4338.205 · July 24, 2018 AD
A Special Dinner
After a day spent apart processing the morning's revelation, Joel comes home with groceries they can't afford. An attempt to patch silence with food, to rebuild normality through the ritual of a shared meal. But as they sit together in their small Glenorchy lounge, both know that love and lies sit in the same room, and some cracks run too deep to fill.
July 24, 2018. Six o'clock. The sound of Joel's Corolla coughing to a stop.
Kate has been sitting in the dark since he left for work, the house silent except for the murmur of unwatched television. She's spent the day cleaning things that didn't need cleaning, folding laundry that could have waited, trying to outrun the memory of his face when he read that birth certificate. When he discovered nineteen years of lies wrapped in government paper.
Joel comes through the door carrying a Woolworths bag. Twenty-three dollars and forty cents of groceries they desperately can't afford. Chicken schnitzels from the deli—the good ones. Fancy herb chips. Fresh broccoli. Vanilla ice cream, Kate's favourite, though they haven't bought ice cream in months.
They circle each other carefully in the small house—mother and son, bound by love and fractured by truth. Kate tries to apologise. Joel asks her to wait. Both pretend they're not drowning. The meal is good. The ice cream is cold and sweet. They sit in their usual spots and try to remember how to be themselves.
Two chapters. Two perspectives. One evening where chicken schnitzel and vanilla ice cream stand in for all the things they can't say.
