Rachael and Audrey used to psychoanalyse Maggie. They concocted some theory that she tolerated Audrey but mistrusted Rachael ever since her joke that I was her ‘beloved’ outside the concert the night they all met.
‘Do you think we could go for a walk?’ I ask, light changing through the window, summer sun sinking towards the Brindabella mountains to our west, streaky clouds promising the kind of glorious sunset I know Rachael loves. ‘Seeing the sun go down on Audrey’s final day feels important.’
Rach’s stoic expression collapses, and as she moves off the sofa, I grab her hand. I can sense the energy it’s taking for her to stay strong for my sake, and she doesn’t need to. ‘I’m so sorry you’ve lost her, too.’
She doesn’t speak. Just gives me a small smile and goes to put on shoes, while I return to my phone, and to Maggie.
I’m not home yet. Will be later. Thanks for food. Can I pick it up in the morning?
She calls me immediately. ‘Fraser, I need to know you’re okay.’
The sound of Maggie’s voice, so normal and familiar and …alive, seems to ground me in the fresh hell of my reality. I can see her, perched on the edge of the grey sofa we bought together during the Boxing Day sales several years ago. The one we watched Netflix on and argued on and broke up on.
Unspoken guilt hangs in the gulf between us. About today. About how Audrey died. If either of us had made a different choice this afternoon, if one of us had picked up that call and gone to the school instead … If we’d arrived there in her place like we should have, since Parker is ours …
‘It was one of those freak accidents,’ I say, uttering words you hear on the news. Not out of your own mouth, about your meant-to-be wife.
Is anything like this ever really an accident?Audrey always believed our heartbeats were numbered, that our deaths were set down in some cosmic script that couldn’t be edited, no matterhow much we tried to interfere with it. It’s how she made sense of things when she lost someone.It was always going to be this way, she would say.This was their inevitable story.
But everything about losing her in this chaotic turn of events is wrong. My body burns for that whiskey. Instead, I pour myself a glass of water and listen for Maggie’s voice. Not the psychiatrist. Not my ex-wife. Just a fellow human being, caught in life’s stranglehold.
It should have been me. I should be dead.I’m seeing spots. Everything is seizing up and shutting down, as if I’m barely clinging to this world myself.
‘Just breathe, Fraser.’ I know she’s issuing the instruction to us both. That voice, the one I’ve fallen in and out of love with over the years, feels like an island, as she pulls me from this storm. There’s a level of compassion in her tone that we lost towards the end. Somehow, despite everything we’ve been through, the intimacy we once shared and that we lost still has sufficient power left to cradle this interaction.
‘Are you safe?’ she asks, just as Rachael reappears in running shoes, pulling her hair into a ponytail. Maggie knows about the depression. We’ve never had any secrets, particularly when we share custody of Parker. It’s a salient question. All I’ve thought about the last two hours is how and when I could end this unbearable pain.
I watch as Rachael fishes one of those pocket packs of tissues out of her handbag and waves it at me as if to say,We’ve got this.
Am I safe?
‘I will be. Thanks for the call, Maggie. I’ll see you tomorrow.’And we will break this to Parker.
Rachael and I make it to the other side of the Acton Peninsula, near the National Museum of Australia, about five minutes before the sun kisses the horizon. We’re the only ones here, as if the world knows we need space for what feels like a sacred moment of goodbye. When the sun makes its bed of pink and red and purple above the mountains and drops slowly out of sight, the grief cascades through my body, weakening me with every passing realisation of all that we’ve lost. Every plan we made. All the unmet dreams. The travels. The simple nights at home with beans on toast. The midnight conversations in each other’s arms under the covers. All the ways we would have helped each other through every challenge and parented Parker together in this patchwork family.
The sky erupts in ever more dazzling oranges and deep reds, then fades as twilight creeps in and the evening star appears. And I am cracked open by a violent flash flood of despair that carves valleys to depths I didn’t know existed. This agony will tear me inside out, every nerve exposed until I’m so frayed, my skin so raw from pain, I’m scared that Rachael will touch me in comfort and I’ll just …combust.
And when equally violent sobs erupt, I can barely tell if they are mine or hers—our grief entwined as darkness descends and the one we love grows even more silent, while the two of us just fall and fall and fall …
‘I need to see Sara,’ I explain as we amble back. I can’t bear the thought of breaking the news that she’s lost her sister, sentencing her, or perhaps me, to making an awful call to their parents, whose bags were already packed to fly from Queensland to Canberra tomorrow for Saturday’s wedding. It all happened so fast this afternoon. I’d called Sara on the way to the hospital, but she hadn’t picked up.
‘We should go now,’ Rachael says. ‘Before it gets too late.’
Before long, we’ve driven over and we’re standing at Sara’s door, not far from Rachael’s place, in Turner.
Rachael’s mouth is moving. Somehow mine won’t. All I hear is static.
And as the information lands and Sara’s face splinters, I can barely witness her distress. It’s unfathomable, losing a sibling. The rest of us only share scenes. Sisters appear in every chapter, from the opening sentence to the very last page.
So do brothers.
I turn this around in my mind, imagining Audrey telling Josh if it were me.What would his face have done?And now I’m down a mental path where I call him tonight and tell him what’s happened here, needing his support, having him smash back a serve of Main Character grief that I cannot be expected to help him through. I can barely hold myself up.
Rachael sweeps Sara into a hug, and we promise to meet her tomorrow and do whatever it is that grieving families do the day after their person has died, when there’s meant to be an imminent wedding.
Before Rachael turns on the engine, I say, ‘The logical thing is to keep the booking in the church. Everyone’s got it in their calendar. Food is booked. We could have a memorial for Audrey now and a smaller event next week at the crematorium, family only. And you, obviously.’
Rachael stares at me, and it’s unclear if she’s horrified, impressed or relieved.
