28. Dane Gallagher
Dane Gallagher
This doesn’t feel real.
I stand at the front door, Charlotte beside me, and we’re both looking at the house. It seems bigger than I remember. Or maybe I’ve just spent fourteen years getting used to whatever shelter we could build ourselves.
The garden’s been kept up—trimmed, watered. Someone’s been looking after it. The cream stone hasn’t changed. I notice the color straight away, still as clean as the day we left.
I push the key into the lock and open the door.
The smell hits first—stuffy but clean. A house that’s been cared for without being lived in. Not dusty. Not abandoned.
Just waiting for our return.
I step inside, and Charlotte follows.
“We’re home.”
I nod. “Yeah.”
It takes a moment to sink in.
We move through the house, room by room. No rush. No need to fill the silence. Just looking. The kitchen. The living areas. Outside, the pool sits still and blue, untouched.
The bedrooms.
Charlotte pauses in the doorway of her old room. I hang back, watching her look around at a space built for someone younger.
Something shifts in her face, then she moves on.
My room’s the same, pieces of a life that stopped at twelve. It doesn’t feel like mine anymore. More like something that’s been kept as it was.
Then we reach Mum and Dad’s room.
We both stop.
“So,” Charlotte says.
“Yeah.”
It’s bigger than the others by a long way. A proper bed. Space that actually works for two people. I glance back down the hall at the smaller rooms and try to picture us in them. It doesn’t fit.
“It would feel strange sleeping in their room.”
I nod. “Yeah. But it’s the only one that makes sense. We’re not eleven and twelve anymore, Char.”
She’s quiet for a second. “No, we’re not.”
“Those rooms belong to the kids we used to be.”
She looks back into the master suite. The bed is made, everything in its place—clean in that maintained, untouched way that says nobody actually lives here.
“I’ll buy new sheets when I go to the shops. But for now, I’ll strip the bed and wash everything.”
We open the windows and doors and let the house breathe. It slowly starts to feel less frozen in time and a little more lived in.
We’re in the middle of making the place our own—Charlotte remaking the bed, me clearing Tara’s and Dad’s clothes from the wardrobe to make room for ours—when the doorbell rings.
We both stop. She looks at me from across the room, and I look back.
“Probably Grandad,” she says. “Checking on us.”
Maybe.
I head downstairs and open the door.
The three faces on the other side don’t register immediately.
Then something clicks.
Quick.
Familiar in a way that reaches all the way back.
“Mate,” the tallest one says.
The voice is deeper than I remember, the voice of a grown man now, but I know it straight away.
Lachlan. Brayden. Jarrah.
We played footy. Rode bikes. Got into the kind of trouble twelve-year-old boys get into when no one’s paying enough attention. Then I got on a boat and didn’t come back.
And they kept going.
I see it now, standing here. They’re not boys anymore. They’ve grown into themselves in ways I wasn’t around to see. It hits me for the first time—time didn’t stop just because I disappeared.
Lachie moves first, grabbing me, pulling me in. A proper hug without hesitation or holding back. It goes longer than it should, but neither of us pulls away.
Brayden’s next. Hard clap on the back, then he wraps me up the same way.
Jarrah hangs back a second, then steps in—hand to the back of my neck. Doesn’t say anything.
“Come in,” I say, once I find my voice.
We end up in the kitchen where Charlotte is.
“Charlotte, these are the blokes I grew up with—Lachlan, Brayden, Jarrah.”
She smiles. “I remember you. Nice to see you again.”
All three of them look at her at once. There’s a brief pause where no one says anything. I can see it—trying to reconcile the kid they remember with the woman standing in front of them now.
“Right,” she says, pushing off the counter. “I’ll leave you to it. You’ve got a lot to catch up on.” A brief glance at me. “I’ve got plenty to do around here.”
She heads off toward the laundry. I follow her with my eyes for a second, then turn back.
Brayden lasts about a second.
“Mate,” he says, still looking down the hallway she disappeared into. “Your sister—”
“Don’t.”
“I’m just saying—”
“I know exactly what you’re going to say, Bray. Don’t.”
Jarrah drops his gaze straight away. Lachie lets out a quiet laugh, not helping.
Brayden shakes his head, like he’s genuinely thrown. “Nah, but—bloody hell. She’s—” He gestures, searching for something that fits and not finding it. “That’s not what I expected.”
“Stop.”
“I’m serious. She’s a proper stunner.” He glances at me, then back toward the hall like he can still see her there. “You were stuck out there with her all those years, I reckon I would’ve—”
“Don’t finish that sentence.”
He does anyway, because he always does. “—had a real hard time remembering she was my sister.”
“Brayden—” Lachie warns.
“Not saying I would’ve.” He scrubs a hand over his face, trying to backtrack. “Because that’d be fucked up.”
“Shut the fuck up about Charlotte. I mean it.”
The room goes quiet.
He lifts his hands. “All right. Fair. No bloke wants to hear that kind of talk about his sister.”
Lachie’s still watching me, a bit more serious now.
“Since when are you like this though? You used to hate her.”
I think about it for a second.
“I was a brat. Thought I knew everything when really I didn’t know a fucking thing.” I shake my head. “I wasn’t good to her, but I should’ve been.”
A quiet look passes between Lachie and Jarrah.
“Things have changed between us. That’s all.”
They leave it there.
“It’s good to have you back, mate,” Lachie says after a moment. “Feels like seeing a ghost.”
I chuckle. “There were a few times I thought I was about to become one.”
“Mate, you’re everywhere,” Brayden says, already reaching for his phone.
“News. Online. All over it.” Lachie shakes his head. “It’s wild.”
I shrug. “We heard.”
“What actually happened out there?” Brayden asks.
“Yeah, how’d you not die?” Lachie adds, half-laughing.
I lean back against the counter, trying to keep it easy. “Figured it out as we went.” A small shrug. “Ate far too much fish.”
That gets a laugh out of them, and thankfully they leave it there.
“Living on an island with your sister is pretty uninteresting stuff. I’d rather hear about you lot. What’ve you been up to?”
Lachie goes first.
“I’m married. Her name’s Sienna. She’s a teacher. Absolute saint, honestly, for putting up with me.”
“Has to be,” Brayden says.
Lachie grins. “Yeah, well. She reckons I’ve got potential.”
Brayden punches Lachie’s upper arm. “You don’t.”
“Shut up.” Lachie shakes his head, smiling, but there’s something softer underneath it now. “We’ve got a boy on the way. Due in six weeks. Gonna call him Fletcher.”
Well, fuck.
That lands a little differently than I expect.
“I’m a bit cooked about it, to be honest. The whole thing. The birth.”
I nod. “You’ll be all right. Just deal with what’s in front of you.”
He draws in a breath and lets it out slowly, like even saying it aloud makes the whole thing feel more real.
Brayden jumps in before the silence can settle. “I’m still living the dream. Single and on the apps.”
I look at him. “On the apps? What is that?”
He grins. “Dating apps, mate. On your phone. You just—scroll, match, chat. Easy.” He leans in slightly. “Plenty of girls on there. You’d do all right. Good-looking bloke, full head of hair. You’re already ahead of half the blokes our age.”
I hadn’t realized hair was such a selling point. Looking at Jarrah’s shaved head, maybe there’s something to it.
“I’m just saying.” Brayden shrugs. “You’ve been off the grid for fourteen years. Time to catch up, yeah?”
“I think I’ve got a few other things to catch up on first.”
He laughs. “Fair enough. But when you’re ready—” he taps his phone “—I’ll sort you out.”
“Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind.”
I don’t tell him I already have the only woman I’ll ever want.
I take out the phone Grandad got for me, and he rattles off his number.
Still getting used to it. Thinner. Faster. Does too much.
“Mate, you don’t have to hunt and peck it,” Brayden says. “It’s not a typewriter.”
“I’m aware.”
He laughs.
Jarrah’s quieter. Always has been.
“What about you, Jay?”
“Yeah, I’ve been seeing someone. Mackenzie. It’s been a few months now. It was on and off at first, but it’s settling into something more serious.”
I nod. “Good on you, mate.”
He nods back once.
It winds down the way these things do—no clear ending, just a gradual shift. Keys in hands, phones checked, that quiet drift toward the door.
“We’ll do a catch-up soon,” Lachie says. “Go for a beer or something.”
“Yeah, I’d like that. Still haven’t actually had a beer.”
He pauses, thrown. “Hadn’t even thought about that.” Then a crooked grin. “Reckon that means you haven’t had a woman either. That’s rough, mate.”
You’ve got that one wrong, Lachie. Very wrong.
We talk for a while after that. Nothing heavy. Nothing that needs pulling apart. Just the kind of easy conversation I didn’t realize I’d missed until I’m standing there in the middle of it.
Eventually, it’s time for them to head off.
Lachie pulls me in—quick, solid. “Good to have you back, mate.”
Brayden lingers a second, gives me a look—half apology, half you know how I am.
“Good to see you,” he says.
“Yeah.”
Jarrah’s last out, pausing at the door. “Good to have you back.”
“Good to be back.”
Then they’re gone.
Charlotte comes into the kitchen a few minutes later.
“How was your visit?”
“Good—strange—but good.”
She hops up onto the counter, feet swinging, watching me. “You look like you’re thinking about something.”
I lean back against the counter opposite her and meet her eyes. “Brayden said a few things about you. I didn’t like it. And I had to react like your brother. Not like—” I stop.
“Not like my husband,” she says.
“Yeah.”
She nods. “Understandable.”