2012/Cronulla Marine Supplies

Zed takes a pile of envelopes from the letterbox and turns back towards the porch, his keys dangling from his hand. I am irritated to see him here, like this, doing ordinary daily things as if he is a regular person. He isn’t. It’s his fault Elijah is gone. Zed came into our lives and changed Elijah in a way that led to his end. I wish we’d never met him. I decide I’m going to tell Zed this now, to his face, in a way I haven’t had the chance to. I unclick my seatbelt and unlock the door.

There is a chime inside my bag.

I pick up my phone and see it’s a message from Dad. A close-up picture of a bird, small and beautiful: electric blue, with a black beak and wingtips. A fanned tail.

Just saw this. Superb. Literally – a superb fairy wren.

Dad and Rebekah are spending more time together. Not romantically: mostly they walk. Her once-dark hair is streaked with silver, thick strands like wire. I don’t know whether it’s because she no longer dyes it, or if it was the shock of it all. When she and Dad walk she links her arm through his and they cling to each other like barnacles. It isn’t a romantic love anymore, but they do need each other. They are bound by loss; if they let go of the other completely they might fall off the face of the earth.

I look back to Zed and think about what he said about his own father. That he hadn’t seen him since he was six years old. I have an image of him then: Zed as a boy, sitting cross-legged on the floor with eyes full of hope. It seems a cruel age: old enough to realise but too young to make any sense of it. For a moment I see Elijah and Zed as just two adolescents who egged each other on to explore new freedoms. Slow down, Elijah had said that night we were all spinning in the car. He didn’t say Stop. Is my anger at Zed misplaced? Two boys got in over their heads, but only one made it back to the shore. Am I mad because it wasn’t the one I expected? I don’t know.

When I drove here, I had visions of pounding on Zed’s door, of screaming through wood – and then when the door opened, standing so close that he would feel my spittle land. I’m livid: that Elijah’s dead; that Zed facilitated his access; at my mother’s infidelity; at Dad’s passivity; at my own poor judgement and failings; and that Zed treats our relationship as if it means nothing. All that fury rolled into sticks, taped together like a bundle of gelignite, daring me to light it.

‘YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE GIVEN HIM DRUGS!’ I’d yell. It’s only now with a twist of clarity I can see, standing right next to Zed on the porch, that the other recipient of my rage is myself. That perhaps I’d handed Zed too great a share of that package.

Even though I thought I wouldn’t go back to the counsellor with the scrunchie, I did. She was the one who helped me plan how to tell my parents about the diazepam I gave Elijah. I was surprised when Rebekah told me not to blame myself, and Dad said that my brother had made his own decisions; I felt they were letting me off too easily.

In my counselling sessions we talk a lot about how, whatever I might or could take away from Zed, it would never equal Elijah. She and I are working on forgiveness, for both Zed and for myself.

On days like today it feels a long way away, but I’m walking towards it.

Rebekah is playing the cello again. After Elijah was found she stopped almost instantly. I went to see her perform last week, in a small ensemble put together for the Sydney Festival. She’d performed ‘Gymnopédie No 1’ in a transcription for cello, a reimagining she’d written for herself. Her performance was a startling display of emotion and it was clear to me, from the energy in the notes, that she was playing it for Elijah. As I watched her, I also came to the realisation that she was far better at communication through cello than through words: that music was her preferred dialect.

Dad came to the performance too, and he looked genuinely pleased to watch my mother play. Afterwards the three of us had supper, so I guess it was more than just loss. His presence there held the same compassionate, optimistic grace that it always has; it makes me think that perhaps it’s possible for families to come apart yet hold at the same time. Crumbling might not always signify destruction, but change.

My loosened seatbelt snakes all the way back over my shoulder, and at the same time the front door of the house opens before Zed reaches it. A woman walks out to greet him. She’s carrying something on her hip. I recognise her from the funeral. She reaches up and puts an arm around his shoulder and kisses him. It takes me a moment to register that it’s a baby she’s carrying. It’s sitting up in a polka-dot jumpsuit, clinging to her side. Zed runs his fingers over the infant’s cheek. The milky chubbiness of the baby’s thighs reflects the light. As I grapple with the fact that Zed has brought a new person into the world, I am ashamed of the destructive impulse that led me here and decide not to get out of the car after all. I refasten my seatbelt.

My phone makes a mechanical hum as it vibrates in my hand. I answer it before it can ring.

Hyun.

‘Hey,’ I say.

‘Hey, what’s up? You still using my car?’

‘Yeah, thanks. I’m nearly done. I can drop it back to your place.’

‘A few of my housemates are thinking about camping this weekend at Burning Palms, you’re welcome to come.’

‘Are you sure there’s room?’

‘There’s always room, for you.’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ I say, flushing in response to his safe love.

‘You could bring your surfboard?’

‘Ah, I’m pretty rusty.’

‘Anyway, no rush, I’ll see you later on.’

‘Okay, thanks again for the car. I’ll see you soon.’

There is an ease in the way I speak to Hyun, even though we haven’t officially been together for that long. We started off just talking about books but somehow the conversation kept branching. I told him about Elijah, how I used to be a sister. Not all the details yet, but that he died. Hyun is a good listener and makes me feel more normal than I do at other times. The friends he lives with always joke around and make me laugh unexpectedly. There is something exciting about our relationship, and the way that it is just starting, but feels old.

Zed walks into the house with his new family and I put the car into gear. That’s the hardest part now: the beginnings and beginnings and beginnings. The placing of more time and space between my brother and me; how Zed, Rebekah, Dad and I all receive something else, and Elijah doesn’t.