Fog and Fade

"Everyone has at least two versions of themselves—the one they wear when they think they're being watched, and the one that surfaces when they forget. I've spent enough time studying behaviour to know the difference. The harder question is which one is real."

The cultural hall looked different when I returned.

Not physically — the same fluorescent panels still buzzed overhead, the same folding table held the same plastic jug of cordial, the same pile of bags slumped against the wall near the stage. But something had shifted in the texture of the room. The tight energy of competition had loosened into something softer, more diffuse. People stood in clusters that kept reshaping themselves — someone would drift away to check their phone, someone else would wander over with a half-empty cup. The basketballs had mostly stopped bouncing, except for a few younger guys at the far hoop who were taking turns at trick shots and missing badly.

I paused at the doors, one hand still resting on the frame. The sweat on my back had cooled in the corridor, and now it felt clammy against my shirt, the fabric sticking to my skin in a way that made me want to pull it away from my body. I didn't. Just stood there for a moment, letting my breathing settle, letting my face arrange itself into something that wouldn't invite questions.

Samuel was near the cordial table, draining a cup with the satisfied air of someone who considered the evening a personal triumph. He caught my eye across the room and raised his empty cup in a kind of salute, grinning. I lifted my chin in acknowledgment and started toward my bag.

Ryan Holloway was nowhere to be seen.

I scanned the room without making it obvious — a skill you developed in spaces where everyone watched everyone else. The Paralowie contingent had thinned considerably. I spotted two of them near the stage, talking to one of the Playford guys about something that involved a lot of hand gestures. Another was scrolling through his phone by the exit. But Ryan's particular build, his careful posture, the way he held himself like someone perpetually conscious of being observed — none of that was present.

Maybe he'd left already. Made some excuse about an early morning, a headache, a text from someone who needed him somewhere else. The kind of exit that nobody questioned because nobody wanted to make things awkward.

I reached my bag and crouched down, unzipping the front pocket to check for my phone. Still there. No messages. The screen's glow felt too bright in my eyes, and I blinked against it before shoving it back inside.

The doors from the corridor opened behind me.

I didn't turn around. Didn't need to. Something shifted in the room — a subtle recalibration, like the way a flock of birds adjusts its formation when a larger bird enters the airspace. Conversations didn't stop, but they dropped half a register. One of the younger guys at the far hoop straightened mid-shot and let the ball clang off the rim without following through.

Bishop Hahn.

I busied myself with my bag, adjusting straps that didn't need adjusting, and watched him in my peripheral vision.

He moved through the cultural hall with the unhurried pace of someone who knew the room would wait for him. Not arrogant — Bishop Hahn wasn't arrogant, exactly — but certain. Grounded in his own authority in a way that made other people feel less grounded in theirs. He was wearing his usual combination of pressed slacks and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow, the kind of casual formality that suggested he'd come from something more official and loosened up just enough to appear approachable.

He wasn't alone. Another man walked beside him — older, grey-haired, wearing a suit that had no business being at a Wednesday evening basketball activity. The jacket was charcoal, well-cut, the kind of thing you wore to stake conference or regional leadership meetings. I didn't recognise his face, which meant he was probably from outside our usual orbit. Stake presidency, maybe. Or visiting from somewhere else entirely.

Their heads were bent close together, conversation continuing in low tones that didn't carry across the ambient noise of the hall. Bishop Hahn nodded at something the other man said, his expression serious, attentive. The body language between them spoke of hierarchy — the grey-haired man leading, Bishop Hahn receiving — but also of collaboration. Shared purpose. Whatever they were discussing, it wasn't basketball results or ward activity planning.

They paused near the doorway to the foyer, still talking. I kept my hands moving on my bag, my posture casual. Just a young man sorting through his things after a game. Nothing to notice.

"—the Temple presidency has been very clear about the timeline—"

The fragment reached me almost accidentally, carried on a lull in the ambient noise. Someone across the room had stopped mid-sentence, and in that brief pocket of quiet, the words slipped through.

"—understand, but we need to be careful." The grey-haired man's voice was lower, harder to catch. "Only those who've been specifically invited—"

"—of course." Bishop Hahn again. "We'll keep this close for now. The last thing we need is—"

Someone dropped a basketball. The sound cracked against the hardwood and bounced off the walls, filling the space with its hollow echo. By the time it faded, Bishop Hahn and his companion had moved through into the foyer, the door swinging shut behind them with a soft click.

I straightened slowly, letting out a breath I hadn't realised I was holding.

Temple presidency. Timeline. Only those who've been specifically invited. Keep this close.

The words sat in my mind like puzzle pieces from different boxes — edges that didn't match, colours that didn't connect. I had no framework for them, no context that made them cohere into meaning. Just fragments, strange and weighted, that I filed away in the same mental drawer where I kept all the things I noticed but couldn't explain.

"Dad! Hang on—"

James Hahn's voice cut through from somewhere behind me. I turned, pretending to check the wall clock, and watched him cross the hall toward the foyer doors.

He'd been on the far side of the room moments ago — I'd seen him there during my scan for Ryan, laughing with a couple of the Paralowie guys about something, his whole body loose and easy. He'd thrown his head back at one point, the laugh carrying across the court, unselfconscious and bright. One of the guys had shoved his shoulder playfully, and James had shoved back, the casual physical language of young men who'd known each other long enough to take liberties.

That James was gone now.

The one crossing the hall moved differently. His stride was the same length, the same pace, but something in his shoulders had pulled inward, drawn up toward his ears. His spine had straightened — not dramatically, just enough that you'd notice if you were looking. The easy swing of his arms had tightened into something more controlled.

He pushed through the foyer doors, and I caught his profile in the moment before they closed. His jaw had set. His mouth was already shaping itself into a smile — but it was a different smile from the one he'd been wearing five minutes ago. That one had crinkled his eyes, pulled his whole face into alignment. This one sat on top of his features like something placed there carefully. Correctly.

"Good to see you, Dad," I heard him say, the words bright and warm and perfectly pitched, just before the door swung shut.

I turned back to my bag.

The corridor doors opened again. I knew who it was before I looked up — some part of me had been waiting for it, tracking the time, calculating how long was reasonable before someone emerged from a bathroom break without it seeming strange.

Nate.

He stood in the doorway for a moment, scanning the room with the careful assessment of someone checking for threats. His face had regained some colour since the bathroom — the ashen grey had faded back to something closer to normal — but there was a tightness around his eyes that hadn't been there before the game. A set to his jaw. The kind of held tension that made the muscles in your face ache if you maintained it too long.

His gaze swept the hall. Passed over the young women near the cordial table, the younger guys still shooting around, his brother Samuel holding court in the corner. Passed over me.

Then came back.

Our eyes met.

It lasted maybe two seconds. Maybe less. Long enough for something to pass between us — not communication exactly, not a message that could be translated into words, but something. Acknowledgment. The shared awareness of standing on either side of a door that had closed behind us and couldn't be reopened.

A muscle in his cheek twitched. Barely visible — just a flicker of movement beneath the skin, the kind of involuntary response the body makes when you're holding something too tightly.

Then he looked away. His gaze slid past me toward Samuel on the far side of the room, and he started moving, crossing the hall with careful, measured steps. He collected his bag from the pile near mine — close enough that I could have spoken to him, could have said something, anything — and checked his phone. His thumb scrolled across the screen without stopping on anything. The gesture of someone who needed their hands to be busy.

I let him go. Gave him the space to pretend nothing had happened, the way I'd promised I would. The way we both needed to pretend, at least for now, at least in this room full of people who knew our names and our families and thought they knew the shapes of our lives.

"Hey."

The voice came from my left. Megan had appeared beside me — materialised, really, with that particular talent she had for being present without announcing herself. She was holding her cardigan closed against the air conditioning, her other hand hanging at her side with a kind of deliberate casualness, like she wasn't sure what to do with it.

"Good game," she said. "You played well in that second half. That drive to the basket near the end — the one where you got fouled — that was really impressive."

"Thanks."

The word came out flat. I heard it hanging in the air between us, inadequate, and tried to find something to add. My hands were gripping the strap of my bag too tightly. I made myself loosen them, finger by finger.

Megan waited. She had that quality — the willingness to let silence exist without rushing to fill it. Her eyes stayed on my face, patient, open, looking for something I wasn't sure I had to give.

The moment stretched. I could feel the shape of the conversation we should be having — the one where I picked up the thread from halftime, asked about her placement, made some joke about the cheap cordial, suggested we continue this sometime when there wasn't a room full of people around us. The normal architecture of two people figuring out if they wanted to keep talking to each other.

The words were right there. I could almost feel them in my throat, waiting.

But between me and those words stood everything else. The bathroom. Nate's face in the mirror. Ryan's panicked flight. The comments I'd overheard during the second half, still burrowing under my skin like splinters. The weight of Luke's absence, years deep, that I carried without ever quite putting down.

I couldn't reach past all of that. Not tonight. Not right now.

"I should probably—" I gestured toward the doors, the motion vague and inadequate. "My dad's picking me up. Don't want to keep him waiting."

Something moved across Megan's face. A small contraction around her eyes. A slight press of her lips together before she caught it and smoothed her expression back into pleasantness. She'd been here before, I realised. Had learned to recognise this particular shape of withdrawal, this specific flavour of deflection.

"Sure," she said. Her voice stayed light, but there was something underneath it now — not accusation, not even disappointment exactly, just a kind of quiet noting. Filing away. "Of course. I'll see you Sunday?"

"Yeah. Sunday."

She smiled — smaller than before, more contained — and moved away. I watched her go, watched her rejoin the cluster of young women near the cordial table. One of them — the one with the sharp voice, the one whose words I'd overheard during the second half — leaned in and said something too quiet to catch. Megan shrugged, a quick lift of her shoulders that could have meant anything, and reached for a cup of cordial. She held it without drinking, her thumb tracing the rim.

I shouldered my bag and headed for the doors.

The foyer was quieter than the hall — just a few people lingering, checking phones, waiting for rides. Bishop Hahn and the grey-haired man had disappeared, presumably into the bishop's office or out through the main entrance. The mysterious conversation had moved somewhere I couldn't follow, carrying its fragments of meaning with it. Temple presidency. Timeline. Only those who've been invited.

James stood near the glass doors, talking to one of the Paralowie guys about something. His posture was still different from how it had been during the game — that careful correctness he'd adopted the moment his father appeared. His hands were in his pockets. His weight was evenly distributed, balanced, controlled. When he laughed at something the other guy said, the sound was warm and easy and perfectly calibrated — loud enough to seem genuine, not so loud as to seem performative.

I wondered if he knew he was doing it. If the adjustments were conscious choices or something deeper, something that happened automatically after years of practice. The body learning to reshape itself depending on who was watching.

I passed him without stopping. Pushed through the glass doors into the night.

The air hit me immediately — cool, clean, carrying the faint eucalyptus scent that seemed to permeate every Adelaide evening. After the fluorescent brightness of the hall, the darkness felt almost physical, pressing against my eyes until they adjusted. The car park had emptied considerably since I'd arrived. Only a dozen or so vehicles remained, scattered across the asphalt like pieces left behind after a game no one had finished.

Headlights swept across the far end of the car park as someone pulled out, their engine noise fading into the suburban quiet.

I found a spot near the entrance, leaning against the brick wall where the light from the foyer spilled out in a yellow rectangle across the concrete. My shirt was cold against my back now, the sweat from the game fully cooled, and I could feel goosebumps rising along my arms. I didn't bother putting my jacket on. Just stood there, letting the chill settle into my skin, and waited.

My heartbeat had slowed since the bathroom, but I could still feel it — a steady pulse at my throat, my wrists, the hollow of my chest. The body's insistence on continuing, on pumping blood and drawing breath, regardless of what the mind was trying to process.

Inside the foyer, I could see James still talking, his silhouette animated behind the glass. One of the young women — not Megan, someone else — crossed behind him, laughing at something on her phone. Normal movements. Normal Wednesday night.

Headlights swept across the car park. The Corolla turned in from the street, moving slowly, Dad scanning for a spot near the building. He found one two spaces down from where I was standing and pulled in, the engine idling.

I pushed off from the wall and walked over. The car was warm inside — the heater had been running — and the familiar smell of the interior wrapped around me as I climbed in. Old upholstery. The faded chemical sweetness of the air freshener Mum had hung from the rearview mirror months ago, its scent almost gone now but still faintly present.

"Good game?" Dad asked. His hands stayed on the wheel, his eyes flicking to the rearview mirror as he prepared to reverse.

"Yeah," I said. "It was fine."

He nodded. Didn't push for details. That wasn't how we operated — hadn't been for years, maybe ever. The Smith men communicated in logistics and silences, in practical arrangements and the things we didn't say.

He put the car in reverse and pulled out of the spot.

I turned my head toward the window, pressing my forehead against the cold glass. The chapel slid past — tan brickwork, the modest spire, lights still glowing behind the frosted windows of the cultural hall. People would be stacking chairs now. Wiping down tables. Restoring the room to its default state of readiness.

Somewhere in there, Nate was probably doing the same thing. Going through the motions. Performing normality until it calcified into something he could live inside.

The chapel shrank in the side mirror, then disappeared as we turned onto the main road.

I watched my breath fog the window glass, then fade. Fog. Fade. The streetlights slid past in regular intervals, each one throwing brief orange light across my hands before pulling away into darkness. The rhythm of it was almost hypnotic. The kind of pattern you could lose yourself in if you let yourself go.

Dad didn't say anything else. His profile was steady in my peripheral vision — eyes on the road, hands at ten and two, the same posture he'd maintained on every drive for as long as I could remember.

I closed my eyes.

The motion of the car carried me forward, through streets I knew without seeing, toward home and bed and another day of holding things I couldn't name.

The silence held us both.