The Crack

“It didn’t start loud. Just a feeling, like the silence had learned how to speak back.”

The fight didn’t start like a storm.

It started like a crack—one of those subtle ones in a windscreen that hides in plain sight, harmless at first, just a shimmer in the glass. But then you blink, and it’s doubled, spread, multiplied itself into a spiderweb of vulnerability. What once felt solid, trustworthy, begins to tremble under pressure, each tiny fracture whispering that the whole thing could go at any moment.

We’d been driving for hours. Or maybe it was twenty minutes. Or maybe all day. Time out here didn’t behave the way it was supposed to. It stretched and sagged like old elastic, sometimes snapping back without warning, sometimes disappearing entirely. I couldn’t tell if the sun had moved since breakfast. I couldn’t remember if we’d had breakfast.

There were no signs anymore. Just skeletal posts, their arms bare and rust-streaked, like old scarecrows pointing at ghosts. Even the landscape had started to look unsure of itself. The colours had bled out under the glare of a sun that hovered in one place, stuck like a pin in a corkboard sky, casting the same washed-out light that made everything look dry and distant and a little bit unreal.

And the car had developed a new noise.

It was subtle at first—a faint ticking that rose and fell with the rhythm of the road. But now it was steady, insistent, like a clock counting down to something. Each tick seemed to tap directly against my nerves, sending small jolts of tension into my spine, my arms, the space behind my eyes. It wasn’t the obvious kind of breakdown-noise. It was the kind that meant something was wearing thin—something critical, hidden, inevitable.

I found myself listening for it in the silences, in the dips between bumps. I held my breath, hoping to hear it again, terrified of what it might mean if it stopped. The sound had become part of our journey now. A passenger.

Then Mum pulled over.

No warning. No explosion, no hiss of escaping steam, no urgent dashboard light flickering like an alarm. She just… eased the car to the side of the road, as if obeying instructions none of us could see or hear. Her hands stayed on the wheel for a moment after we stopped, fingers tight on the worn leather, her face unreadable.

We’d come to rest beside a cattle gate that looked like it had been abandoned decades ago. It hung half open, one hinge seizing every few seconds and letting out a dull creak when the wind caught it. The metal was the colour of dried blood—deep brown-red, oxidised to the point of fragility. I thought if I touched it, it might crumble like burnt paper.

The paddock beyond was flat and empty. Not just empty in the usual way—truly, fundamentally devoid of life. A few wiry bushes clung to the soil, spaced too far apart to pretend they were part of anything living. In the middle of it all stood a windmill, or what remained of one. Its blade was broken, one piece dangling on a twisted bolt, spinning slightly when the breeze caught it, like it was trying to lift off but had forgotten how.

The whole thing leaned drunkenly to one side, held up more by rust than by design, its lattice legs sunk unevenly into the dirt. It looked like it should’ve collapsed years ago. Maybe it had, and we were just seeing the memory of it, standing out here in a place where time lost its grip.

No one spoke.

Mum opened her door and stepped out, not looking at us, not explaining. Just walking around to the front of the car, arms crossed, posture tight. She stood there, back straight, like a soldier waiting for orders, or someone trying to hold themselves together with posture alone.

The engine ticked as it cooled—echoing the sound from inside, but more hollow now. More final.

I stayed where I was, seatbelt still tight across my chest, and stared at the windmill. The blade swung in the wind, just once, before hanging still again. Like it was signalling something I couldn’t understand.

Somewhere between breath and silence, the first fracture had appeared.

And though none of us said it aloud, we all knew the same thing: the rest were coming.

Mum walked to the front of the car with the slow, deliberate pace of someone fulfilling an obligation only she understood. Every step seemed to carry weight beyond movement, like the ground itself might judge her intentions if she faltered. Her shoulders were set, arms locked tightly across her chest as if to keep something inside—panic, perhaps, or the fraying edges of composure that had held this journey together longer than they should have. She stood with her back to us, facing the open road—or what passed for a road now—with the rigid stillness of someone listening. But not to us.

I wondered what she was hearing.

Maybe the wind, threading its way through rusted fences and dried-out trees. Maybe voices—imagined or remembered—that had become louder than reason. Maybe just her own thoughts circling the same track over and over again, like a dog worn down by confinement. Thoughts she wouldn’t—or couldn’t—say aloud.

Inside the car, we didn’t speak.

We’d spent so long moving that the sudden stillness felt unnatural, like something was wrong simply because it wasn’t in motion anymore. The air tasted of dust and old fabric and something sour I couldn’t name. My legs ached from the hours of sitting, but still I didn’t move. I watched her through the glass instead—our mother, our compass, our uncertain anchor—and waited.

Then Mack opened his door.

The hinges shrieked, high and pained, a sharp protest that cut across the hush like a bone breaking. The noise made Mum flinch—only slightly, but enough. Dust lifted at his feet in a rusty bloom, catching in the sunlight like blood in water before settling again in a soft, inevitable sigh.

He stood outside for a moment, neither approaching nor retreating, just... waiting. Watching her. His breath misted slightly in the fresh, cold air, shoulders tense beneath his hoodie. That careful space between them was more than physical—it was emotional, too. Measured. Fragile. The distance people hold when they’re trying not to hurt each other, but know they probably will.

I followed, clutching Ribbons so tightly that my knuckles had gone bloodless, her stitched neck stretched from the pressure of my grip. I slipped from the car and stepped lightly, as if my footsteps might break the moment open. The gravel shifted under my trainers, each crunch like a snapped twig in a forest no longer sleeping.

I didn’t go to them.

Instead, I drifted to the back of the car, letting my fingers brush against the dusty paint as if the contact would root me to something solid. I crouched beside the back wheel, pretending to inspect a clump of spindly grass that had somehow managed to grow in this place. It was grey-green and jagged-edged, the kind of plant you couldn’t pick without bleeding. Resilient in the most ruthless way. I traced one of its blades with the tip of my finger, feeling how sharp it was, how dry. A survivor. But only just.

From that spot, I could watch them without being seen. Mum hadn’t moved. Mack had, slightly—just enough to be noticed. His fists were loosening now, opening and closing like he was rehearsing the words he hadn’t said yet, trying to gauge whether they were weapons or offerings. I didn’t know which they needed to be.

I held Ribbons close, the cotton body warm where my hands had gripped it too long. I waited. The air pressed down like it wanted to extract something from us—a confession, a direction, a decision. And I knew, with a cold certainty I didn’t want to have, that the crack had widened. That whatever came next would come because the silence couldn’t hold out any longer.

“Tell me the truth,” Mack said, and his voice carried across the dry paddock with a clarity that startled me.

Mum didn’t move. Not a flinch, not a glance. Her arms stayed locked across her chest, chin tilted forward, gaze locked on the horizon as if sheer will alone might force it to shift, to yield some sign that we weren’t as lost as we all felt.

“What truth?” she replied, finally, though the shape of the question gave her away. It wasn’t confusion—it was evasion, the kind of response you give when you know what someone means but can’t yet face it aloud.

“Where are we going?”

“I told you.”

“You didn’t.”

“I told you Queensland.”

“That's not a plan,” Mack said, and his voice was firmer now, no longer the voice of a child appealing to authority but something else—measured, adult, carved from necessity. “Queensland’s a state. It's huge. Where in Queensland? When? How? Why?”

Each question struck like a hammer tap, precise and controlled, exposing the emptiness behind her story. And still she didn’t face him. Her shoulders lifted closer to her ears, spine drawn tight, as though she could shrink inside herself and disappear beneath the weight of his words.

“I don't need a plan,” she said at last, but it didn’t sound like defiance. It sounded like fatigue. Like someone reciting lines from a script written in desperation. “I need you to do what you're told.”

I felt something hollow open up in my chest at that. Not anger. Not even fear. Just the cold, distant recognition that the people we relied on might not know any more than we did—that their authority wasn’t rooted in knowledge, but in habit, in momentum, in the hope that nobody would look too closely.

“We’re not safe out here,” Mack said, his tone careful, almost gentle, but firm. Unflinching. “You don’t know where we are. The car’s breaking down. You haven’t booked anywhere to stay. We haven’t had a proper meal in days. We’re running out of money, and petrol, and options.”

He wasn’t accusing her—he was naming facts, laying them out like puzzle pieces we all knew didn’t fit together. And somehow, that made it harder. Harder to argue with, harder to dismiss.

“I’m doing my best,” Mum hissed, and it was like steam hissing from a pipe, pressure building to an unsustainable level. “You think this is easy? You think I want to be out here, in the middle of nowhere, with two children and no—”

She choked on the sentence, snapping it shut like a slammed door. But it had already opened, and we’d all seen what lay behind it. I held Ribbons tighter against my chest.

“I think you're scared,” Mack said softly.

He wasn’t trying to wound her. He was naming what we’d all felt, all seen in glimpses—in her sleepless nights, her tight smiles, the silence that had begun to fill the spaces between her instructions. She hadn’t just lost the thread of this journey. She’d lost the shape of where we were supposed to be going.

That did it.

She turned around like she’d been shot, her boots scraping dry gravel and kicking up a swirl of red dust that caught the sun and made her look like she was standing in smoke. Her face was drawn tight, too tight, like it had been pulled over the bones without enough skin to stretch. Her eyes glittered with something wild and shining—tears barely held back and something sharper beneath them, the heat of panic sharpened to rage.

“Of course I’m scared!” she shouted, her voice cracking open. “Everything’s falling apart and your father’s gone and they’re watching—”

The word exploded and then stopped, like a car slamming into a wall. Her hand went to her mouth, fast and fierce, as if she could physically shove the words back in, undo the fracture that had just split her wide open.

We all froze.

Something had been said. Something real. Something dangerous.

Mack stepped forward—just once—but something in that single stride shifted the whole moment. It wasn’t about distance. It was about intent. He was stepping across a threshold, closing the gap not just between bodies, but between truths. He wasn’t letting her hide behind silence anymore. Not this time.

“Who's watching?” he asked.

The words weren’t loud. They didn’t need to be. They slipped into the space between them like a key into a lock, quiet but exact, and I felt something tighten in the air—as if the landscape itself had paused to listen.

She didn’t answer. Didn’t flinch. But something inside her settled. The tension in her shoulders slackened just a little, her arms loosening around her body as though whatever invisible brace she’d been using to hold herself together had suddenly gone slack. She looked less like a figure in battle and more like a person simply tired of fighting.

Mack didn’t follow up immediately. He let the question breathe, didn’t demand or accuse. He stood firm, feet planted in the ochre dust, arms loose by his sides, just being there—offering her the space to speak, but making it gently clear that not speaking would no longer be enough.

“Mum,” he said, softer now. There was something almost tender in his voice. “I'm trying to help you. But I can't if you keep pretending you're fine when you're obviously not.”

She turned toward him then—not all the way, just enough for me to see the flicker of expression that passed across her face. Something between grief and disbelief. Her lips parted as if she meant to say something, but what came out was a bitter little laugh that had no humour in it at all.

“I have to pretend,” she said, and the words came like a snapped branch, raw and sharp. “Do you think anyone else is going to keep us safe? Do you think there’s someone waiting in the wings to step in and sort this out? There’s no cavalry coming, Mack. No backup plan. It’s just me. Just me.”

The repetition rang with fury—at the world, at herself, maybe even at us. And yet underneath it, I heard it: the quiver in her breath, the tremor at the edge of her certainty.

“But you don’t have to do it alone,” Mack said, and it wasn’t a plea. It was an offer. Calm. Solid. The kind of thing people said when they’d stopped needing to be right and started needing to be kind.

She looked at him—really looked this time—and her eyes searched his face like she was trying to find something there, something she’d maybe forgotten he could give. I held my breath. Ribbons was clutched so tightly under my arm I felt the stitches straining.

The silence stretched. It wasn’t empty—it was thick, filled with everything unspoken. I imagined I could hear it, the way you sometimes hear a storm before it arrives: that pressure, that hum.

Please say it, I thought. Whatever it is. Just say it.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she brought the heel of her hand to her forehead like the pain inside her skull had become too much to carry. She stayed like that for a second—maybe longer—head bowed, face hidden, the weight of whatever she carried pulling her down.

Then, just like that, she turned.

Her movements were swift now, decisive. She strode back to the car, her steps hard and purposeful like she was crushing whatever had tried to rise inside her. The door opened, the engine coughed once before settling into that uneven idle we’d all come to dread.

“We need to keep going,” she said, not looking at either of us. Her voice had flattened again, ironed clean of emotion. A statement, not a discussion. “We’re burning daylight.”

I watched her hands tighten on the wheel and knew the door had closed again—not just the car door, but something larger. The window to honesty, to real answers, had cracked open for a moment, and now it was sealed shut, leaving only the echo of what could have been.

Mack looked at me as he passed, his expression unreadable but his eyes tired. So tired.

And I climbed back in too, the car door closing with a soft thud that felt heavier than it should have. As we pulled away from the broken gate and the windmill with its shattered wings, I stared at the empty paddock one last time and wondered what might have changed if she’d told the truth.

But I already knew.

Some moments, once missed, never return.