A waiter approaches. ‘We need a couple more minutes,’ Audrey says, leaning across and adding, ‘That’s if minutes even exist. According to you, I’m already eating what I am about to order, even though it hasn’t yet been cooked.’
‘You’re about to order it, you’re eating it, and you finished it decades ago.’
‘But this is what I always say about destiny!’ she replies, putting the menu down. ‘Imagine we do have free will, but at the same time we’ve already made all of our decisions. We’ve done it all, and that’s why it feels so fated.’
I love it when we do this. Swap ideas. Her music. My science. This kind of philosophical wandering. There’s something deeply bonding about the vulnerability of questioning things aloud. Of being beginners in each other’s worlds.
‘Fraser, are you saying that we are six years old in one part of the universe, we’re here tonight, and we’re ninety-six somewhere else?’
I reach for her hand. ‘I’m saying we’re on a date in this Italian restaurant, and we’ve been married fifty years.’
A hush seems to suck in all of time.
‘Have we?’ she asks, chestnut flecks shining in her eyes.
I didn’t mean to ask. Not in this specific moment. We just dashed out for a spontaneous meal. She’s in a simple black sundress, straps tied at the shoulders, hair twisted in a casual knot on her head.Would she have wanted this to have been better planned? And for me to produce a ring?
As I meet her wide eyes, an inevitable future seems to reveal itself, rushing and tumbling all the way back to this red-and-white-chequered tablecloth, candlelight flickering across her face—the answer to a question I haven’t yet voiced already in her eyes.
‘Will you?’ I ask her, heart thumping.
‘I already have,’ she replies instantly, reaching across the table with both hands. ‘Isn’t that how this works?’
I’m hit by a calming certainty that this is exactly what we’re meant to do. This is the future we already have, not creating itself but unveiling itself. As our waiter returns, Audrey beams at him. ‘We’re getting married!’ she announces. ‘Shall we have champagne?’
Then she smiles at me. ‘Fraser, I willburstif I have to keep this quiet! Can I at least call Sara and Rach?’
All I can do is stare at her, heart racing. It’s not a sense of events getting away from us, or that we’re rushing things or that I didn’t think this through. It’s that in every corner of time, across every decade, at every age we’ll ever be,I can’t believe this woman is already mine.
If I could marry Audrey without telling my family, I would. As perfect as the gentle falling into the inevitability of this engagement has been, three days later, I’m nervous about breaking the news. I’ve gone on ahead, without her, and I find my parents on their front verandah. In the Miller family, it’s best to navigate information of this magnitude in private.
‘This isn’t a subconscious attempt to one-up your brother, is it, Fraser?’ Mum says, right out of the gate. ‘How does Maggie feel?’
‘Maggie is fine. Parker, more importantly, is thrilled. She’s already practising to be the flower girl.’
I took Maggie out for coffee yesterday. There’s a certain grief associated with moving on, even when Maggie chose to end things. This feels like the final piece of evidence that we failed.
‘She’s good for Parker,’ she conceded, back ramrod straight. ‘And she’s good for you, too, Fraser. You seem happy.’
I wouldn’t say so to her, of course, but this relationship feels like the big bang in my world. The later-in-life origin moment, despite all that came before it.
‘I think it’s wonderful,’ Dad says now. ‘You deserve each other.’ He squeezes my shoulder the way he used to when I was a kid, eyes misting.
‘Oh, here he is!’ Delight spreads across Mum’s face as my brother pulls aggressively into the driveway, classical music blaring from his sleek vehicle, an advertisement for himself as always.
She can’t bustle fast enough down the steps and over to his car.
‘Fraser’s marrying Fickle Sully,’ she announces, before he can even extract himself.
He kills the engine, gets out, slams the door, and kisses Mum on the cheek. ‘You should stop calling her that,’ he says sullenly.
Then he locks darkened eyes with me over Mum’s shoulder and says, ‘Congratulations.’
The attention on my news is fleeting. As they walk up the steps, he brightens and says, ‘You’re looking at the music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic!’ And he punches the air.
While our parents bask in this development, I’m thrown to another part of the eternal timeline. A younger Audrey confiding in him about the plagiarism. His promise to help. The call he made to prioritise himself instead, every notch he’s carved on his career belt since falling into line like dominoes at her expense, right up to this fresh coup in the States.
Mum throws herself into his arms the way she ought to have thrown herself into mine. Josh is the squeaky wheel. He’s the brittle one.You’re not like him, Fraser. You’re logical and sensible and strong. I never have to worry about you.It’s the fallacy that has driven this lifelong orchestration of hushed tones and special allowances that I’m contemplating when she hits us with ‘I assume you have a wedding-related question to ask your brother?’
