the sun was coming in through the blinds. Strips of sunlight ran across my desk, the floor, and up onto my bed. There were dust motes drifting in and out of the lines of light. The doona was pulled up under my chin.
Lying there, I remembered that Mum hadn’t come. She hadn’t come to stand next to me like she’d stood next to Ray. She hadn’t come and told me that she loved me just as much as she loved Jazzie, when I needed to hear it most.
I rolled away from the window towards the door, and that was when I saw Dad. He was sitting in the soft chair from his and Mum’s room. It was squished between my desk and bed, set up at an angle where he could rest his feet on the end of my mattress. He was dressed and shaven, his hair washed and brushed, maybe even cut. He was reading a newspaper, gently turning each page, looking down through his half-framed grandpa glasses, the ones that Mum used to tease him about.
When Dad glanced up as if he was doing a scheduled check, he caught me looking at him. ‘Well, hello, decided to join us, did you?’
I smiled but didn’t say anything.
He came over and sat next to me on the bed. ‘You with us this time?’
‘Yeah, think so.’
‘You know how long you’ve been asleep for?’
I glanced out the window. ‘Don’t know, an hour, maybe two?’
‘Try three days.’
‘What?’ I shuffled myself up in bed. My body felt weak and floppy. Everything went a bit hazy for a moment before it came back into focus.
‘Do you remember anything after you collapsed on the floor?’
‘No …’ But even as I said it, I had visions of Dad walking me to the toilet, Dad asking me if I wanted something to eat, Dad telling me I should drink something.
‘You’ve had us all worried. We’ve had the doctor out here to see you twice.’
‘How many days?’ I asked again, not quite believing.
‘The police were here not yesterday but the day before, in the morning. So, today’s the third day, but I guess if you add it up in hours, it’s really only two days. All the same, it seems like a bloody long time.’
‘Did I bang my head?’
‘No, nothing like that. The doctor said it’s probably stress. He said you were taking on too much.’
I felt like I was trying to swim to the surface of something, get my head above water where I would have a clearer vision, be able to breathe.
Dad kept talking. ‘Exhaustion, the doctor said, but I wasn’t convinced. Me, Ray, and Scott have been keeping a vigil. Making sure you kept on breathing.’
‘Uncle Scott’s back?’
‘Not back as in living here, but he’s been coming around to help out. He sat here with you while I went and bought a bit of food and got my hair cut yesterday.’
So, he had had his haircut. As much as I didn’t want Uncle Scott back living here again, taking over as if he was the boss of all of us, I was relieved to hear that him and Dad were friends again.
‘You hungry? You must be starving.’
My stomach was grumbling, not in a hungry way though, more of an indecisive growl, wondering whether to vomit or not. ‘No, I don’t want anything, just yet.’
‘You got to eat, mate.’
‘Yeah, sure, but not just yet.’
Dad reached out and put his hand on my leg that was covered by the doona. ‘Did you hear what the police were talking about the other day?’
I started to cry without any warning at all.
Dad got up from the chair and came and sat on the bed, scooping me up into a big hug. ‘I’m here. I promise. I’m here.’
I cried harder.
‘I know I’ve been gone, but I’m back now. I’m not going anywhere. There’s nothing more important in this world than you and Ray. I mean that, Luka, nothing more important.’
The relief was physical. It washed through my body, making me feel heavy, like I was sinking into the mattress.
Dad sat back from me, still holding my shoulders. ‘Do you want to talk? Tell me what’s going on?’
I didn’t, but the words jumped out before I could stop them. ‘She chose Jazzie over me.’ The words were wet and soggy, difficult to understand.
‘What did you say?’
It was my chance to say ‘nothing’, to go back to crying and worrying about everyone else, but I couldn’t, it was as if the words had made up their own mind and they wanted out. ‘Mum chose Jazzie over me,’ I said, clearly now, almost angrily.
‘Oh, Luka, that’s so not true.’ Dad tried to come in for another hug, but I dodged him and thumped him hard in the middle of his chest.
‘She chose Jazzie over me! Jazzie over me! She wouldn’t have done it for me! She wouldn’t have come into my school if there was a bomb there. She would have stayed here, with Jazzie.’
Dad didn’t try and hug me again. He stayed sitting where he was, close enough that I could smell the shaving cream he used and the lemon-scented washing powder Mum had always used. My body was trembling, as if it feared the things I was saying. I wanted to scream and thrash until everything in the room was turned upside down, until everything was broken, until everyone knew that my mum had loved Jazzie more than me.
‘Your mum loved you, Luka, very much, mate. As much as she loved Jazzie.’ His hand was on my leg again, holding it firmly. He looked thoughtful. ‘You know all those nights and days that I stayed in bed? Well, I had exactly the same thought, that your mum had chosen Jazzie over me. I felt terrible for thinking that way, but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t understand why your mum would risk everything we had. She was the love of my life, mate. But now she’s gone, not because she had to, but because she chose to.’ Dad had a vacant, faraway look in his eye. I didn’t know whether he was somewhere with Mum or back in his room with the blinds pulled up, missing her so desperately that all he could do was sink deeper and deeper into the black nothing that had threatened to suffocate him.
For a moment, I thought I was going to have to get strong again, that I was going to have to be the one looking after Dad instead of the other way around, but then Dad brought his eyes back to mine. His eyes were sad and tired, but they were looking at me.
He sighed and squeezed my leg. ‘But you know, Luka, just like I do, that Mum didn’t choose Jazzie over me or you or Ray. She chose Jazzie because Jazzie was the one who needed her, because she knew how scared Jazzie would be, locked up in a kindy with a guy threatening to blow them all up.’ He was crying now but kept going. ‘I don’t believe your mum went in there thinking she was going to be killed. I don’t think it was some sacrificial act of love. You know your mum, she was the eternal optimist. Remember how she’d always say, “Don’t worry, love, everything will work out in the end.” And she would have thought that. She would have thought she was just going in to hold Jazzie’s hand, that’s all. It never would have entered her head that she wasn’t coming out.’ Dad was quiet again. He picked up my hand and held it between his two huge hands. ‘I’m not saying she wouldn’t have gone in there if she’d known she was going to die. I think she probably would have. You kids were everything to her, there’s no way she would let any of you suffer without being right there alongside of you. But if she’d known that was it, that she wasn’t going to see us again, she would have rung me, Luka, she would have rung to say goodbye.’
I doubted that was true. I doubted Mum would have given Dad the chance to try and convince her that she shouldn’t go into the kindy. But I didn’t say anything; I let Dad believe what he needed to believe.
‘She would have done the same for you or Ray. Would have thrown herself in front of a Mack truck for any of you. But she wouldn’t have done it for me.’ Dad spoke the last sentence so softly that it was hard to hear him. ‘It’s a funny thing, that, the way a woman loves her kids, it’s completely different to the way she loves her man. She wouldn’t have done it for me because she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving you guys behind.’
‘But she loved you too, Dad.’
‘Yeah, I know that, mate. I don’t doubt it. Not for a second. But it was never as much as she loved you, your sister, and your brother. That’s how it’s supposed to be. Don’t ever doubt her, it wouldn’t be fair; it would make her life seem like it had been a waste of time. Nothing would devastate her more than you doubting her love. She would see that as a huge failure – the most important thing in the world to her was being the mother of you three kids.’
Mum hadn’t failed, I knew that. I knew that she’d loved me, just not as much as Jazzie, that was all. But did it really matter if she loved Jazzie more? As long as she loved all of us, did it really matter if she loved one of us more?
The door opened, and Ray stuck his head through. When he saw me awake and sitting up, he grinned. ‘I thought you were gone to us.’ He came into the room and sat down on the chair where Dad had been sitting, putting his feet up on my bed. ‘I thought we’d have to put you in one of those nursing home places, and I’d spend the rest of my life visiting my out-to-it brother holed up in among all the oldies.’
‘Nah.’ I smiled. ‘Not that easy to get the house all to yourself.’
And then Ray started talking. Not about Mum or Jazzie, or the bombing or the Jacobsen family, but about normal, everyday stuff. The footy tipping comp he was in at school, who was leading it and who didn’t have a clue. How his mate Matty had been putting Ray’s tips in for him while he’d been away, but he was hopeless at it. Ray said it was going to take him the rest of the season to catch up. He talked about school, said he hadn’t gone back yet, said he didn’t really want to but guessed he would have to if he was going to finish year twelve. He told me and Dad about the engineering course he wanted to do up at The University of Queensland in Brisbane.
‘One of the young blokes at work did that course,’ Dad said. ‘You could come in one day, have a chat with him if you’d like.’
I sat there leaning up against the back of the bed, listening, my eyes heavy, slowly closing, their words like the warm sun, slowly putting me back to sleep. The last thing I heard before I fell asleep again was Ray talking about Jemma, a girl from school.
‘She rang the day after the bombing, you know? She’d heard about Mum and Jazzie and rang to say how sorry she was and to ask if there was anything she could do.’
‘Nice girl,’ Dad said.
‘Yeah, takes a lot of guts to ring like that.’
Then I was asleep and dreaming. In the dream, Ray was still there with his feet up on my bed, talking, making me laugh with his stupid jokes, telling me in infinite detail everything he’d done for the past two years, every moment of every day. In the dream, his words pushed through my skin and into my body, gently pulsing, calming me. I wanted them to go on forever.
It was a few days after that that Ray went around to the Jacobsen’s house. He didn’t tell me himself, Dad did. He said Ray went there to apologise. He stood in front of the whole Jacobsen family and told them he was sorry for all the trouble he’d caused. None of them said anything. They just let him talk, and then, when Ray was finished, Mr Jacobsen nodded and held the door open for him to leave.