Ghost-Light

"Some dinners you remember for the food. Others you remember for the gaps—the words no one said, the chair that felt empty even when someone was sitting in it."

By the time I stepped into the kitchen, the smell hit me first — garlic and rosemary, warm and earthy, clinging to the air like something you could lean into. The soup was already in the bowls, golden and thick, steam curling upwards in delicate spirals. I hovered for a second, just taking it in. The heat, the smell, the quiet hum of the house settling into evening. There was something grounding about it. Like stepping into a memory that hadn't fully settled yet.

I'd spent most of the afternoon in my room with my laptop open to a half-written assignment on habitat fragmentation — the kind of reading that left you staring at the same paragraph for twenty minutes, turning words over without absorbing them. Millie had been sprawled across my feet the whole time, her warmth a steady counterweight to the restlessness I couldn't quite name. Leaving my bedroom felt like surfacing from deep water.

I slid into my seat, letting the rhythm of it carry me — same chair, same angle of light from the window lamp. The lamp's amber glow spread across the room like it was trying not to disturb anything. The overhead light stayed off. I hated that thing anyway — too harsh, like an interrogation in a hospital corridor. This light was gentler. It softened everything — the cutlery, the bowls, even the edges of my own thoughts.

Dad came in behind me. I didn't have to look up to know it was him. His pace gave him away — measured, quiet, a little reluctant. I could picture his face without turning: eyes still sharp but tired, mouth drawn the way it got when he'd been pulled out of something mid-thought. He moved to his place at the head of the table, the one he always took without needing to be asked. It wasn't a rule. Just... muscle memory. Like everything else in this house.

I watched him settle — the slight adjustment of his chair, the way his hands came to rest on the table's edge. I could see the marks on his wrist where his watch had sat all day — small pale grooves pressed into his skin. He clasped his hands in front of him, still and calm, like he did when he prayed or explained engine parts to someone who didn't get them. There was a kind of focus to it. A quiet gravity. Sometimes I wondered if he knew how much that steadiness meant to the rest of us. Sometimes I wondered what it would take to ask him.

The soup shimmered under the lamplight, little flecks of garlic and herbs drifting like something preserved in amber. It smelled like the kind of food that had taken time, even if no one would say so. I picked up the spoon but didn't eat yet. There was something about this particular stillness I didn't want to break.

"Shall we?" Dad said, looking up.

I was already halfway down in my seat, nodding instinctively. My hair fell into my eyes like it always did. I brushed it back, barely registering the movement. For a flicker of a second, I felt young again — like the boy I used to be, legs too long for the chair, asking impossible questions over dinner while everyone else tried to eat. Back when Lisa still lived at home. Back when Eli was across the table instead of halfway around the world in Salt Lake City. The house had felt fuller then. Louder. Now it was just Charles and me holding down this end of the family — the two youngest, left behind while the others built lives elsewhere.

Mum sat down across from me. I caught the faint sound of her skirt brushing against the chair, the fabric familiar in the way furniture is — unchanged no matter how much everything else has shifted. I didn't meet her eyes. Not out of avoidance. Just... I knew what I'd see. Tiredness, quiet concentration, a kind of emotional economy she practised without realising it. She'd know I'd noticed, though. She always did. That was the thing about Mum — you didn't have to say everything out loud.

Dad began the prayer. "Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for this meal, for the hands that prepared it, and for the peace of this home. Please bless those not with us tonight, and help us to remember what truly matters. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen."

The words were the same as always, but somehow they landed differently in the low light. They felt real. Not because of their poetry — there wasn't any — but because they'd been worn into the shape of our lives. A kind of repetition that made them stronger, not weaker. Please bless those not with us tonight. I thought of Eli, wondered what time it was in Utah, whether he and Lisa were sitting down to their own meal or still caught up in whatever adventure she'd planned for him.

"Amen," I said softly, just a breath behind Mum. The quiet that followed wasn't awkward. It was full. Heavy in a way that didn't ask to be lifted. Just shared.

And then — of course — Charles arrived.

Late, naturally. Not a hint of apology in sight. He drifted in like someone who'd taken a wrong turn into the wrong play halfway through the final act. His hoodie was askew, one sleeve shoved up like it had been battling gravity, the zip halfway down his chest in an unfinished gesture of effort. His hair told its own story — flattened on one side, wild on the other. Either he'd just woken up or had been lying horizontal watching YouTube videos for hours. Probably both.

He dropped into his chair with a kind of slack-boned inertia, like he hadn't quite found his way back into his own body yet. There was a hum around him — something screen-glazed and electric. His phone must have just been in his hand, and you could still see its glow in his eyes, that faint reflection like ghost-light. He looked up briefly, glancing over the table, eyes skimming the soup, skipping right over me, brushing past Mum like she was background scenery, before landing, finally, on the food in front of him.

I knew that look. Had catalogued it the way I catalogued animal behaviour — the slight dilation of the pupils readjusting to lamplight, the defensive hunch of shoulders, the way his jaw was set just a fraction too tight. Charles at sixteen was a study in contradictions: all sharp edges and soft underbelly, broadcasting indifference while his body betrayed everything he actually felt.

The contrast was stark. Dad and I were anchored — present. We'd come in quiet and steady, settled like the room was meant to receive us. But Charles — he was all static, like a live feed cutting in and out, not quite tuned to the same frequency. Watching him, I felt this odd ache in my chest. Not anger. Just that sort of hollow pang when you notice someone slipping out of a moment that used to hold them easily. He'd been different since Paul moved back to Broken Hill. Since Eli left for the States. Like something had come loose and he hadn't figured out how to tighten it again.

"You've missed prayer," Mum said, sliding him a spoon. Her voice was calm, matter-of-fact. Not cold — just... well-worn. Like this wasn't the first time she'd said it. Or the fiftieth.

"Sorry," he mumbled, barely looking up. His eyes were on the steam rising from his bowl, and the word came out on autopilot — like a cough, not a thought.

He set his phone down next to his plate, face-down but within easy reach. It sat there like a coiled animal — quiet, but tense. We all pretended not to notice it, even though its presence was louder than most of the conversation that followed. You could feel it between us: the other life he was half-living, the messages waiting just beneath the surface, calling him back.

The silence it created was too good to resist.

I reached for the ladle, letting the movement play out with deliberate slowness. A grin crept up before I even said anything — the kind that started behind my teeth and pushed forward. With Eli gone, this was my job now. Someone had to keep Charles from disappearing entirely into that screen. Someone had to remind him there were people in the room who actually knew him.

"Texting Chloe again, were we?"

It landed perfectly. I saw the twitch in his cheek, the stiffening in his shoulders. But he didn't fire back right away. Instead, he tore into his toastie with calculated nonchalance, like he was performing the act of eating rather than doing it out of hunger. The cheese stretched between his fingers like spider silk, glistening in the low light, and he dipped the corner into his soup with deliberate slowness. Classic Charles — play the long game. Buy time. Make sure the footing was stable before advancing.

"She asked about the seminary reading," he said eventually, eyes fixed on the soup like it held divine answers. "Doctrine and Covenants. She had questions."

"Right," I replied, ladling soup into my bowl with enthusiasm I didn't bother masking. The metal clinked gently against the ceramic, the rhythm casual, deliberately disbelieving. "That's what they're calling it now."

Charles shot me a glare — sharp, sudden. He had this way of staring like he was trying to sharpen the edges of the room with it. But I saw the flush creep into the tops of his ears, pink and blooming like a flag raised against his will. He hadn't figured out how to keep his tells in check. Not yet. At sixteen, Charles was all elbows and defences, walking that awkward line between not caring and caring far too much.

I remembered being there. Not so long ago, really. The difference was I'd had Eli to talk to — someone who understood the weight of expectation without needing it explained. Charles had me now, and I wasn't sure I was enough.

"Oh, I bet she did," I added, laying it on with a grin I knew would annoy him. "Like whether it was your turn to send the heart emoji, or hers."

"Shut up."

It came out harder than I think he meant it to. The warmth of the kitchen flickered for a second, pierced by the heat in his voice. His hand clenched around his spoon, knuckles whitening just slightly. I backed off — silently — but not before catching the flash of something beneath his irritation. Not just embarrassment. Something rawer. I filed it away, the way I always did. Charles didn't like to be seen, but that didn't mean I'd stop watching out for him.

"Language," Dad said, still hunched calmly over his soup, not even raising an eyebrow. It was the kind of response honed from years of refereeing sibling skirmishes. Completely unfazed.

Across the table, Mum caught my eye. She didn't say anything — didn't need to. The look was enough. One brow raised, a tilt of the head. The universal signal. I see what you're doing. I know that smile. Don't push it.

I raised both hands in theatrical surrender, palms lifted like I was a saint framed in stained glass. The grin stayed, though. I couldn't help it. "Just making dinner lively."

"It would be nice," Mum said, folding her napkin with the same quiet intensity she used for all small acts that carried more meaning than she let on, "if we could speak about something that didn't involve teasing your brother. Or his phone."

I tilted my head, feigning solemn contemplation. The look was part of the act — a pantomime of reflection — but Mum's eyes held mine for a beat longer than necessary. That unspoken thing passed between us again. She knew I was needling Charles because I missed having someone to talk to. She knew the teasing was connection, not cruelty. She didn't say any of it. She didn't have to.

"I could talk about Millie instead?"

"Please no," Charles muttered into his soup, voice muffled by the steam like he hoped it could double as camouflage.

But I was already in motion, the kind of momentum that came from spending too many hours alone with textbooks and a dog who couldn't answer back. The idea had barely left my mouth before the whole story unspooled in my head, every ridiculous detail rising to the surface. This was safer ground — animals I understood. Animals made sense in ways people rarely did.

I leaned forward, elbows on the table, water glass nearly tipping as I launched in.

"You know she chased a kookaburra off the fence this afternoon?" I said, pausing just long enough to set the stage. "Like a furry missile launched from the back steps. Didn't even hesitate. Just charged at it like she was guarding the bloody perimeter of Fort Knox."

Dad, still halfway through a spoonful of soup, let out the barest ghost of a smile. "I'm amazed it didn't laugh at her," he said. It wasn't loud, but it landed. Dry as always, and all the funnier because of how rare it was.

Something eased in my chest at that. Dad's humour was like sighting a rare bird — you couldn't force it, couldn't predict it, but when it appeared, it felt like a gift. I wished I knew how to tell him that. Wished the words came as easily as observations about Border Collies and kookaburras.

"It did!" I laughed, the image in my head now vivid and ridiculous and completely irresistible. I couldn't help it — my hands were already up, tracing the kookaburra's retreat through the air. "Right before it flew off — properly offended bird, wings all ruffled with indignation. You could practically hear it thinking, 'How dare this oversized dust mop challenge my authority?'"

And just for a moment, it was perfect. That lightness, that spark. Mum smiled — an actual, honest smile, soft and unguarded. I hadn't even meant to pull it out of her, but seeing it made something ease inside me. These moments were what I held onto. The small victories. The proof that we could still reach each other across all the silences and distances.

But the feeling didn't last.

Across the table, Charles sat hunched, barely touching his food. His toastie had started to cool, the cheese turning stiff, the edges drying where the steam no longer reached. He wasn't really in the room with us — just orbiting it. Eyes distant, shoulders curled in. I could tell he was listening, sort of, but he wasn't part of it. Not really.

Then he rolled his eyes — textbook Charles. All performance, all signal. He picked up his glass with that exact kind of casualness that begged to be noticed.

"Even Chloe gets more peace at her house," he muttered.

The words landed wrong. Like a floorboard you didn't realise was loose until it groaned beneath your weight. The room stilled. All that warmth, that rhythm we'd briefly rediscovered — it just paused. Not broken. But skewed.

I looked at him, eyebrows raised, spoon still halfway to my mouth. "Wow. That bad, huh?"

"Jerome," Mum said. Just my name. Quiet, but carrying all the weight in the world.

Dad didn't say anything. He didn't have to. He just kept eating, like he always did when things got tense. But I saw his eyes flick to Charles — not sharp, not scolding. Just watching. Reading. Like a man turning a verse over in his head, trying to see what lay beneath it. I wondered what he saw. Wondered if he'd say anything later, in one of those private moments I was never privy to. The conversations that happened behind closed doors, between patriarch and son rather than father and son.

The shift in the room wasn't loud. No one slammed a door or raised their voice. But it was there — subtle, inevitable. Like the temperature dropping before the rain. The lamplight still glowed, but it felt thinner now, as if it no longer reached the corners of the room with the same warmth. Everything felt just a bit more defined. Sharper. The kind of clarity that didn't comfort so much as expose.

We kept eating. No one said it, but we all felt it. That pause. That falter in the middle of what had been — if not peaceful — at least familiar.

Charles sank a little lower in his chair, his hoodie pulling up around his neck like he was trying to disappear inside it. His shoulders rounded in, and the indifference on his face was so carefully placed it almost fooled me. Almost. But I'd seen that look before. Too many times. That wasn't apathy — it was armour. A quiet recoil from something that had landed harder than he expected.

I wanted to say something. Not another jab — something real. But the words stuck somewhere between my chest and my throat, the way they always did when it mattered most. Eli would have known what to say. Eli had a way of cutting through Charles's defences without making him feel exposed. I just had bad jokes and worse timing.

Then I heard it. A soft thump beneath my seat. Solid and unmistakable.

Millie.

I hadn't seen her slip in, but she was there now, curled up under my chair like she'd been there all along. She had a way of doing that — appearing without fanfare, claiming her spot with total confidence, as if the floor had been laid just for her. I glanced down. She looked up. Her tail wagged once, slowly. A punctuation mark of contentment.

The tension in my shoulders released, just a fraction. Millie had that effect — she always had. Even as a puppy, she'd known when to press close and when to simply be present. I'd told my behavioural ecology lecturer once that dogs were better at reading emotional states than most humans. He'd laughed. I hadn't been joking.

"She's been good today," I said, glad for the out. I reached down and scratched behind her ears, feeling her lean into it with that slow-blooming satisfaction only dogs seem to master. "Didn't chew anything important. Kept me company while I was sketching ideas for the new shelter. That wallaby pup I told you about — they're thinking of expanding the enclosure at the wildlife park."

Mum smiled, though it didn't quite reach her eyes this time. There was something held in the way she looked at me — intentional, careful. A smile designed for balance, not joy. One she pulled out when things threatened to fray, like a familiar layer she could throw around the moment to keep it from getting colder.

"We'll see if she's still in your good books when you're brushing fur off your navy jumper tomorrow morning."

"I don't mind," I said, shrugging off the imagined strands of dog hair with ease. The tension in my shoulders had already started to fade. "She's family."

And she was. More than that — she was my constant. The one relationship that didn't require translation, didn't come loaded with expectation or history or the weight of things unsaid. When I'd thought about deferring my mission, it was Millie I'd talked to first. Sitting on the back step in the dark, her head on my knee, trying to find words for a decision I wasn't sure I could explain to anyone else. She hadn't judged. Hadn't asked questions. Just stayed.

I let my eyes move slowly around the table, not rushing, just taking it in. Quietly scanning the scene, taking stock of the emotional temperature the way someone else might check the weather. It was second nature now. Reading body language like tracking wildlife — subtle clues, small shifts. The tilt of Charles's head, the way Mum's hands stayed folded neatly in her lap, the measured pace of Dad's chewing.

The bowls in front of us were half-finished. The soup had lost a bit of its steam but still gave off that familiar mix of garlic and rosemary — less assertive now, more delicate, fading into the background. The toasties were mostly gone, just a few crusts left behind like footprints of a meal shared more out of habit than hunger.

There was still warmth in the air. Fading, but there.

Beneath the table, Millie pressed her weight against my ankle. I reached down, fingers finding the familiar softness behind her ear, and let the moment hold for as long as it would.

Dad checked his watch. The same one he'd had for years — silver, scuffed nearly to oblivion. Time carved into metal. He frowned at it, and I saw the lines around his eyes deepen the way they did more often now. Small accumulations I kept noticing.

"Jerome, it's already ten to seven. You'll be late for basketball."

The words broke through the stillness like a stone dropped into water. I was out of my chair before he'd finished the sentence.

"Ah—right."

The chair scraped back hard against the tile — that familiar wooden protest I'd been making since I was twelve. Millie's head lifted from my ankle, startled, but I was already moving. I grabbed the last crust off my plate, shoved it in my mouth as I went.

"I thought I had more time. Thanks, Dad."

"Don't touch my crumble," I mumbled at Charles through the mouthful. He caught the look. Message received.

Then I was down the hallway, feet finding the familiar path without thinking — doorframes, carpet edges, the spot where the floor creaked if you stepped too hard. My room was chaos. Clothes in layers, textbooks stacked beside half-finished sketches of enclosure layouts. Kit. Where was my kit?

I scanned the mess the way I'd scan undergrowth for movement. There — navy heap, buried under jeans and lecture notes. I pulled it free, changed fast. Shorts, shirt, socks that almost matched. Shoes. Bag.

Good enough. You learn not to wait for perfect.

Back down the hallway at a jog, slightly breathless, shirt not quite straight. Dad was already at the door, keys in hand. No impatience on his face. Just that quiet readiness, like he'd known exactly how long I'd need.

"Ready!"

"Let's go then, before you miss the warm-up."

The evening air hit cool as we stepped outside. I pulled the door shut behind me, the sound fading into the quiet street.

The house went on without me. It always did.