The Pause Between Knocks

The journey from Liverpool Street to my mother's house in Sandy Bay should have been automatic—a route I'd driven countless times since getting my licence at seventeen, through university years when I'd return home laden with laundry and existential crises, through my courtship with Nial when I'd bring him for Sunday dinners. But today, nothing felt automatic. Every familiar landmark seemed foreign, transformed by the lens of crisis through which I now viewed everything.

The Hobart streets glistened like black mirrors, reflecting the grey sky. I passed the Cascade Brewery, its gothic facade dark against the mountain backdrop, and remembered taking Nial there on one of our first dates, how he'd made me laugh so hard I'd nearly choked on my beer. The memory felt like it belonged to someone else's life, some parallel universe where husbands didn't vanish and wives didn't have to beg police for help.

My phone lay silent on the passenger seat, face up, screen dark. Every few seconds, my eyes would flick to it, willing it to light up with Nial's name, with his voice, with any explanation that would make this nightmare dissolve. But it remained obstinately silent, a black rectangle of absence that seemed to mock my desperation. I'd turned the ringer to maximum volume, paranoid I might miss his call whilst driving, but the only sounds were my own breathing and the low rumble of the engine.

The events of the morning tumbled through my mind like clothes in a dryer—Linda's betrayal, Jenkins' unexpected kindness, the way the police station had smelled of disinfectant and defeat. But one detail kept surfacing above the others, demanding attention like a song lyric you can't quite place.

Luke Smith.

The name felt familiar in a way I couldn't define, like déjà vu's cousin—not quite a memory but the shadow of one. Had Nial mentioned him? Had I seen the name somewhere? The harder I tried to grasp the connection, the more it slipped away, leaving only an uncomfortable sense that this was important, that I should know this, that forgetting might cost me something I couldn't afford to lose.

Detective Jenkins had asked about him with such deliberate casualness that it screamed significance. The slight tension in his jaw, the way his pen had paused over his notepad, the careful neutrality that had replaced his previous warmth—all of it suggested Luke Smith was more than just a random name. But more than what? And how did he connect to Nial's disappearance?

As I turned onto Davey Street, heading south towards Sandy Bay, I found myself checking the rear-view mirror more frequently than the was warranted. A white sedan had been behind me since I'd left the police station, maintaining a consistent distance through several turns. Paranoia, surely—Davey Street was a major thoroughfare, and white sedans were hardly uncommon. But my nerves were raw, every shadow a potential threat, every coincidence a possible conspiracy.

The sedan turned off at Molle Street, and I exhaled a breath I hadn't realised I'd been holding. This was what Nial's absence had done to me—transformed me from a rational drama teacher into someone who saw patterns in chaos, threats in the mundane. Or perhaps that's what I'd always been, and normal life had simply never given me reason to notice.

The rain eased slightly as I climbed the winding streets towards my childhood home, the elevation offering a different perspective on the city spread below. Hobart looked smaller from up here, contained between mountain and river like something that could be held in cupped hands. It was a city where everyone knew everyone, where secrets were hard to keep, where a missing husband should have been found by now through sheer gossip if nothing else.

Yet Nial had vanished as completely as if he'd stepped off the edge of the world.

My mother's house appeared through the rain like something from a fairy tale—not the Disney kind but the older, stranger sort where houses could be havens or traps depending on who you were when you entered them. The Federation-style home sat on its rise like a dowager empress, slightly shabby but maintaining dignity through force of personality alone. The yellow weatherboards—Rowena had insisted on yellow despite my father's protests about property values—seemed to glow even in the grey light, a deliberate act of defiance against Tasmania's often gloomy weather.

The garden was pure Rowena—a controlled chaos of native plants and English cottage flowers that shouldn't have worked together but did, through some alchemy of her particular genius. Even in winter, it bloomed with stubborn determination: hellebores and early jonquils, the last of the autumn roses clinging to life, a carpet of violets that had colonised every available space. It was the garden of someone who believed in abundance over order, in beauty over rules, in life persisting despite all logic suggesting it shouldn't.

I pulled into the gravel driveway, the familiar crunch under my tyres triggering a Pavlovian response of childhood comfort and adult complication. How many times had I heard that sound? Running out to greet my father returning from the university. Sneaking in past curfew as a teenager. Arriving with Nial for the first time, nervous about my parents' approval. Bringing Sammy home from the hospital, terrified and triumphant in equal measure.

The engine ticked as it cooled, and I sat for a moment, gathering myself for what came next. Through the windscreen, I could see the front window curtain twitch—Rowena, keeping watch as she always did, protective and intrusive in equal measure. She'd have been waiting since  I dropped Sammy off this morning, reading volumes into my tone, my pauses, the things I hadn't said.

The car felt safe, a bubble between the police station's harsh reality and the emotional minefield of my mother's concern. Here, I could be alone with my fears without having to perform strength for Sammy or competence for the authorities. But bubbles were meant to burst, and mine had a three-year-old inside that house who needed his mother to have answers she didn't possess.

I checked my phone one last time—nothing—then grabbed my handbag and prepared to face whatever waited inside.

The front path was exactly as it had always been—slightly uneven bricks that my father had laid himself one summer, now softened by moss and time. I knew each dip and rise, could have walked it blindfolded. My feet found their childhood rhythm automatically, muscle memory deeper than consciousness.

I had barely reached the verandah steps when the front door flew open, revealing my mother in all her complicated glory.

Rowena stood framed in the doorway like a portrait of maternal concern painted by someone who understood that mothers were never simple.

"Oh, Jenny," she murmured, her voice thick with emotion that she'd never quite learned to fully suppress despite her best efforts at maintaining composure.

Then she was pulling me into an embrace that was purely Rowena—firm enough to convey strength, gentle enough to acknowledge fragility, scented with the same L'Air du Temps perfume she'd worn since 1979. Her arms came around me with the particular confidence of someone who'd held me through chickenpox and heartbreak, through triumph and disaster, who knew exactly how much pressure to apply to keep me from either flying apart or feeling suffocated.

I leaned into her, feeling five years old and thirty-two simultaneously. The familiar scent of her perfume mixed with the lingering aroma of whatever she'd been baking—chocolate chip biscuits, from the smell—and the particular combination that was uniquely my mother: wool and wisdom, comfort and complication. She was safety and judgment, understanding and expectation, all wrapped in cashmere and complicated love.

The embrace held everything we couldn't say directly—her fear for me, my desperate need for someone to make this better, the complicated history of a mother and daughter who loved each other deeply but had never quite figured out how to do it simply. When she'd held me after my father's death, it had felt like this—as if she could physically prevent me from dissolving through sheer maternal will.

But reality has a way of intruding on even the most necessary comforts. Nial was still missing. Sammy still needed explanations I couldn't give. The name Luke Smith still echoed in my mind like a bell whose sound I should recognise. I pulled back, blinking rapidly against tears that wanted to fall but couldn't, not yet, not here where Sammy might see.

"Come in, love," Rowena said, stepping aside with the grace of someone who'd studied ballet before choosing piano, who understood that sometimes the most important movements were the ones that created space for others.

Her tone was gentle, but I knew that particular gentleness—it was the calm before the interrogation, the soft approach before the hard questions. Rowena had been a concert pianist, trained to read the spaces between notes, and she'd apply that same analytical intensity to reading the spaces between my words.

Crossing the threshold was like entering a time capsule that had been continuously updated but never fundamentally changed. The hallway still featured the William Morris wallpaper my parents had argued about for months before my mother won through sheer persistence. The console table still held the Waterford crystal vase that had been a wedding present, today filled with white roses from the garden that managed to bloom despite winter's best efforts.

The smell of home enveloped me—lavender from the potpourri Rowena made every spring, lemon oil from the furniture polish she insisted was better than anything commercial, the lingering ghost of decades of Sunday roasts and Christmas puddings and birthday cakes. Underneath it all was something indefinable but essential, the accumulated scent of family life that no amount of airing could disperse.

Family photographs lined the walls in what Nial had once called "Rowena's gallery of genetic propaganda." They marched through time in carefully curated formation: my parents' wedding in 1980, all seventies hair and hopeful smiles; my father receiving some academic honour, looking proudly uncomfortable; Kevin and Robert and me at various stages of childhood, our faces changing but our birth order dynamics clearly visible even in still images.

My gaze caught on our wedding photo, and I stopped so abruptly that Rowena nearly walked into me.

There we were, frozen in a moment of perfect happiness that now felt like evidence from another lifetime. The photo had been taken in the gardens at Shene Estate, the historic property we'd chosen for its theatrical grandeur that appealed to my dramatic sensibilities and its Tasmania heritage that satisfied Nial's deep connection to the island. The afternoon light had been golden, making everything look touched by magic.

I stood in my grandmother's wedding dress—vintage 1940s silk that Rowena had spent months restoring—looking at Nial with an expression of such complete adoration that it made my chest ache to see it now. My younger self had been so certain, so secure in the future stretching before her. She'd had no idea that certainty was just another performance, that security was an illusion that could dissolve as quickly as morning frost.

Nial stood beside me in the photo, his hired suit fitting him perfectly after three trips to the tailor, his smile creating those creases around his eyes that I'd loved to trace with my fingertips. He'd insisted on wearing his grandfather's cufflinks, tiny silver tools that honoured his family's building tradition. His hand rested on my waist with casual possession, as if he'd never imagine a time when he wouldn't have the right to that touch.

We were surrounded by our families, all dressed in their wedding finest, all smiling for the camera with varying degrees of genuineness. Linda was there, of course, on Kevin's arm, looking elegant and controlled even then. My father stood slightly apart, already beginning the weight loss that we hadn't yet recognised as illness. Rowena held herself with the posture of someone who'd performed for audiences far more critical than wedding photographers.

But it was Nial's expression that held me now—not his smile for the camera but the way he'd been looking at me in the split second before the shutter clicked. I remembered that moment with painful clarity. He'd leaned close and whispered, "I love you, Mrs Triffett," trying out my new name like a gift he couldn't quite believe he'd been given. The photographer had captured the instant just after, when his formal smile held traces of that private joy.

"Jenny? Are you alright, dear?"

Rowena's voice pulled me back to the present, where that man in the photograph had vanished as completely as if he'd been edited out of existence. I turned to face her, automatically preparing some reassuring lie, but the look in her eyes stopped me.

This was Rowena in full maternal mode—concern mixed with determination, ready to extract truth through compassion or confrontation as needed. She'd perfected this expression through three children and forty years of teaching piano to reluctant students. It was the look that said resistance was futile, that she'd wait as long as necessary, that love and interrogation weren't mutually exclusive.

"I—" I started, then faltered, the words scattering like birds startled by a loud noise.

How could I explain what I barely understood myself? That Nial had disappeared but might have sent a text? That the police wouldn't help except for one detective who'd asked about someone named Luke Smith? That I felt watched, followed, caught in something larger than a simple missing person case? That I was terrified not just that Nial was gone but that he'd chosen to go?

Before I could attempt any explanation, the sound of small feet on floorboards announced Sammy's approach with the particular thunder that three-year-olds somehow managed despite weighing less than a large bag of potatoes. He appeared around the corner at full speed, his face lighting up with joy that hit me like a physical force.

"Mummy!"

He launched himself at me with complete trust that I'd catch him, which I did, though the impact nearly knocked me backwards. His arms went around my neck with the fierce grip of a child who'd learned too young that people could disappear, and I held him just as tightly, breathing in his little-boy smell of biscuits and baby shampoo and that indefinable sweetness that wouldn't last much longer.

His curls tickled my cheek, wild despite Rowena's obvious attempts at taming them. He'd inherited Nial's hair—dark, thick, with a mind of its own—along with his eyes and his stubborn chin. Looking at Sammy was like seeing Nial reflected through a funhouse mirror of childhood, all the features rearranged but unmistakably connected.

For a few seconds, the world contracted to just this—my son's weight in my arms, his heart beating against mine, the simple animal comfort of holding my young. Nothing else mattered: not missing husbands or mysterious names or the judgment waiting in my mother's eyes. Just this moment of connection that required nothing more than presence.

But three-year-olds don't allow escape for long. Sammy pulled back to look at me, and I saw Nial's eyes examining me with an intensity that no child should possess. He was studying me the way he studied his picture books, looking for clues to decode the story. His little brow furrowed with concentration and worry.

"Mummy, where's Daddy?"

The question landed like a blow to the solar plexus, knocking the breath from my lungs. He asked it so simply, as if it were no different from asking where his favourite toy was, but I heard the layers underneath—confusion, fear, the beginning of an understanding that something fundamental had changed in his small world.

The tears I'd been holding back since leaving the police station finally broke free, hot and unstoppable. They carved tracks down my cheeks that felt like rivers eroding stone, each one carrying away a little more of my composure. I pulled Sammy close again, burying my face in his hair partly to comfort him but mostly to hide my breakdown from his too-perceptive eyes.

"Daddy's... Daddy's not here right now, sweetheart," I managed, each word fighting past the knot in my throat that felt like it might choke me. "But he loves you so much, Sammy. He misses you terribly, I'm sure."

The lie tasted bitter on my tongue. How could I be sure of anything? If Nial could disappear without explanation, if he could send texts that didn't sound like him, if he could leave his son wondering where he'd gone, then what could I be certain of anymore?

Sammy pulled back again, and this time his eyes were filling with tears that turned their blue into something oceanic and devastating. His lower lip trembled with the effort of not crying, trying to be the big boy Nial always praised him for being.

"But why did he go away?" His voice cracked, pitched high with distress. "Doesn't he want to be with us anymore?"

The question shattered something inside me. This was the fear I'd been avoiding, the possibility too terrible to contemplate—that Nial had chosen this, had decided that whatever was happening in his life was more important than being with us. That we weren't enough to keep him here.

I opened my mouth to offer some comfort, some explanation that would make sense to a three-year-old's understanding of the world, but nothing came. How did you explain abandonment to someone who still believed in Santa Claus? How did you maintain a child's faith in love and safety when your own had been shattered?

Then Rowena was there, her arms encompassing both Sammy and me, creating a three-generational cocoon of complicated love. She didn't hesitate or ask permission, just folded us into her embrace with the confidence of someone who'd weathered her own storms and survived to shelter others from theirs.

"Now, now," she murmured, her voice carrying that particular grandmother magic that could make even the impossible seem manageable. "Let's not jump to conclusions. Your daddy loves you both very much, Sammy. Sometimes grown-ups have to go away for a little while, but that doesn't mean they don't love us or want to be with us."

Her words were aimed at Sammy but meant for me too, a gentle chiding wrapped in comfort. Don't catastrophise, they said. Don't let your fear become his truth. Hold the line between honesty and hope.

I caught her eye over Sammy's head, and in that look was all our complicated history—the mother who'd pushed me towards excellence but held me when I fell short, who'd critiqued my performances but celebrated my successes, who'd never quite approved of Nial but had loved him because I did. She'd buried my father, her partner of thirty-five years, and survived. Now she was here, offering that same survival instinct to me, whether I wanted it or not.

"Why don't we all go into the kitchen?" Rowena suggested, her tone brightening with deliberate cheer as she pulled back, already guiding us down the hallway. "I've just taken a batch of your favourite chocolate chip biscuits out of the oven, Sammy. And I think we could all use a nice cup of tea."

"Biscuits!" Sammy exclaimed, his tears temporarily forgotten in the face of chocolate's reliable comfort.

The speed with which he shifted from despair to delight was both heartbreaking and hopeful—the resilience of childhood that could find joy even in the wreckage of confusion. I managed a weak smile, grateful for Rowena's ability to navigate emotional minefields with the same skill she brought to difficult piano passages.

As we moved towards the kitchen—the heart of every home but especially this one, where Rowena had reigned over countless family meals and crises—I felt the house working its particular magic. Not healing, exactly, but holding. These walls had contained our family's joys and sorrows for decades. They could contain this too, at least for a while.

The kitchen hadn't changed much since my childhood—the same cream Aga that my father had imported at ridiculous expense, the same Welsh dresser displaying Rowena's collection of blue and white china, the same scrubbed pine table where I'd done homework and cried over boys and planned my wedding. The windows still looked out over the garden and down to the city below, Hobart spreading like a map of my entire life.

Sammy climbed onto his usual chair—the one with the booster seat that lived here permanently now, a tiny throne for Rowena's only grandchild—and reached immediately for the plate of biscuits cooling on the rack. They were perfect, because Rowena didn't do anything by halves, even stress baking. The chocolate chips still slightly melted, the edges just crispy enough, the centres soft with promise.

"Just one before lunch," Rowena said automatically, though we all knew she'd allow him at least three.

She moved to the Aga, filling the kettle with the efficiency of someone who believed tea could solve, if not everything, at least enough to be going on with. I sat down heavily in my childhood place at the table, the chair creaking familiarly under my weight. Everything was the same and nothing was the same, like a play where someone had changed all the crucial dialogue but kept the original set.

"Now then," Rowena said, her back still to me as she arranged cups on a tray with unnecessary precision. "Why don't you tell me what's really going on?"

The question hung in the air like a conductor's baton waiting to begin, and I knew the performance of pretending everything was manageable was about to end. But as I opened my mouth to speak, to finally release the full weight of my fear and confusion, that name surfaced again in my consciousness like a fish breaking water:

Luke Smith.

Who was he, and why did I feel like remembering might change everything?