BRUNO GOES OFF SHIFT and returns home to find a note from his brother.
At Dad’s. Cleaning up.
He showers and tries to nap.
It’s no good.
He knows why. He needs to do his part.
Needs to, whether he likes it or not.
Forever and ever.
The Karras family home is a low-set brown-brick building, well back from the water in Labrador. It’s the sort of place that will never be a holiday rental. Too ugly, too lived-in. Bruno loves the house, but he knows that its sunny aura is just the overlay of memory. It’s all the Christmases and birthdays that happened inside. The bunk beds with Thunderbirds sheets. Home-cooking and board games. It’s where he grew up.
It’s still dusk when he arrives, and yet his siblings have every light on. As Bruno steps in, he finds Danny standing knee-deep in brown cardboard boxes, holding two identical glass vases. ‘I don’t even remember these,’ he says, grinning. ‘Do you remember them?’
Bruno shakes his head.
‘Remember what?’ says a voice. It’s his sister, Gracie. She comes to the mouth of the hallway, her hair pushed back under a blue bandana. ‘Look what the cat dragged in.’
Gracie’s daughter Megan appears by her side. She’s five years old and shy.
‘Hey, Megan. What are you doing back there?’ says Bruno.
‘Grandpa has a lot of old stuff,’ the little girl says.
Gracie pats the kid’s hair.
‘We’re really doing this, huh?’ says Bruno.
‘It seems like it,’ says Danny.
Gracie rolls her eyes. ‘It’s not that bad.’
Over the course of a few hours, the siblings declutter and pack. There are three piles forming: one for the dump, one for the op shop and one to keep. Bruno works in the study. He disposes of paperweights, a desk lamp and his father’s collection of small business periodicals—the sort of thing Bruno couldn’t imagine anyone reading once, let alone archiving. He sorts through a decade of his father’s taxes, dumping the majority of it. For what it’s worth, their father’s death wasn’t legally complicated. He had a will. His affairs were in order. Which is worse, in the scheme of things.
It all started with their mother. Bernadette. She died when Bruno was sixteen years old. Cancer, caught late, meaning the entire ordeal was mercifully swift. She was gone inside of five months, but her death was no quiet journey into the afterlife. Bernadette died miserable, with a hundred unsaid things left inside of her. For the rest of them, the loss lingered, turning up all sorts of damage later on. They were never quite the same.
Fifteen years later, it’s Dad’s turn. Lung disease.
It’s almost as if Bruno’s life has neat cycles.
His birth to his mother’s death.
Her death to his father’s death.
Except this is Dad. He’s the fucking sun. The tireless career man. The single parent. The church-goer and dutiful ALP man. When the world slowly destroys this man, it rots the footings, and under the footings, there’s only sand, all the way down.
That’s not even the worst of it. The worst part is that the old man feels the dread too. Can’t fight it off for his children. There’s been too much trouble in his life and now it’s caught up with him. He can’t cope. Desperate, dying, mad, he does a terrible thing. He waits until Bruno and Danny are up the shops, then he visits the kitchen pantry and reaches into the place where Bruno keeps his service revolver during after-work visits. With the gun in hand, he goes to the garage, takes two puffs on one last illicit cigarette before putting the gun in his mouth.
It takes them an hour to find the body.
It’s agony when they do.
Then the aftermath causes further heartbreak for Bruno at work.
A Queensland policeman is in command of his firearm at all times.
He’s responsible.
Bruno squats in the garage and looks at the spot where his father’s blood used to be. He touches it and has instant recall; not to his father’s body, but to something else: the blood under the carpet of the O’Grady’s master bedroom.
Is this progress?
Could be.
‘There you are,’ says Gracie.
His sister stands in the doorway, the yard light illuminating her figure. ‘Danny said you were struggling. I’m sorry I’ve been pushy of late. I’ve got—’
Bruno stands. ‘Nah, it’s okay. We had to do it.’
‘We’re behind on the mortgage,’ Gracie says. ‘Gareth’s work is slow.’
‘It’s fine,’ says Bruno. ‘Really.’
‘I should have said this a while back, but I can’t believe that Dad did this to you. Some days I hate him for it.’
‘Yeah, me too. He knew I put the gun in the pantry because I was scared Megan would touch it. It just got to be a habit. I wanted to be here with him so much that I got sloppy.’
‘He was out of his mind. I keep telling myself that.’ His sister looks around the shed. ‘It’s a shit place to die, isn’t it? I had visions of holding his hand in some hospital bed or something.’
Gracie comes closer and hugs him.
There’s a pause.
She lets go. ‘Okay, I better get home. I’ve had enough for one day. What are you doing?’
‘I’m going out. I’m gonna have a couple of drinks and decompress.’
‘Sounds like a good idea.’
Bruno smiles. ‘Ask me tomorrow.’
‘You taking Danny?’
‘No. He’s too pretty.’