Interrupted Grace

“You fight for ten minutes of quiet like it’s a luxury, and then the phone rings and reminds you—peace was never yours to keep.”

A patch of sunlight had begun to creep across the kitchen tiles with the kind of deliberate slowness that only natural light can afford—unhurried, indifferent to human urgency. It moved with a measured grace, unconcerned by schedules or alarms, brushing lazily against the legs of the dining chairs as if the day itself had nowhere particular to be. It gave the quiet impression that time, at least for the sunlight, was abundant and wholly its own—unbothered by calendars or to-do lists or the fragile balancing act of a woman trying to manage too many competing demands at once.

I realised, with a vague sense of disbelief, that I had barely sat down since breakfast. And even then, that moment hadn’t counted. Half a slice of toast hastily eaten, followed by a hurried mouthful of cooling tea as I shifted the washing basket from one hip to the other, mentally calculating the likelihood of rain based on the angle of the light and the particular scent of the air outside.

The morning had vanished in its usual blur. A chaos of minor, relentless tasks: damp laundry pegs slipping from my fingers into dew-wet grass; the answering machine beeping with the mild insistence of messages I kept meaning to check but never quite did; and a frankly absurd but oddly passionate altercation between Jerome and Millie over a missing sock—one Jerome was absolutely certain he’d left on the end of his bed, and which Millie, judging by the sheepish tail thumping and the suspicious tuft of white thread near her water bowl, had claimed as some kind of textile prize.

Now, at last, I was seated. A true, unbroken moment. A rare event in the domestic calendar worthy of quiet celebration.

The wooden surface of the kitchen table was dappled in the soft light that slanted through the north-facing window—gentle and forgiving, the kind that had the uncanny power to make even unwashed dishes and scattered breadcrumbs appear like part of a carefully staged still life. The kind of light that whispered, it’s alright; the world isn’t falling apart just yet.

I’d taken the small liberty of brewing a proper cup of tea—chamomile and lavender, one of Evelyn’s staunch recommendations, supposedly good for the nerves and capable of restoring a frayed sense of perspective. But I’d let it steep too long. Forgotten it briefly while wiping down the benches or checking whether the chicken had begun to thaw. The steam had long since faded into the air, leaving behind only a ghost of warmth in the ceramic and a taste that would now be more bitter than calming. Still, I cradled the mug between my palms, grateful for the gesture if not the contents.

The scone I’d saved from morning tea sat on its side plate with a posture of mild disappointment—cool now, slightly firm at the edges, slouching faintly against the butter knife like it knew it had been neglected. Nevertheless, I reached for it with slow determination. It might no longer be fresh, but it was mine. A small, stolid reward.

Ten minutes, I bargained with myself. Just ten minutes of stillness. Ten minutes of silence that belonged solely to me—without demands or questions or complications. Ten minutes to gather myself before the next tidal wave of necessity.

My mobile rang.

Of course it did.

The sound shattered the quiet like a dropped casserole dish—sharp and immediate, slicing through the hard-earned peace I’d been guarding like a fragile relic. I didn’t move at first, just stared at the phone as if it had personally betrayed me, hand still hovering above the forgotten scone, mouth forming a tight, unseen line.

I drew in a breath through my nose—long, slow, controlled. The kind of breath you take when there’s no one around to perform calmness for, but you know the alternative is unravelment. Then, with a sigh that seemed to release more than just air, I reached across and grabbed the phone.

I answered on the fourth ring, my voice carrying the accumulated weight of a morning that had already demanded more from me than I’d been willing—or prepared—to give.

“Greta speaking.”

There was no attempt to conceal the irritation in my tone. No softening with pleasantries or performance of politeness. The voice that came through the receiver would meet me exactly as I was: frayed, hollowed, and not in the mood for unexpected intrusions. Especially not ones that dared to arrive just as I’d sat down with a lukewarm cup of calming tea and a scone already surrendering to staleness.

What greeted me instead was a muffled exclamation—“Shit”—delivered in a soft, unfamiliar voice. The kind of accidental profanity that slipped out when someone forgot, momentarily, they were supposed to be presenting themselves as professional. It certainly wasn’t the sort of greeting one hoped for when answering one’s mobile, and it did absolutely nothing to improve my already depleted mood.

“Excuse me, who is this?” I asked, sharper than necessary.

“My sincere apologies for that,” came the reply, noticeably more composed now. The speaker had evidently taken a moment to recover her professional footing. “This is Officer Felicity Massey from the Broken Hill Police.”

The words landed like a glass dropped from height—an audible crack of recognition that reverberated through my chest. Broken Hill. The police. My back straightened involuntarily, muscles pulling taut beneath my jumper. Irritation vanished, evaporating in an instant and replaced with a tight, heavy presence low in my ribs. The cold steel of alarm.

“Oh,” I said, the single syllable snagging in my throat. It was all I could manage. A new emotion crept in—regret for the tone I’d used, for the impatience I hadn’t thought twice about expressing just moments ago. The name of the town had done what no amount of decorum could: it cleared the fog of the morning entirely.

There was a pause. Not long. But long enough.

Long enough for the full weight of what might be coming to slip its fingers under my skin. Long enough for that heavy silence to press its palm to my sternum and begin to squeeze.

A small gasp escaped me—unbidden, ungraceful. “Is this about Paul?”

“It is, actually,” Officer Massey confirmed, her tone steady and clear, the voice of someone who dealt in fact rather than conjecture. “I’ve just finished speaking with his wife, Cla—”

I didn’t let her finish. The name alone was enough to summon a flare of disbelief, of bristling defensiveness I barely tried to suppress.

“Claire went to the police station?” The question burst out of me, disbelieving and hot, edged with something I recognised too late as personal betrayal. The image of Claire at a police desk, wringing her hands and making dramatic declarations, was both unsurprising and infuriating.

“Yes, Ma’am. She left our offices only a few minutes ago,” came the calm reply, though I detected a hint of caution in the officer’s tone now—an adjustment to the sudden emotional temperature shift.

“Stupid cow,” I muttered before I could stop myself. The words tumbled out with bitter force, too fast for revision. I flinched internally the moment they left my mouth, horrified by how they must have sounded. “Claire has always been an attention-seeker. She’s constantly creating unnecessary drama. You should just ignore her.”

The moment hung there, taut and unpleasant. The words rang hollow even in my own ears—petty, defensive, lacking any of the calm authority I liked to project in moments of crisis. But the truth beneath them wasn’t so easily dismissed. I wasn’t just trying to explain Claire away. I was clawing at some semblance of control, grasping for familiarity in a situation that had begun slipping sideways, fast and frighteningly.

The officer’s response was clean and direct, her professionalism sharpening just enough to slice through my bluster.

“You’ve heard from Paul recently, then?” she asked, tone neutral but clearly unmoved by my outburst. She wasn’t going to be distracted. She wasn’t going to be managed.

“No,” I replied, too quickly, too sharply.

There was another pause—brief, but thick with significance. I could almost hear Officer Massey shifting in her seat, the barely perceptible rustle of someone recalibrating their approach. The silence held a certain tactical weight, like the moment before a chess piece is moved, deliberate and strategic.

“If you haven’t heard from Paul either,” she resumed, her tone now edged with the cool clarity of formal procedure, “why exactly should I simply ignore his wife’s concerns?”

“Hmm… Yes,” I found myself muttering, but my concentration had already fractured.

Jerome chose that precise moment to enter the kitchen.

He moved with the lumbering carelessness of someone who had only recently emerged from sleep and wasn’t yet convinced he should be upright at all. His hair bore the flattened signature of a pillow, a single wing of dark strands splayed awkwardly to one side. He carried his mobile phone loosely in one hand, the other tugging at his unzipped hoodie as if dressing himself in slow motion. Sleep still clung to him like fog.

My eyes snapped toward him, narrowing instinctively. The division of my attention under these circumstances was more than unwelcome—it was intolerable. I was standing in the dining room, talking to a police officer about my missing son, and Jerome had chosen now—of all possible moments—to stage a casual raid on the biscuit tin.

With an utter lack of awareness, or perhaps indifference, he reached for the container. The ceramic scraped noisily against the benchtop, its metal lid rattling with a jarring clatter that grated along my already frayed nerves.

“Yes?” Officer Massey’s voice crackled faintly through the line again, her tone sharper now, confusion inching toward suspicion. “Yes, you have seen Paul recently?”

I inhaled sharply, chest tightening, fighting the sudden and overwhelming desire to snap—at Jerome, at the officer, at the entire confluence of interruptions and indignities that had derailed what was supposed to be ten solitary, healing minutes.

My eyes locked on Jerome with the full force of maternal censure. I raised my free hand and performed a series of increasingly frantic gestures: flat palm, sharp wave, fingers flicking toward the door with silent urgency. Go away, I mouthed with unmistakable clarity, lips taut, jaw clenched.

He responded with maddening nonchalance, one eyebrow lifting in idle amusement as he continued his mission. The biscuit tin’s lid came off with a soft pop, the sound disproportionately smug.

“No. I just told you quite clearly that I haven’t seen Paul,” I said into the phone, my voice clipped and acidic, precision-tempered by barely restrained fury. I pivoted slightly, turning my back to Jerome and angling myself toward the quieter end of the room in a desperate bid for some semblance of privacy.

Claire’s melodrama, Paul’s silence, Jerome’s oblivious timing—they crashed together in my mind like wayward objects in a rising tide. I could feel the swell building, pressing against my ribcage.

And threading through it all, steady and unmistakable, was the slow and quiet panic I could no longer deny.

A tug in the chest. A chill along the spine. That low, humming undertone that says: Something is truly wrong.

As Officer Massey began to speak again, I sensed a subtle recalibration in her voice. The rhythm of her speech slowed, each word released with the caution of someone navigating unstable terrain—like stepping carefully across loose gravel, fully aware that any false footing might cause the entire surface to shift beneath them.

“Mrs Smith,” she began, noticeably more deliberate now, her tone wrapped in professional restraint, “do you have any particular concerns for Paul’s wellbeing?”

My brow furrowed at the phrasing. The question struck with a peculiar dissonance, an unsettling note played just slightly off-key. It dropped like a forgotten shoe in an otherwise quiet room, scattering my composure and unsettling something within me that I hadn’t yet identified.

A slow ripple of discomfort passed through my chest, tightening into the familiar arrangement of maternal worry layered with something sharper—defensive instinct. I felt my shoulders stiffen, my spine lengthening in automatic response, as though I needed to brace against an accusation I couldn't yet see coming.

“Of course I do. He’s my son,” I answered, allowing a carefully modulated firmness to shape the words. “I have exactly the same amount of concern for him as I do for all of my children.”

Even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t strictly true. Concern doesn’t distribute itself with mathematical fairness across a mother’s heart. It pulses where it must, where it’s drawn most often—towards the child who’s lost, who’s struggling, who’s drifted into the fog of uncertainty and won’t answer your calls.

“Sorry, Mrs Smith,” she continued, her voice slipping into a slightly different register now—more direct, maybe even a touch cooler. There was a faint tension threaded through her words, a suggestion of professional distance edging closer to suspicion. “I meant specifically, are you worried that you haven’t heard from him for several days now?”

This time, the question hit its target cleanly. I felt it strike beneath the breastbone, an old bruise pressed again. I pressed my lips together, holding my breath for a beat to wrestle my expression back under control. Then I let the breath go in a long, thin exhale, the sound of it betraying the fatigue I hadn't meant to expose.

“I am… a little concerned, yes,” I said, the words emerging more brittle than intended. Frustration surged again—tight and hot, pressing against the sides of my throat. “But you have to understand that Paul and Claire are constantly arguing about something. Can you believe she actually had the audacity to accuse me of lying!”

The sentence burst out, untamed, before I could dress it in diplomacy. My voice had lifted in pitch, sharpened by indignation. There was a heat in my chest now, one that didn’t stem from worry alone.

“What specifically does she think you lied about?” Officer Massey asked, her voice infuriatingly neutral—toneless, professional. The kind of carefully trained calm that somehow made me feel all the more flustered by contrast.

“Hmph!” The sound escaped me—half-scoff, half-growl. “She’s convinced that Paul is here in Adelaide with us, hiding out. She claims he drove down after they had another one of their dramatic arguments the other night.”

My jaw tightened as I spoke, the clench of it so habitual I didn’t notice until it began to ache. I felt my grip on the phone tighten slightly, pressing it more firmly against my ear.

“But he’s not here with us, and we haven’t heard a single word from him,” I added, though the defiance that had charged my voice only moments ago was already beginning to soften at the edges. A cooler, quieter feeling was starting to take its place—something that felt like fear dressed up in hesitation. “I suppose I am genuinely a little worried about him.”

The admission hovered, vulnerable and raw, in the charged silence that followed. It seemed to hang between us, held aloft by the fragile tension of what hadn’t yet been said. Behind me, the untouched tea on the kitchen table had long gone cold, the steam disappeared, leaving only the faint scent of lavender and disappointment.

Worry. Frustration. Resentment. Each emotion twined itself around the others in my chest, blurring their edges, muddling their intent. Nothing felt separate anymore. Nothing felt containable.

“If Paul isn’t in Adelaide with your family and he isn’t currently in Broken Hill with his wife,” Officer Massey pressed on, her voice now even more precise, more deliberate, “do you have any idea where else he might be?”

The question landed heavily, thudding into the space where denial had been trying to build a wall.

And just like that, I was no longer reacting—I was being forced to think. To look. Not at Claire’s dramatics. Not at the logistics of who’d said what. But at the far less comfortable terrain of real possibilities.

The part of me I’d kept locked behind practicality stirred—uneasy, uncertain, and no longer able to look away.

I let out a soft gasp as a thought surfaced so suddenly it felt like stepping from shadow into sudden sunlight—sharp, jarring, and impossible to ignore.

“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,” I said, the realisation forming mid-sentence, even as the words spilled out. My pulse quickened—finally, something useful. Something real. How had I failed to consider the most obvious connection?

“What's the brother's name?” she asked at once, her tone sharpening with renewed focus. I could hear the faint scratch of pen on paper, the rhythm of someone newly attentive, finally able to chart a path forward after wading through conversational fog.

“Luke,” I replied without hesitation. “We don't maintain regular contact with him these days—family relationships, you know how they can be—but I know he and Paul have stayed in touch. They talk often. Paul actually spent Christmas with Luke a couple of years ago, when things were particularly tense at home.”

“That's excellent information, Mrs Smith. Do you happen to have a current contact number for Luke?” Her voice now carried the unmistakable cadence of momentum—a woman grasping the thread that might finally lead somewhere. I pictured her on the edge of her seat, biro hovering, a new determination cutting through the earlier weariness.

“Yes, I do have his number. Just hold on one moment while I find it,” I said, already fumbling at my phone, suddenly aware of the delicate weight of being useful. The pressure of it. My fingers, jittery and clumsy, stabbed at the screen, opening and closing the wrong apps in rapid succession.

And then—the line went dead.

A thick silence descended, sudden and absolute. It was the sort of silence that leaves your ears ringing.

“Hello?” I called, my voice climbing with disbelief. “Hello? Officer Massey?”

But there was nothing. No rustle. No static. Just the blank, heartless screen of my phone, the connection severed as abruptly as if the conversation had never existed at all.

From the dining room doorway, Jerome’s voice arrived, absurd in its timing and its normality.

“Mum, can I have a biscuit now?”

“You can have two,” I replied, the words blunt, distant. My eyes never left the screen, my mind still caught in the trailing thread of a call that had meant far more than I’d realised at the time. I didn’t glance his way. Couldn’t. My focus remained fused to the rectangle of dead glass resting in my palm like a stone still warm from the sun, but cooling fast.

Surely she’d call back. Surely she’d noticed the disconnect and was already redialling. I waited, eyes flicking between the screen and the clock. One minute. Two. Three.

The silence seemed to deepen with each breath I took, coiling around me like a fog, thick and oppressive, wrapping itself around my thoughts, numbing the earlier momentum.

My tea sat untouched on the table, its surface dull and clouded. My scone had stiffened on its plate, slumped like a forgotten guest after the party’s end.

That conversation—fragmented, frustrating, yet suddenly so pivotal—had opened something I’d been trying to keep tightly sealed. A door in my mind that I hadn’t meant to unlock. Not yet.

Paul. Claire. The children.

The names drifted in unanchored sequence, scattered thoughts from a puzzle with no guiding image. Their quarrels weren’t new, but this silence was. This drawn-out, oddly hollow quiet.

I imagined Rose—small, all elbows and stubborn grace—waiting on their cracked veranda steps, her shoes on the wrong feet, like she did when she dressed herself. Waiting for a dad who wasn’t coming home when he said he would. And Mack, older now, silent and watching everything, storing it away. He’d be too proud to ask outright, too clever not to notice. Boys learnt early that silence was a kind of protection. That grown men didn’t always come back.

Still no call.

I stared at the phone with a kind of pleading desperation, willing it to come alive. Willing her voice to return and pull me back into purpose.

But the screen stayed black. Indifferent. Silent.

A long breath escaped me. My shoulders slumped beneath its release. I rose from the table, my movements stiff, knees reluctant. The scone and tea remained abandoned, casualties of a morning that had spun completely off-course.

Everything—my plan for calm, for quiet, for a small reclaiming of peace—had been overrun by the endless tide of obligation and uncertainty.

In the hallway, I paused, resting one hand on the frame of the nearest door. I closed my eyes, shutting out the visible clutter, allowing only the internal noise to remain.

Please let him be safe, I whispered into the stillness, a prayer launched not into ritual but into the hollow quiet, where anything sacred might hear. Wherever he is. Whatever he's doing. Just let him be safe.

And then, softer still—just lips moving now, breath barely rising:

Please let me be strong enough for whatever’s coming next.