NINETEEN
Ella hands me a fresh swaddle. ‘She’s colicky, so just wrap her up like I showed you and rock side-to-side.’
I wrestle the screaming baby into a blanket burrito and gently start rocking her. ‘You’re lucky you’re cute,’ I mutter, but it’s hopeless. Daisy’s voice is strong and surprisingly acoustic. She kicks her legs in response, and I take that as a thank you.
It’s day three of this trip, and I’m not sure if I’m dehydrated or just slowly losing my mind, but somehow being back here feels … weirdly okay.
Which is annoying, because I’m not supposed to like it.
The dirt is too red, the sun too aggressive, and the location too isolating.
Yet there’s something about the vastness of it all – the way the land stretches out endlessly, untouched by skyscrapers and bustling traffic.
It’s the kind of remoteness that lets me sleep better but also drives me insane from the lack of reception.
Around us, the living room is chaos. Suit bag, nappy bags, a forgotten sock on the coffee table, and Darcy muttering something about losing his belt.
‘It’s in the nappy bag,’ Ella calls without looking up.
‘I already checked—’
‘Check again.’
He sighs and rummages deeper in the bag, eventually pulling out the belt with the sheepish expression of a man caught doubting his wife.
Ella hands me a spare swaddle and crouches next to the suitcase. ‘Okay, nappies are packed. Wipes. Toys. Sanity. Have we forgotten anything?’
Darcy looks at her, face full of affection. ‘We’re good to go.’
‘And your parents definitely have the spare bassinet in their car?’
‘Yep. Mum called me just before to say the bassinet is set up in the spare room, and she and Dad are helping Luke get the house ready now.’
‘Right.’ She stands and brushes her hands together. To me, she says, ‘You’re still okay to follow in your rental car? Just in case Daisy has a meltdown and we have to leave earlier. Then Darcy can stay back if he wants.’
‘Yep.’ I nod and pretend that I’m not internally freaking out about the fact that I really should’ve rescheduled this weekend visit and that Luke might genuinely hate my guts.
And not in a flirty ‘I secretly want you’ way – in a ‘Please leave before I call the police’ kind of way.
And what if this … plan – this uninvited, babysitting crashing of a funeral – turns out to be not just insane, but also wildly inappropriate?
What if I get there and someone asks, ‘How did you know the deceased?’ and I have to say, ‘I had emotionally complicated sex with his son.’
Oblivious, Ella gives me grateful smile and takes the crying baby off my hands. ‘You’re a gem.’
We make the two-hour drive to Luke’s farm with no signal, no bars and no hope.
I drive slowly behind Ella and Darcy, eyes scanning the dusty stretch of dirt for anything remotely gate-like.
There’s only bush. Endless, barb-wired, anxiety-inducing bush.
I’m about five seconds from throwing the whole plan out the window when I see it.
A modest gate. A small, handpainted sign nailed to a post: Wirra Station.
My stomach drops. I stop the car and watch Ella get out and open the gate.
Both cars cross the cattle grid before Ella closes the gate behind me and climbs back into her car.
It’s a whole process, made longer by the pounding in my chest and the faint whisper of ‘You’re not invited’ crawling under my skin.
Which shouldn’t bother me as much as it does. But what if I want to be here?
I shake the thought and keep driving.
The dirt road winds through the landscape, soft and dry and full of existential dread. Every bend, every tree stump, makes me reconsider.
Then – finally – I see it.
A house. Modest and charming. Single storey, white timber with a wide wraparound porch that sags in the middle, tired from too many years of holding up grief and weather.
Several cars are parked neatly out front – the quiet, respectful funeral kind of parking that screams that no one’s talking above a whisper right now.
I grip the steering wheel.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
I’m here. I actually did it.
Now all I have to do is get out of the car and walk into the aftermath of someone’s death.
Then face the man who I can’t seem to stop tormenting and insist that I’m here for no other reason than to babysit Daisy.
It’s not a lie but it’s not exactly the whole truth either.
It’s the sort of justification that lands me in trouble ninety- seven per cent of the time.
One hundred per cent doable.
Probably.
I run my hands down my black silk dress and use the rear-view mirror to check my eyeliner, applied that morning with shaky precision.
The next few seconds are spent trying not to think too much.
If I start thinking, I’ll turn the car around.
And if I turn the car around, then none of this ever happened. And I don’t think I want that.
I take a deep breath and open the car door.
The heat hits me like a warning – dry, still, heavy with dust and the kind of silence that feels as if it knows things about you.
I cross the small patch of gravel and head straight for Ella and Darcy’s car. Darcy is halfway through wrangling a pram from the boot while Ella rummages around in a bag for wipes, trying to juggle a newborn who clearly didn’t nap in the car.
‘Here,’ I say, reaching for the baby bag before Ella can drop it. ‘Let me.’
She glances up. ‘You don’t have to—’
‘I know,’ I reply, slinging the strap over my shoulder. ‘But I want to.’
Darcy shoots me a grateful look and silently hands me a stack of baby clothes to shove into the bag. Truthfully, I’m just happy to have something to hold on to. Something to keep my hands busy.
Once Daisy is strapped into the pram, we turn towards the house.
A pair of old work boots sit neatly by the door. A ceramic pot of lavender, mostly dead, slouches near the steps. Wind chimes hang in the corner, swaying in the breeze with that hollow, tinny sound that always makes me feel as if I’ve walked into someone else’s memory.
I follow Ella and Darcy up the wooden porch steps, each one creaking beneath me. The screen door groans as they ease it open and step inside.
The air smells like him – earth and eucalyptus – with something citrusy underneath, maybe lemon, maybe wood polish, maybe just time. It’s the kind of smell that seeps into floorboards and skin and becomes part of the house itself.
Darcy places the bags down as I move through the hallway on autopilot, my chest tightening with every step until I find myself at the back of the house.
Through the open doors, I see Darcy’s parents, Sophia and James, alongside dozens of other people under the wide canopy of a swamp bloodwood tree.
The deep pink blossoms are in full bloom, bright and lively and wrong.
Too vibrant, too beautiful for a day like this.
Several of them fall in slow-motion flurries onto the red soil and dusty shrubs – confetti at the wrong kind of party.
I freeze.
My feet stop at the top step.
I can’t go any further.
A wave of nausea rolls through me. This was a mistake. A colossal, reckless, what-the-hell-was-I-thinking mistake.
Daisy cries.
I blink and turn in time to see Ella gather her crying baby into her arms and duck towards a bedroom to breastfeed.
Darcy breaks away when he spots someone he knows in the crowd outside.
Still clutching the baby bag, I turn back around and watch people mill about, wondering what the hell I’m supposed to do now.
Sophia Thornwood floats by with a tray of empty wine glasses. She pauses beside me and says, ‘Would you be able to grab the other tray for me, darling?’
I follow her gaze and spot the second tray on the kitchen bench. ‘Of course,’ I say, grateful to be put to use. More people shuffle down the hallway, wearing various masks of grief. I pop the baby bag in the room with Ella and then busy myself with helping Sophia in the kitchen.
My head is buried in napkin folding when Ella reappears with a sated Daisy. ‘Hey,’ she says softly. ‘You good?’
I glance up and smile awkwardly. ‘Yeah. You?’
Ella gives me a knowing look, then says, ‘I asked him if it was okay if you came, given you’d already planned this trip, and he said it was fine.’
I chew on my bottom lip.
‘If it’s too awkward, we can—’
Holding my hand up, I cut her off. ‘It’s fine. I just feel a little out of place, but don’t worry about me. You should hand Daisy over and go mingle. I’m on babysitting duty, remember?’
‘How could I forget?’ she says, smiling.
‘Ready?’ Darcy appears beside Ella. Outside, everyone has congregated under the flowering tree, and we trail through the back doors to join them.
I stick to the edge of the crowd, content to watch from a distance as person after person steps up to talk about a man I never met.
It all feels too intimate and too painful for someone like me to witness.
A stranger surrounded by people grieving.
A speaker crackles to life. ‘True Blue’ by John Williamson drifts out into the wide, open sky.
The first few notes fall, and everything else follows.
Someone starts crying – soft at first, then harder.
A woman clutches a man’s arm. A teen wipes his sleeve across his face.
The pink flowers shimmer above it all, and beneath them, a man I never knew is lowered into the ground.
I don’t move.
I don’t breathe.
I simply stand there – in the shadow of a stranger’s house, watching a group of people say goodbye to someone they loved while I try not to come undone over a man who probably never wants to see me again.
The casket hits the earth with a hollow finality that echoes all the way through me.
People begin to drift around the tree. Quiet voices. Soft footsteps on red dirt. Tissues crumpled in jacket pockets. It’s the strangest sort of ending – both heavy and delicate.
I look past them, and I see Luke.
Sandy blond hair brushed roughly into place.
His dimples are absent, along with that trademark spark in his blue eyes, now swallowed by the shadows beneath them.
Even his usual squared and stubborn posture has folded in on itself.
All six-foot-something of him curled inwards like one of the neighbouring trees in the peak of summer.
He stands a few metres away, his hands in his pockets, head slightly bowed as if still tethered to the patch of dirt where his father now rests beside his mother.
Two other strangers start shovelling dirt on top of the casket, and my heart aches to imagine what he must be feeling at the sight of it.
He hasn’t seen me yet.
I clear my throat and shuffle closer. Ella’s watching me as I hand her a sleeping Daisy, perhaps debating whether or not to grab my arm and stage a casual, whisper-fuelled intervention. But she doesn’t.
I cross the space between us, one tentative step at a time, until I can see the grief etched on his face. It halts me in my tracks. I don’t say a word.
Because he looks … lost.
Not in the usual way, the emotionally distant, romantically inconvenient way I know so well. In the real way. The ‘I don’t know who I am without them’ way. The ‘I haven’t slept in weeks and today I buried my last parent’ kind of way.
I almost turn around. Almost.
Instead, I say the first thing that comes to mind. ‘I forgot how good you look in a suit.’
Slowly, he turns to face me.
His eyes are red. His skin is dull with exhaustion. He looks like someone who’s been carrying the entire family name on his shoulders for years and now realises he can’t hand it off to anyone else.
Yet he still manages to muster the faintest smirk at my comment. ‘Is that supposed to be a compliment?’
I shrug. ‘Honestly, my ears are still ringing from Daisy crying, so I’m not operating at peak wit today.’
He exhales a half laugh, short and rough.
It’s not much. But it’s something.
‘Thanks,’ he says eventually.
I frown. ‘For what?’
‘For taking my mind off the fact that I just buried my dad. Even for a minute.’
I shift, awkward in my heels, my arms crossed as if they might hold me together.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. And I mean it. For the funeral. For everything.
He shakes his head. ‘You don’t have to be. You’re not cancer.’
I smile, tight and shaky. ‘I mean … I could be.’
That gets a real laugh.
We fall into silence, staring at the space where his father was laid to rest. Someone calls out Luke’s name. He turns his head briefly, lifts a hand to wave them off.
When he looks back at me, his expression is unreadable. ‘You’re staying here tonight with Ella and Darcy?’
I look down at my black heels, already covered in red dirt. ‘I, um … If that’s alright with you. I came in a separate car, though, so I can leave if—’
‘Stay,’ he says.
I look up, meeting his eyes.
He clears his throat. ‘I told Ella it was fine. There’s plenty of room anyway.’
The words hit me like an old love song I forgot I knew the lyrics to.
I blink once. Twice.
Then I nod.
Luke gives me a small nod back.