The Evening That Didn't Happen

“Sometimes the hardest thing isn’t when they leave. It’s when they don’t arrive at all.”

The late afternoon light was cold and colourless, filtering through the lace curtain like milk strained through gauze. I sat alone in the sewing room, though I hadn’t touched a needle all day. The machine rested silent on the table before me, its thread still drawn from a mending project begun and abandoned days ago. A half-folded length of muslin drooped across the adjacent chair, a thought left unfinished.

The house was unusually still. Not the reverent stillness of the Temple—that sacred hush that had filled my lungs only last night—but a different kind of quiet. Brittle. Echoing. The silence of something expected that never came.

Tonight had been meant to be Family Home Evening.

I’d even peeled potatoes.

The messages had come in one by one, like leaves falling from a tree I hadn’t noticed was already bare.

First, Charles—muttering his apology from the hallway, already halfway out the door. “I’m going to the Bakers’. Chloe’s mum’s making chicken pie. Is that okay?”

I’d nodded. Of course it was okay. He was almost seventeen and smitten and barely home as it was.

Then Jerome—texting from the Wildlife Haven in the Hills. A rescued wombat had slipped into respiratory distress, and he was staying through until the vet arrived. He’d sent a photo of its blanket-wrapped body, its soft snout poking out like a child asleep in prayer, captioned: “Sorry Mum. Emergency. Raincheck?”

And then Noah. The worst one, somehow.

He rang just after four, his office line blinking across the screen like a signal I didn’t want to answer. When I picked up, his voice was gentle—too gentle—the tone he used when trying to cushion something that would still bruise.

“Greta, I’ve just had a call from the Bishop. There’s someone who needs a visit tonight. I’ll go straight there after work—I won’t make it home for dinner.”

I closed my eyes, pressing my thumb to the bridge of my nose, as though that small pressure might hold everything in place.

“Right. Of course.”

He said something else—something kind, no doubt, something meant to reassure—but it blurred past me, like a voice through glass. I hung up a few moments later, my hand still resting on the phone as though letting go might splinter me.

Inside, something buckled.

We had just covenanted. Just stood together at the veil of something vast and holy. And already, he was gone again—called away, needed elsewhere. And I was left, once more, to hold the weight of it alone.

Now, the potatoes floated listlessly in a bowl of cold water. The chicken sat untouched in the fridge, its chill leaching outwards like an accusation. Millie snored softly beside the heater, blissfully unaware that the afternoon had hollowed itself out.

I sat in the dim room, the edges of the day drawing in like wet fabric, and waited. For something to shift. To click. To right itself.

But nothing did.

And eventually, I reached for the phone.

The unanswered calls, the days of silence from both Luke and Paul, had become a dull throb beneath everything else—a pressure behind the eyes, behind the ribs. I carried it like a stone in my chest, heavy and unrelenting, dulling every moment with the ache of not knowing.

Claire’s voice still rang in my ears, clear as cut glass: If I don’t hear from him soon, Greta, I swear I’ll take the kids and go. Don’t think I won’t.

And she would. She’d do it out of spite, out of wounded pride, out of the stubborn certainty that I was somehow the villain in all this. I hadn’t heard further. Not a word since.

What could I say? What comfort could I possibly offer when I didn’t even really know where my son was?

I stared down at the keypad, my thumb hovering over the numbers like a diver at the edge of a cliff. The Temple had asked for secrecy. For patience. For faith.

But it hadn’t asked me to sit quietly while my family unravelled around me.

My fingers trembled slightly as I dialled the number for the Broken Hill police, Officer Felicity Massey more specifically.

As the line connected, I took a deep breath, steeling myself for the conversation ahead.

“Officer Massey? This is Greta Smith. I'm calling about my son, Paul.” My voice sounded small, almost fragile, as if the very act of speaking his name aloud might shatter the tenuous hold I had on my emotions.

“Mrs Smith, hello,” came the response, the officer's voice tinged with a mix of concern and professionalism. “Have you heard anything new?”

I hesitated, the silence on my end stretching just long enough to betray the turmoil inside me. The words stuck, caught somewhere between the knot in my throat and the weight pressing down on my chest. I felt suddenly brittle, like the air around me had grown too sharp to breathe.

The past few days had been a blur—spiritual revelation, secrecy, the rising tide of uncertainty in every corner of my family life. I was exhausted in a way that sleep couldn’t touch.

“I did have a brief text message conversation with Paul’s brother, Luke, a few days ago,” I began, forcing the words out carefully, as though speaking too quickly might unravel them. My voice wavered slightly as I recalled the message. “He said that he had bought Paul a plane ticket and that Paul was with him in Hobart.”

Even as I spoke it, the memory returned—how my chest had loosened slightly at the thought of Paul being somewhere safe, not vanished but accounted for, if only for a moment. The glimmer of relief that had flickered then, small and tentative like a match in the dark.

But it hadn’t lasted. That moment of peace had crumbled into silence. Days of it. Deafening.

And now, I was here again, chasing answers across a widening void.

There was a pause on the other end of the line, a moment of contemplation before Officer Massey spoke again.

“So it's all sorted?” she asked, her tone equal parts hopeful and sceptical.

I felt a flare of frustration rise within me, hot and sharp, a surge of emotion I struggled to tamp down. Sorted? How could she even suggest such a thing? Didn't she understand the gravity of it all—the tight knot of dread that had taken root in my chest and refused to ease?

“No,” I said firmly, the word clipped, my grip tightening on the phone until my knuckles turned white. “Luke told me he’d get Paul to call me. That was a few days ago, and I still haven’t heard from him. He’s not answering his phone or responding to any text messages. Luke isn’t answering any of my calls or messages either.”

The admission hung there, heavy and hollow, a silence yawning open in its wake. It stretched longer than it should have, thickening with every second that passed. I could feel the panic rise again, that now-familiar swell beneath my ribs, tight and trembling—the fear that had crept in on Friday and grown roots over the weekend.

I closed my eyes, inhaling deeply, trying to steady the shaking that had begun in my hands and now seemed to hum through my entire body. The room around me felt smaller somehow, the walls tilting inward with slow inevitability, the ceiling lowering like a lid.

My worries had become a weather system. And I was in the eye of it now—utterly still, and waiting.

“I'm not really sure there's much we can do, Mrs Smith,” Officer Massey said finally, her voice gentle but firm. “It doesn't appear any crime has actually been committed.”

The words hit me like a physical blow—a sucker punch to the gut that stole the breath from my lungs and left me reeling. My grip on the phone tightened involuntarily, and I pressed it harder to my ear as if proximity might alter the meaning of her words.

A fresh surge of anger flared within me, sharp and unbidden, mingling with the old, worn desperation that had been clinging to me for days. I could feel it beginning to fray at the edges now, turning raw, splintered.

“Please,” I begged, my voice cracking as the tears I’d kept in check all day finally broke free. “Please, Officer Massey. Can’t you at least contact someone in Hobart? Have them visit Luke’s house, just to check that Paul is there and that they’re all safe?”

Even as I said it, I hated the sound of my voice—how childish it was, how exposed. The raw edge of desperation coloured every syllable. But there was no way to disguise it, no dignity left to shield myself with. This was a mother’s plea, stripped bare.

There was a beat of silence on the line, taut and expectant. I held my breath, bracing against the possibility of dismissal, of being told once again that this wasn’t their concern. My heart pounded in my chest like a fist against a closed door.

“Alright, Mrs Smith,” Officer Massey said at last, her tone shifting, softening. “I'll see what I can do. I'll contact the local authorities in Hobart and ask them to perform a welfare check at Luke's residence.”

The relief that rushed through me was immediate and all-encompassing. It swept through my limbs like heat returning to frostbitten fingers—tingling, painful, and real. I sank back slightly into the chair, my body suddenly hollowed out by the release.

A sob rose unbidden, catching in my throat, half-choked by exhaustion, half-drenched in gratitude.

“Thank you,” I whispered, the words thick and wet. “Thank you so much.”

As the call ended, I let the phone slip from my hand, the soft thud of it against the sewing table oddly final. I sank back into the chair, the old wood creaking beneath me, my body trembling with the aftershocks of the conversation.

I glanced around, my gaze catching on the familiar trappings of this space—my space. The wall of pinned swatches and pattern envelopes, faded at the corners from years of use. The thread rack, neat but thinning, a few spools missing, borrowed or lost. A photo of the children as toddlers—Paul’s gap-toothed grin front and centre—tucked into the frame of the window above my machine. It had been there for years, and now I couldn’t bear to look at it too long.

Everything looked the same. But nothing felt right.

The room, once a sanctuary, felt hollow. The muslin on the chair beside me was still crumpled where I’d left it. A pair of shears glinted under the lamp, untouched. Somewhere beneath it all, a sense of something coming undone pressed in around me. Not just this evening, or Paul’s silence, but something more fundamental. A slow unravelling.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that the ground beneath my feet had shifted—that something had broken loose that would not be easily set right again.

Paul. My firstborn. Out there somewhere, unreachable. Was he scared? Was he even thinking of us? The not-knowing hollowed me out.

I closed my eyes and folded my hands in my lap, fingers locking tightly, knuckles whitening as I offered up a prayer that was less formed than it was felt—a soundless cry for strength, for guidance, for some divine whisper that he was alright.

In that silent room I held to the smallest ember of hope—the promise in Officer Massey's voice that someone would look. That someone, somewhere, would knock on a door and maybe find him standing there.

That was all I needed now. One knock. One answer.

And so, I sat there, hands clasped tightly in my lap, willing myself to be still—though everything inside me buzzed with restless energy. I waited for news, for any scrap of information that might anchor me in the uncertainty that had quietly, insidiously, become my reality.

The minutes ticked by with cruel indifference, each one stretching into an eternity. I stared at the mottled patterns in the muslin on the chair, the faded grain of the sewing table’s surface, the way the light from the hallway cast a threadbare line across the carpet. And then I slipped—unwillingly—into memory.

Paul as a boy: knees perpetually scraped, cheeks flushed with summer heat, his eyes always darting towards mine to check for approval. I could still see the way he’d run into my arms after school, his backpack bouncing wildly, breathless with stories and a need for reassurance he didn’t yet know how to name.

I remembered the nights—how many?—when his cries had summoned me from bed. The small shape of him in the dark, curls stuck to his forehead, clutching his toy dog with the ear half-chewed. I would sit beside him and hum old lullabies into the hush, smoothing his hair, whispering promises that everything was alright.

Now, those memories twisted sharp in my chest. Once, they’d comforted me. Now they pierced. What if I had seen the best of him already? What if those days had been the whole of it—the only time he was ever truly safe, truly mine?

The thought coiled deep in my gut.

I rose from the chair, my legs unsteady, the hem of my skirt catching slightly on the edge of the table as I moved. I paced the narrow length of the sewing room, the floor creaking beneath each step, my mind tumbling through a labyrinth of possibilities, each one darker than the last.

What if something had happened to Paul?

What if he was hurt? Or trapped? Or spiralling into something too deep for even Luke to name?

Or worse.

The thought struck like a crack of thunder, loud and immediate and too awful to hold.

But I held it anyway.

Because someone had to.

I found myself in the kitchen, though I couldn't quite recall crossing the threshold. My hands moved of their own accord—filling the kettle, setting it to boil—the muscle memory of comfort in crisis.

The soft whirr of the element was the only sound, underscoring the silence like a hush before a storm. I moved slowly, deliberately, grounding myself in the small, familiar rituals. The clink of the spoon against ceramic. The creak of the cupboard door. The faint scent of peppermint rising as I tore open the teabag wrapper.

I poured the tea, the stream of water trembling slightly in my grip, sloshing against the rim of the cup. When I lifted it to my lips, the heat singed my tongue—but I barely registered it. The pain seemed dulled somehow, distant. A whisper beneath the roar of thought.

I stood at the counter, both hands wrapped around the cup, drawing what little comfort I could from its warmth. But nothing softened the knowledge curling tighter and tighter inside me: we had passed a threshold, somewhere in the last few days, and nothing—not prayer, not memory, not even the hush of the Temple—could rewind us to what had been.

Still, I waited.

Waited for the phone to ring. For a knock at the door. For a message to appear, a sign, a crack in the silence.

Outside, the world moved on—cars passing, a dog barking in the distance, the soft wail of a child from the neighbouring yard. Life, unknowing, untroubled.

But inside, I stood braced in the gathering dark, holding fast to a hope I couldn’t name.

And so I waited. For Paul. For the storm to break. For something, anything, to come.