something that would fix this. If only I could.

I reached over to place my hand on top of Bridget’s. I could feel her trembling. She stopped stroking Henry’s hand and looked at me, but I wished she hadn’t.

Her expression was hollow, as if she was just an empty vessel. The light in her eyes was gone. She looked just like she had after Em disappeared, and the comparison made my insides shrivel up. Her eyes were dry, as if shedding tears was a pointless exercise. As if the grief was a part of her now, and she didn’t want to let go of it. That scared me. Like me, Bridget was the logical one of the family, the one endowed with the sensible gene. She was also the old soul who had it all figured out, the one who could find comfort where there was none.

But not now, not today. Today, she was broken. Today, she was suffering. And there was nothing anyone could do about it.

Memories came flooding back to me, lodging themselves in my heart like tiny splinters.

I missed my Dad every day, even now, all these years later. I was just a kid when he died, I didn’t even know him, not properly, not like a grown man came to know and appreciate the person inhabiting his father’s body.

Was it worse for Bridget, losing her Dad at her stage in life? Was it more painful, coming to know and appreciate her father for the man he was, before losing him? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know. I knew enough to know it must be tearing her apart inside, just as it had torn me apart. Maybe grief was just grief. No ‘better’ or ‘worse.’

“He’s gone,” she whispered, nodding, as though she knew it, but she couldn’t quite make herself believe it.

I took her in my arms and rocked her slowly from side to side, and she let me. She held onto me as if I was saving her, but I felt grossly inadequate. I wasn’t saving her. I couldn’t. She would have to feel this, just like we did, and she would have to find a way through it.

All I could do was hold her.

HENRY’S KITCHEN WAS
like one of those rooms you see in museums. Unchanged since the 1950s, with no modern conveniences such as microwaves and coffee machines. Slightly dark, with café nets hanging in the windows, an old lemon yellow Formica table with chrome legs and matching chairs taking centre stage. Even though it was sizable, it was cosy in the winter, and cool in the summer. It was the heart of the home.

Yet sitting there after the doctor had left, waiting for the funeral director to come, it felt cold and empty.

Henry’s teapot, the old, dinged, aluminium one he favoured, sat on the bench. Maia had offered to make everyone tea and coffee, but there was no coffee in the house, and no one really wanted to drink tea out of his teapot without him here. It felt wrong. Not that we said that out loud. It was a chorus of ‘no thanks, I’m fine.’ Which, of course, was bullshit. We were anything but fine.

I had lost enough people in my life to know that this was the worst time. The waiting. The in-between hours. A death had occurred, but the arrangements had yet to be made. In the meantime, we were in limbo.

I remembered Vinnie and I venturing out from under the bed after Dad died, sitting outside on the back porch. We were at a loose end. Mum was inconsolable and everyone seemed to have their hands full with her. We were just kids. We didn’t know what to do with our grief, or where to put ourselves.