Dead Air

"You can lose someone without them dying. You just stop saying their name, and eventually the silence where they used to be starts to feel normal."

The light was wrong.

That was my first thought as consciousness surfaced — not the gentle grey of pre-dawn, not the amber glow of the hallway light streaming through the gap in my door. This was different. Brighter. The kind of light that meant the sun had been up for a while, that morning had arrived and progressed without me.

I reached for my phone before my eyes had fully adjusted, the movement sending a pulse of pain through my injured arm. The bandage had shifted during sleep, the gauze bunched awkwardly against the wound, and I had to bite back a hiss as I fumbled the phone from the bedside table.

10:47 a.m.

The numbers sat there, accusatory and immutable. My mid-morning tutorial had started at ten. I'd set an alarm — I was certain I'd set an alarm — but either it hadn't gone off or I'd silenced it without waking, my exhausted body overriding whatever good intentions my conscious mind had established.

I let the phone drop onto the mattress and stared at the ceiling.

Millie stirred beside me, lifting her head to regard me with the particular expression she reserved for moments when my behaviour deviated from established routine. She was used to me being up early, used to the quiet mornings before the rest of the world woke.

"I know," I said quietly. "I missed it."

She huffed once and settled her head back onto her paws, apparently deciding that my academic failures were not her concern.

The arm throbbed steadily, a dull ache that had settled into the tissue overnight and now seemed determined to remind me of its presence with every small movement. I pushed myself upright slowly, testing the limits of what my body would tolerate. The wound itself was hidden beneath layers of gauze, but I could feel it there — tender, warm, the particular sensation of flesh that was trying to knit itself back together after being torn apart.

Stephen had said it would hurt more today. He'd been right.

I sat on the edge of the bed for a long moment, weighing options. I could get dressed, rush to campus, try to pretend that I could catch the end of the lecture or at least show my face. I could email my tutor with an explanation — injured arm, rough few days, overslept — and hope for understanding. Or I could accept that the day had already slipped beyond my control and adjust my expectations accordingly.

I reached for my phone again and opened my messages.

Jerome: Hey. Missed the 10am. Did I miss anything important?

The text went to Aiden Cooper, a fellow zoology student I'd been partnered with on a research project earlier in the semester. We weren't close friends exactly — Aiden was more social than me, more comfortable in groups, more likely to suggest study sessions that involved coffee shops and background chatter rather than the quiet solitude I preferred. But we'd developed a functional working relationship, and he was reliable about sharing notes when circumstances required.

I set the phone aside and made myself get up.

The process of standing, of moving to the bathroom, of managing basic hygiene with one functional arm — all of it took longer than usual and required more concentration than it should have. I changed the bandage clumsily, wincing as the gauze pulled away from the wound. The laceration looked better than I'd expected — less angry, the edges holding together under the butterfly strips Stephen had applied — but it was still clearly an injury, still obviously something that would invite questions if anyone saw it.

I pulled on a loose hoodie, careful with the sleeve over my injured arm, and made my way back to my room. Millie had relocated to the warm spot I'd vacated, her body curled into a tight ball in the centre of the bed. I let her stay there and settled into my desk chair instead, opening my laptop with the vague intention of doing something productive.

The screen glowed to life, revealing the documentary I'd paused last night still frozen on a frame of Kakadu bushland. I closed the tab and opened my university email instead, scanning through the messages that had accumulated. Nothing urgent. A reminder about an assignment due next week. A reminder notice about a guest lecture I'd already planned to attend. The ordinary detritus of academic life, continuing regardless of whether I was present to participate in it.

My phone buzzed.

Aiden: Dude where were you? Hartley asked about the project timeline

Aiden: I covered for you but she wants to see progress by next week

Jerome: Sorry. Rough morning. What did she say exactly?

Aiden: Just that she wants to see our preliminary data analysis. Said we should book a meeting

Aiden: You ok? Not like you to miss class

I stared at the message, considering how to respond. The truth was too complicated — I'd been injured rescuing an eagle, I'd been present for a euthanasia that was still sitting somewhere in my chest like a stone, I'd been asked questions about my future that I didn't know how to answer. None of that translated into a text message. None of it was the kind of thing you shared with someone who was essentially a project partner rather than a genuine friend.

Jerome: Yeah fine. Just overslept. Arm's giving me trouble

Aiden: Arm?

Jerome: Long story. Work thing

Aiden: You and your wildlife stuff. One day you're going to get eaten by something

Jerome: That's not really how it works

Aiden: Tell that to Steve Irwin

I didn't respond to that. Aiden meant it as a joke — he always meant things as jokes — but Steve Irwin's death wasn't something I found particularly funny. The man had done more for wildlife conservation and public education than almost anyone else in Australian history. The fact that he'd died doing what he loved didn't make his loss less significant.

I turned my attention to the laptop, pulling up the research database and logging in with credentials I'd memorised long ago. The project Aiden and I were working on involved analysing population data for a threatened species of grassland bird — the kind of methodical, statistics-heavy work that I usually found satisfying in its precision. Today, though, the numbers on the screen seemed to blur and swim, refusing to coalesce into meaningful patterns.

My mind kept drifting. To Pip, peaceful at the end. To Ghost, watching from his perch with eyes that would never learn appropriate fear. To the eagle, its wing torn and bleeding, its future uncertain. To Margaret's words about the kind of person who stays.

I forced myself to focus. Opened a spreadsheet. Began entering data from the most recent survey results, the repetitive task providing enough structure to keep my hands busy even if my thoughts remained elsewhere.

The house was quiet around me. Charles had left for school hours ago. Dad was at work. Mum was somewhere in the house, her presence detectable in the small sounds that filtered through walls and closed doors — the distant clink of dishes, the hiss of the kettle, the ambient noise of domestic life continuing its rhythms.

My phone buzzed again.

Aiden: Seriously though you should come to the review session on Monday. Hartley's going to want answers

Jerome: I'll be there

Aiden: Cool. Want me to send you what I've got so far?

Jerome: Yeah that would help. Thanks

A file appeared in our shared folder a few minutes later — Aiden's preliminary analysis, rough but serviceable. I downloaded it and began reviewing his methodology, making notes on areas where we might need to adjust our approach. The work was tedious but not difficult, and it provided a thin barrier between me and the thoughts that kept trying to surface.

An hour passed. Then another. The data entry was nearly complete, my notes on Aiden's analysis filling half a page, when hunger finally became impossible to ignore. I'd skipped breakfast — or rather, breakfast had skipped me while I slept through it — and my body was beginning to register its objections.

I stood, stretched carefully to avoid jarring my arm, and headed for the kitchen.

The kitchen was quiet in that way it sometimes got after midday — sunlight creeping across the tiles in soft, diagonal strips, touching chair legs and the side of the fridge like it had nowhere else to be. I liked that kind of light. It didn't push or prod. It just arrived and made things look still. Honest. Even the mess.

The breakfast dishes had been cleared away, but evidence of the morning remained — a newspaper folded on the table, a half-empty glass of water by the sink, the particular arrangement of objects that spoke of routines interrupted and resumed. I moved through the space quietly, not wanting to announce my presence, not quite ready for conversation.

Mum was already there, seated by the window with the phone pressed to her ear. Her back was rigid. The kind of stillness that meant she wasn't just listening — she was bracing. Her shoulders were slightly lifted, like she hadn't realised she was holding them that way. I could only hear one side of the conversation — hers — but that was enough to tell me this wasn't small talk.

I moved slower, instinctively quieter. Not because I was trying to sneak, but because the atmosphere told me loudness wouldn't be welcome. I reached for the biscuit tin — half on autopilot, half in silent rebellion. I knew I shouldn't interrupt, but I also knew I was going to anyway.

The lid scraped across the bench with more noise than I meant. That was the thing with ceramic. It didn't care what kind of mood the room was in.

I looked over. Mum's eyes snapped toward me like they'd been waiting for an excuse. She wasn't just looking — she was aiming. Her hand flicked toward the doorway in a series of frantic gestures. Flat palm. Sharp wave. A silent order: Go.

I raised an eyebrow in response — half bemused, half oblivious. Really? Over a biscuit? But she was serious. Jaw set. Eyes locked. So I took the hint. Sort of. I stayed long enough to finish what I'd started, lifting the lid and popping it off with a satisfying little pop.

I extracted two biscuits — Scotch Fingers, the kind that left crumbs on everything — and replaced the lid with exaggerated care. Mum's expression had shifted from urgent to something closer to resigned frustration, the particular look of a parent who had long ago accepted that her children would never quite behave the way she wanted them to.

I stepped back, chewing already, but slower now. Something in Mum's tone stopped me from walking away entirely.

"No. I just told you quite clearly that I haven't seen Paul," she was saying — sharp, clipped.

Paul.

The name landed differently than it might have a week ago. Paul was my half-brother, dad’s eldest son from his first marriage, fifteen years older than me and living a life in Broken Hill that had always felt distant and slightly abstract. We saw each other at family gatherings — Christmas, occasionally Easter, the mandatory occasions that brought the scattered Smith clan back together — but we weren't close. The age gap was too wide, the geographic distance too great, the simple fact of having different mothers creating a divide that goodwill alone couldn't bridge.

But Paul was also the one who'd taught me to play piano, patient hours during a summer visit when I was nine and he was trying to escape whatever tension was building between him and Claire. Paul was the one who'd sent me a card when I got into university, handwritten rather than just signed, with actual thoughts about what the achievement meant. Paul was complicated in ways I didn't fully understand, but he was family, and something in Mum's voice suggested that family was suddenly relevant in ways it hadn't been yesterday.

I leaned against the doorframe, biscuit paused halfway to my mouth, not trying to listen but not not listening either.

There was a beat of silence — Mum receiving information I couldn't hear. Then her voice again, lower this time, slower. "Of course I do. He's my son. I have exactly the same amount of concern for him as I do for all of my children."

That one made my chest tighten, in a way I didn't like. I looked down at my biscuit, half-eaten, and suddenly didn't feel much like finishing it. The words didn't land evenly. They weren't meant to. Not really. Something in the way she said them felt... strained. Like she wanted them to be true.

Paul wasn't her son, not biologically. He was Dad’s son, which made him her stepson, which made the assertion of equal concern a statement of principle rather than simple fact. Mum had always treated Paul and Luke with genuine affection — she wasn't the kind of person who would withhold love based on bloodlines — but the relationships were different. They had to be. You couldn't parent children who arrived in your life at nine and eight years old the same way you parented the ones you'd carried and birthed and raised from infancy.

And there was the other thing, too. The thing that hung unspoken in the air whenever family dynamics were discussed. Luke. The brother who'd been pushed out — or who'd chosen to leave, depending on whose perspective you took — because of who he was and who he loved.

Mum paced a little, her back toward me now. Her shoulders looked stiff, and her voice was fraying around the edges in that way it sometimes did when she was trying not to let something show. "I am… a little concerned, yes. But you have to understand that Paul and Claire are constantly arguing about something."

That was true enough. Paul and Claire's marriage had always seemed volatile from the outside — passionate in ways that could tip toward conflict without much warning. They loved each other, I thought, or at least they had once. But love wasn't always enough to make a marriage work, and the glimpses I'd caught during family visits suggested that whatever they'd built together was under strain that neither of them quite knew how to address.

I glanced toward the hallway — considered slipping back out, leaving her to it — but I didn't move. My body just stayed put, like it knew there was more to hear. She sounded like she was trying to convince someone. Or herself.

"She's convinced that Paul is here in Adelaide with us, hiding out," she snapped suddenly, voice rising. "She claims he drove down after they had another one of their dramatic arguments the other night."

I blinked. Paul? Here? That didn't seem right. Didn't seem likely. If Paul had come to Adelaide, surely we would have heard about it. Surely he would have come to visit. But something about the idea lodged in my gut — not because I believed it, but because I could see why someone might. If you were running from something, if you needed to disappear for a while, where would you go? Family. The people who were supposed to take you in regardless of circumstances, who were obligated by blood and history to provide shelter even when they didn't fully understand what they were sheltering you from.

"But he's not here with us, and we haven't heard a single word from him," Mum added, her voice dropping again. Softer this time. Quieter. The kind of quiet you don't mean to use unless something's already gotten in.

The biscuits in my hand had gone warm from my grip. I wasn't eating anymore.

"I suppose I am genuinely a little worried about him."

Mum was still now, completely still, listening to something being said on the other end of the line. And then, all at once, her voice again: "I don't know why I didn't think of this possibility before, but he may very well have gone to visit one of his brothers in Hobart."

That landed like a dropped pin.

Hobart. Brothers. The phrasing was careful — one of his brothers — but there was only one brother in Hobart. Only one person she could be referring to.

"Luke," she added, confirming what I already knew.

Luke.

The name settled into the kitchen like something physical, displacing air, rearranging the quality of the light. I hadn't heard Mum say Luke's name in months. Maybe longer. He existed in our household as an absence rather than a presence, a shape defined by the space around it rather than by anything solid or tangible.

Luke was thirty-four now, living in Tasmania with his partner Jamie, building a life that had nothing to do with the family he'd grown up in. He'd left — or been pushed, or some combination of both — because of who he was. Because he was gay, and being gay didn't fit with the faith our family had built their lives around, and nobody had been able to figure out how to hold both truths at the same time.

I remembered the last time I'd seen Luke. A Christmas visit, maybe five years ago, before things had gotten bad enough that he'd stopped coming altogether. He'd been quieter than usual, more withdrawn, watching the family dynamics from a slight remove as though he was already preparing to become an outsider. I'd been sixteen, too young and too self-absorbed to understand what I was witnessing, but old enough to sense that something was wrong.

We'd talked, briefly, about nothing in particular. He'd asked about school, about whether I was still drawing, about what I wanted to do when I grew up. I'd given him the answers I gave everyone — fine, yes, I don't know — and he'd nodded with a sad little smile that suggested he heard what I wasn't saying as clearly as what I was.

That was the last real conversation we'd had. After that, Luke had become a name that made people uncomfortable, a topic that got changed, a presence that was felt most acutely in its absence.

And now Mum was offering his contact information to a police officer.

"Just hold on one moment while I find it."

I saw her thumb moving across the phone screen, searching through contacts or messages for information she probably hadn't looked at in years. She was muttering to herself now, fumbling, distracted — the particular concentration of someone trying to locate something they'd filed away and forgotten.

And then — stillness. A strange, absolute silence. Mum's head lifted slightly. She stared at the screen. No blinking light. No voice.

"Hello?" she said. "Hello? Officer Massey?"

The line had gone dead. I could tell from the way she was holding the phone, from the confusion on her face as she pulled it away from her ear and looked at the screen as though it might explain what had just happened. Technology failure, maybe. Poor reception. Something mundane and explicable.

But the moment didn't feel mundane. It felt heavy, weighted with implications I couldn't see but could somehow sense pressing against the edges of the room.

I hovered in the doorway, awkward now. Unsure what to do with my hands, with my body, with the question I hadn't meant to ask but asked anyway, just to make something normal happen again.

"Mum, can I have a biscuit now?"

"You can have two," she said, automatic, distant.

She never looked up. Not once. Just kept staring at the phone in her hand like she was waiting for it to make sense again.

I backed away, quietly this time, biscuits barely touched. The hallway behind me felt colder than before. The kitchen light, softer. But the space I left behind — something in it had shifted.

And I knew better than to ask what.

Back in my room, I closed the door behind me more gently than usual. Millie had moved from the bed to the floor, stretched out in a patch of weak winter sunlight that had found its way through the window. She lifted her head at my entrance, regarding me with that quiet question only dogs seem to know how to ask.

"I think something's up," I murmured, settling onto the edge of the bed.

She blinked once, slowly, then rested her head on her paws again. Not dismissive exactly — dogs didn't dismiss — but accepting. Whatever was troubling me existed outside her sphere of concern. Her world was simpler: food, warmth, the presence of her person. The complicated dynamics of human families didn't register on whatever scale she used to measure the world.

I envied her that, sometimes. The clarity of a life uncomplicated by the weight of things you couldn't change.

My phone buzzed. I'd left it on the desk, and I had to get up again to retrieve it, the movement sending a fresh pulse of ache through my arm.

Aiden: Hey did you see the email from Hartley?

Aiden: She moved the meeting to Tuesday

Jerome: No I missed it. Thanks for letting me know

Aiden: No problem. How's the arm?

I looked at the bandage, visible now where my sleeve had ridden up. The gauze was still clean, no sign of bleeding through, but the wound throbbed steadily beneath it — a constant reminder of yesterday, of the eagle, of everything that had happened in the span of a single day.

Jerome: Sore but ok. Should be fine by next week

Aiden: Good. We need you functional for the presentation

Aiden: Hartley's going to ask hard questions

Jerome: I know. I'll be ready

I set the phone aside and lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. The afternoon light was shifting now, the angle of the sun changing as the day progressed. In a few hours, Charles would be home from school. Dad would return from work. The house would fill with the ordinary noises of family life — conversation, meal preparation, the particular rhythm of people sharing space.

But something had changed. I could feel it, even if I couldn't name it. Paul was missing. Claire thought he was hiding here. Mum was talking to police and mentioning Luke's name for the first time in I couldn't remember how long.

And underneath all of that, barely visible but somehow present, was the weight of the past few days — Pip's heartbeat stopping under my hands, the eagle's blood on my arm, Margaret's question about what kind of person I was.

I thought about Luke. About the distance that had grown between him and the rest of us, the way he'd become a name that made people uncomfortable. I thought about how easy it was to lose someone without them dying, how you could push people away with love that came wrapped in conditions, how families could fracture along lines that nobody intended to draw.

You have exactly the same amount of concern for him as I do for all of my children.

The words echoed in my memory, Mum's voice straining around them. She'd been talking about Paul, but the statement included Luke by implication. All of her children. All of Dad’s children. The ones she'd raised and the ones she'd inherited, the ones who fit neatly into the family's structure and the one who didn't.

Did she have the same concern for Luke? Did any of us?

I didn't know. I wasn't sure I wanted to know. Some questions were easier to leave unasked, their answers too uncomfortable to contemplate.

Millie shifted on the floor, resettling herself in the patch of sunlight that had moved since she'd first claimed it. I watched her adjust, her body finding the warmth with the instinctive precision of a creature who knew exactly what she needed and had no hesitation about claiming it.

My phone buzzed one more time.

Aiden: You sure you're ok? You seem off today

I stared at the message for a long moment, considering how to respond. The truth was too complicated, too layered with things that didn't translate into text messages or casual conversation. The easy lie — yeah fine just tired — felt inadequate, a betrayal of whatever strange honesty the day seemed to be demanding.

Jerome: Yeah. Just a lot going on

Aiden: Fair enough. Let me know if you need anything

Jerome: Thanks. I will

I put the phone on the bedside table and closed my eyes.

Outside, the afternoon continued its slow progression. Somewhere in the house, Mum was probably still holding her phone, still waiting for it to make sense. Somewhere in Broken Hill — or maybe Hobart, or maybe somewhere else entirely — Paul was dealing with whatever had made him disappear. Somewhere in Tasmania, Luke was living a life that none of us were part of anymore.

And here, in this room, with Millie breathing softly on the floor in the soft winter light, I lay still and tried not to think about all the ways that families could fall apart while still technically remaining intact.

Something was shifting.

I could feel it.