Empty Rooms, Full Questions

"I'd choreographed entire performances with less planning than it takes to avoid your husband's piano."

The hallway stretched out before me, doors standing open on either side like mouths waiting to speak.

I couldn't go back to the bedroom. Couldn't stand in that cold room with its empty spaces and evidence of departure. But I couldn't stay still either—the restlessness was back, that electric current running through my limbs, demanding movement.

So I moved.

Mack's room first. The door was already open—it was always open when he wasn't here, some superstition of mine that I'd never examined too closely. I stopped in the doorway and looked at the space my son usually filled.

The bed was made, the doona pulled tight and tucked under the pillows the way he liked it. His bookshelf was crammed with the usual chaos—Lego sets half-built, chapter books with cracked spines, a collection of rocks he'd gathered from various walks that I'd given up trying to throw away. The poster on his wall, some superhero thing, was coming unstuck at one corner. I'd been meaning to fix it for weeks.

It was too quiet. Mack's room was never quiet when he was in it—there was always noise, movement, the constant hum of a nine-year-old boy existing in a space. Now there was just stillness, and the faint smell of him that lingered in the bedding, and the shapes of his things waiting for him to come back and give them purpose.

I missed him. The realisation arrived with a physical ache, a hollow place in my chest that hadn't been there a moment ago. I missed his noise and his questions and his endless energy. I missed having someone in this house who was purely, uncomplicatedly glad to see me.

But beneath the missing, something else: relief. Sharp and shameful and true. I was glad he wasn't here. Glad he hadn't seen his father climbing out a window, hadn't heard us arguing, hadn't been part of this mess that was still unfolding in ways I couldn't predict.

I turned away from the doorway.

Rose's room was next, smaller than Mack's, painted the pale pink she'd chosen when she was four and was already starting to outgrow. Her bed was neat too, and her stuffed animals were arranged against the pillows in the particular order she insisted on.

Six years old. She was only six years old, and she'd already learned to read the weather between her parents, already knew when to be quiet and when to make herself small. I'd watched her do it at dinner last week—Paul snapping at something, the sudden tension in the room, and Rose's face going careful and neutral in a way no six-year-old's face should know how to go.

What were we teaching her? What patterns were we laying down in her small, absorbent mind?

I pulled the door closed. I couldn't look at the room anymore—at the pink walls and the stuffed animals and the evidence of a childhood unfolding in the middle of all this adult wreckage.

The lounge room was darker than the rest of the house. I hadn't turned the lamp on when I'd come through earlier, and the only light came from the kitchen doorway at the far end, casting long shadows across the furniture. The shapes were familiar even in the dimness—the couch, the armchair, the television mounted on the wall, the bookshelf crammed with years of accumulated reading.

And the piano.

It sat against the far wall, its dark wood gleaming faintly in the light from the kitchen. A baby grand, the extravagance we'd allowed ourselves when Paul's business had its first really good year. He'd cried when we'd bought it—actual tears, which I'd never seen from him before or since. It had been one of the few times I'd felt like I truly knew him, like I'd glimpsed something real beneath all the careful performance.

I didn't look at it directly. Skirted around the edge of the room, keeping my eyes on the floor, on the coffee table, on anything except that dark shape in the corner. The piano was his. The piano was ours, was the thing that had connected us in the beginning, music and movement, his playing and my dancing. I couldn't look at it right now. Couldn't think about what it meant or what it had meant or what any of it added up to.

My phone was in my hand again. I didn't remember taking it out of my pocket.

The screen glowed to life. No notifications. No missed calls.

I kept walking.

His study was at the end of the hallway, past the bathroom, the smallest room in the house. The door was closed—it was always closed, Paul's one concession to privacy in a home full of children and chaos. I'd stopped going in there years ago, not because he'd asked me to but because it had become clear that the space was his alone, a place where he could disappear and not be reached.

I stopped outside the door.

My hand hovered over the handle. Inside would be his desk, his computer, his files. The paperwork of a life I was supposed to share but had somehow been excluded from. I could go in. I could open drawers, rifle through folders, search for whatever it was I was looking for—some explanation, some evidence, some answer to the question of why.

Why had he packed a bag?

Why had he been planning to leave?

Why hadn't I seen it coming?

The door stayed closed. My hand dropped to my side.

Not yet. I wasn't ready yet. Going into his study felt like crossing a line I couldn't uncross, like admitting that this was serious, that this was more than just Paul sulking at the pub for a few hours. If I went in there and searched through his things, I'd be making it real in a way I wasn't prepared for.

He'd be home soon. He'd come back, and we'd talk, and this would all become just another story we told about that time Dad climbed out a window. Something to laugh about eventually, maybe. Something to file away with all the other strange moments of a long marriage.

I turned away from the study door.

Charlie was behind me. She'd been following me this whole time, I realised—padding along at my heels as I moved from room to room, a silent black shadow with watchful eyes. She stood in the hallway now, tail low, head slightly ducked, waiting to see which direction I'd go next.

"Stop following me," I said.

She didn't move. Just watched me with that patient, expectant look that dogs had perfected over thousands of years of domestication.

I walked past her, back towards the kitchen.

The light was too bright in here, the same harsh overhead glare that had been bothering me all evening. The kettle sat on the bench, full of water that had gone cold hours ago. The pile of post was still on the table, exactly where Paul had left it when he'd pretended to be sorting through it, when he'd been killing time until he could make his escape.

I picked up the post. Flipped through it without really seeing.

An electricity bill—overdue, probably, I'd have to deal with that. A catalogue from some homewares store I'd never shopped at. A letter from the school about something I'd have to read properly later. A credit card offer, glossy and insistent. The ordinary debris of a life that kept happening whether you wanted it to or not.

I set the post back down. The pile was messier now, disturbed by my handling, and something about that bothered me—the disorder, the evidence of my own presence disrupting his absence.

My phone.

I unlocked it. Checked the screen. Nothing new. Pulled down to refresh, that small hopeful gesture that never seemed to produce different results.

Nothing.

I called him again. It was automatic now, muscle memory—find the contact, press call, raise the phone to my ear. I barely heard the ringing anymore, barely registered his cheerful voicemail greeting, that professional voice that meant nothing.

I can't take your call right now—

I hung up.

The kitchen hummed around me. The refrigerator. The light. The clock on the wall, ticking off seconds that seemed to stretch longer and longer the more I listened. Eight thirty-two. He'd been gone for nearly two and a half hours.

The house felt different at night when it was empty. During the day, there was always something—the kids' noise, the television, music from somewhere, the sounds of living. At night, with everyone gone, the silence had a texture to it. A weight. As if the house itself was holding its breath, listening for something, waiting alongside me for whatever came next.

Charlie's claws clicked on the tiles.

She'd followed me to the kitchen—of course she had—and now she was standing by her food bowl, looking at me with that expression dogs got when they were trying to be patient but were running out of patience. Her tail wagged once, twice, a tentative question.

I should feed her. The thought surfaced through the fog of everything else, a small practical fact. She hadn't been fed tonight. Paul usually did it, and Paul wasn't here, and I'd been too busy—too distracted—too something—to remember.

"Fine," I said. The word came out flat, tired. "Fine."

I crossed to the pantry, pulled out the bag of dog food. The kibble rattled as I poured it into her bowl—too loud in the quiet kitchen, an assault on the silence I'd been inhabiting. Charlie was at my feet immediately, her whole body wagging now, as if this one small act of caretaking had erased all the hours of neglect.

I stepped back. Watched her eat.

She was Paul's dog. That was the thing. He'd wanted her, years ago, had convinced me that the kids needed a pet, that it would teach them responsibility, that it would be good for the family. And then somehow I'd ended up being the one who fed her half the time, who took her to the vet, who cleaned up after her when she was sick. Paul loved her—loved the idea of her, loved playing with her when he was in the mood—but the actual work of keeping her alive had fallen to me, like everything else.

This bloody dog.

She looked up from her bowl, kibble crumbs on her muzzle, tail still going. Her eyes were bright, grateful, as if I'd done something wonderful instead of just meeting the basic requirements of keeping another creature alive.

I looked away.

The kitchen. The kettle. The post. The empty chair where Paul had sat pretending to be present while planning his departure. The clock ticking, ticking, ticking.

Eight thirty-seven.

He'd be back soon. Any minute now, probably. He'd have had his sulk, drunk his beers, convinced himself he was the reasonable one, and he'd come home and we'd deal with this the way we dealt with everything—badly, incompletely, with a thin layer of pretence smoothed over the top.

I just had to wait.

I was good at waiting. I'd been doing it for years.