The Toast Wasn't Burnt

“Sometimes, it’s not what burns that matters—it’s what survives the fire and pretends it was never touched.”

As I opened the car door and slid off the passenger seat, the morning air met me with a crisp embrace. The cool of the concrete driveway kissed the soles of my bare feet, sending a shiver up my legs that felt oddly grounding. My sneakers, slack-laced and well-worn, dangled from my left hand like an afterthought, swaying with each deliberate step, their rubbery soles tapping softly against one another in rhythm.

"I'll be back in an hour to collect you," Gladys's voice rang out from behind me, practical and unceremonious, as though this were just another routine errand and not the aftermath of a night that had unravelled our very sense of reality.

I didn’t turn around.

Instead, I raised a hand in silent reply, a short wave over my shoulder that felt more final than I meant it to. Words seemed unnecessary, redundant even. We’d shared enough confessions, enough arguments and silences, to know that sometimes gestures said more than voices ever could.

The distance between me and the car widened with each step I took, but it was more than just physical. It was a quiet metamorphosis. With every stride towards the front door—each brush of my foot against the rough chill of the concrete—I felt something within me begin to shift. I was stepping out of the passenger seat not only of the car, but of circumstance. The passive observer, the reluctant witness to everything that had happened, was slowly being left behind.

By the time I reached the door, keys in hand and shoes swinging idly at my side, I no longer felt like someone being carried by the tide. I was moving under my own momentum now.

Protagonist, I thought, as my fingers found the lock.

Protagonist of what, though—I wasn’t sure.

Entering the house, the act of closing the front door behind me was soft, almost reverent—a hush, like the turning of a final page at the end of an unsettling chapter. This threshold, this hinge between worlds, had always represented comfort: the familiar cadence of domesticity, the scent of brewed tea, the occasional distant hum of the vacuum. But today, it felt more like a line drawn in sand—fragile, uncertain. A gateway not to sanctuary, but to quiet, functional disarray.

The smell hit me before the silence did—burning toast. Acrid, sharp, and accusing, it curled into my nostrils with the tenacity of a memory that refuses to be ignored. I inhaled, the scent coiling inside me like a reprimand. A telltale sign that the morning had already tripped over itself. Father must be running late for work again, I thought, the notion laced with a slow, creeping concern. Nearing his sixtieth birthday, he now fought daily skirmishes against time—each one more futile than the last. Alarm clocks were dismissed, calendars ignored, toast cremated.

Retirement hovered somewhere on the horizon, a finish line he kept squinting at but never quite moving towards. It was only a few years away, yet every morning, I wished it were closer. Watching him—this man who had once seemed unshakeable, granite-solid—be slowly chipped away by routine was a quietly devastating ritual. Each small misstep, each panicked rustle for keys or misplaced wallet, was a breadcrumb trail of erosion. It wasn’t just the toast that burnt—it was time, stealing bits of him, quietly, unapologetically.

Curiosity nudged me toward the kitchen, cautious yet compelled. I expected disaster: smoke, a half-melted spatula, the toaster defiantly lodged mid-pop. Instead, what I found made me pause.

There it sat on the breakfast bar—toast. Perfectly browned. Not charred. Not forgotten. Just… right. Balanced on a pristine white porcelain plate, gleaming softly beneath the kitchen’s halogen glow like some improbable relic. It looked oddly regal, absurdly pristine amid the usual carnage of his rushed mornings. An island of calm in the sea of habitual chaos.

He wasn’t there, of course. Probably off somewhere rummaging for a tie or arguing with the hallway mirror. But this—this small, unassuming triumph—was something. I stood there for a moment longer than necessary, the scent of toasty warmth now oddly comforting. A small smile tugged at the corner of my mouth, involuntary but sincere.

Today, the toast had made it. A rare win.

"You didn't come home last night," my mother's voice cut through the morning silence like a cold draft seeping through a cracked window. It startled me—not just the words, but the way they landed. Not accusatory. Not quite. But heavy, expectant. A quiet disappointment coiled in the stillness behind her tone. Her presence loomed just out of sight, a gravity that bent the air between us.

"I was with Gladys," I replied, my voice calm—too calm. A practised steadiness masking the quiet thrum of tension beneath. My fingers sought movement, something familiar, something grounding. I reached into the kitchen drawer, hand closing around the small butter knife, its metal cool and clinical against my skin. A prop. A distraction. A tether to the moment.

As I spread butter over the toast, I watched the knife trail through the golden crust, dragging uneven strokes that refused to blend cleanly. Each movement felt stiff, mechanical—like I was painting over cracks that only widened with every pass. There was no hiding in breakfast, not really, but I tried anyway.

"How is she?" my mother asked, stepping into view. Concern furrowed her brow, genuine—but shaded by something else. Fear, perhaps. Or that quiet kind of dread that grows from watching someone unravel in slow motion. Her eyes didn’t quite meet mine.

"She's fine," I lied, too easily. The words dropped from my lips before I could catch them, before I could weigh the cost of one more fiction. The butter clung stubbornly to the knife, refusing to spread evenly—like truth catching on the edges of a carefully constructed façade.

She was anything but fine. Gladys was drowning in slow increments, and I was helping her stay afloat by pretending not to notice the water rising.

I knew what my mother carried—nights of weeping quietly behind closed doors, the soft tremor in her hands when she spoke about Gladys, the barely veiled anxiety in every half-casual question. To tell her what I’d really seen, really felt, would only crack her further. And I couldn’t bear to watch another person splinter.

Why couldn’t she see it, though? The wine disguised as self-care, the emotional whiplash, the way Gladys’s laughter always came half a second too late. A functioning alcoholic, I thought bitterly. Though the 'functioning' bit was starting to slip away, like a mask worn too long.

I took a bite of the toast. Cold. Damp. The butter had barely melted, clinging to the bread like a film of disappointment. I grimaced, chewing without hunger. The texture was uninviting, the flavour muted—an echo of something that should have been comforting, but wasn’t.

Like everything else this morning.

"Morning, sweetheart," my father's voice broke through my reverie as he entered the kitchen, trailing the faint scent of aftershave and worn leather. His presence was a balm—uncomplicated, reassuring. A steady note of comfort in a symphony otherwise discordant with tension and unspoken grief.

"Morning, Daddy," I replied, setting the toast down with a listless motion. The bread, already congealing, sat limp on the plate, a symbol of everything I couldn’t quite stomach today.

He kissed my forehead lightly, a brief press of warmth that somehow made the weight behind my ribs a little easier to carry. A quiet lifeline, thrown without fanfare.

"You're not going to finish that?" he asked, eyes dropping to the half-eaten toast, brow raised in quiet concern.

"I'm full already," I lied, rolling my shoulders in a shrug that was meant to be breezy but landed closer to defeat. The lie was paper-thin, a poor disguise for the truth—that my appetite had vanished somewhere between anxiety and exhaustion, and nothing on that plate could possibly fill the space it left behind.

"Full?" he scoffed, humour lighting his features. His chuckle, though brief, carved a temporary crack in the morning’s heaviness. "Even a mouse would eat more than you."

I smiled, barely. His teasing was gentle, familiar. A ritual between us, one I welcomed, if only because it asked nothing more than presence. No probing, no layered meanings. Just a father trying to feed his daughter, in more ways than one.

Across the kitchen, Mum reached for the small card tucked beneath the ceramic magnet shaped like a rooster. Her fingers moved with precision, as though plucking that sliver of cardboard required more focus than the conversation around her. She held the appointment reminder aloft, its crisp corners fluttering in her hand.

"I have to go into town for an appointment at eleven. Do you want to come for a ride?" she asked. Her tone was carefully neutral, but I caught the flicker of something beneath it—hope, maybe. Or a quiet plea for time, for connection on neutral ground.

I shook my head, more gently than I might have otherwise. The refusal came quickly, but not unkindly.

"No thanks. Gladys and I are going to visit Jamie and Luke this morning. She's coming to collect me in an hour," I replied, forcing a faint brightness into my tone. Trying to make it sound like a plan I looked forward to, rather than a slow, inevitable return to the minefield we’d tiptoed across last night.

My mother nodded once, lips pressed into a line that didn’t quite smile. I wondered whether she sensed the performance in my voice—or recognised it as one of her own.

Mother's gaze shifted, cutting sideways with the precision of a scalpel. A glance that didn’t need to linger—it had already dissected me. "Don't they have work today?" she asked, her tone casual on the surface, but the edges of her voice betrayed her. Concern, suspicion… the faintest whiff of maternal dread. She never did well with unanswered questions.

She didn’t wait for mine. "Actually, doesn't your sister have work today?" The follow-up landed quicker, sharper. A volley of questions flung like darts, too fast to dodge and too pointed to ignore. It was classic Mum: the soft interrogation wrapped in domestic familiarity, sugar-dusted with care but dense with implication.

"Gladys has the week off, remember?" I said smoothly, my voice steadier than my pulse. Deflection wrapped in a factual bow. A truth, yes, but one chosen precisely because it veered us away from murkier terrain. Because while my mother might ask about work schedules, she wasn’t asking what she really wanted to know.

And I wasn’t ready to volunteer the truth.

My answer hung there, a placeholder. But the silence that followed was thick with the questions she hadn’t asked, and the ones I couldn’t stop asking myself.

What is Luke doing about work?

The thought crept in uninvited, unsettling. Has he just… quit? Did he even say?

I tried to recall. Tried to remember if Gladys had mentioned it. If Jamie was really gone—gone gone—how was Luke explaining his absence? What cover story did he have, if any?

The unease scratched at me from the inside. Each unspoken question another piece of thread tugged loose from a tapestry that was already beginning to unravel. And somehow, I knew—instinctively—that whatever Luke was doing, it wouldn't be conventional. Not anymore.

"Sounds like a marvellous idea, honey. Maybe your mother and I should tag along too," my father's voice breezed in like a sudden gust, light and teasing, as though we were all just planning a casual brunch and not navigating the fallout of burned secrets and buried truths.

"No," I said, too quickly, too sharply. The word leapt out before I could temper it, slicing the moment clean in two. It hung there, taut and unapologetic, louder than I meant it to be, sharper than it needed to be.

His brow lifted, a single arch that asked everything in silence: Why not?

I caught myself. Reflexively, I reached out and gave his shoulder a gentle nudge. "You do have work today, remember," I said, trying to coat the rebuff in levity, to smooth the rough edges with a familiar jest. My voice took on that lilt I reserved for peacekeeping. An offering. An apology disguised as banter.

"Yes, he does," Mum cut in before he could answer, ever the conductor of our disjointed little orchestra. Her words came with the practised cadence of someone who had wrangled time and men and to-do lists into order for decades. "In fact, you'd better go and finish getting ready, or you'll be late again," she added, her tone crisp, but her eyes twinkled with affection. It was all part of the act. The structure. The dance.

Across the breakfast bar, my father's eyes met mine, warm with humour and a flicker of understanding. “The master has spoken,” he said with theatrical deference, bowing his head slightly and breaking into one of his wide, irrepressible grins. The kind that made it impossible not to smile back—if only for a second.

Then came the sharp crack of cotton against air. The tea towel flicked with pinpoint accuracy, its corner just brushing the edge of his arm. Mum stood like a fencer after a perfect strike. “Hurry up, or the master won’t miss next time,” she warned, eyes glittering with mischief that didn’t often make it to the surface.

It was a rare moment of levity—our household's version of intimacy. And in that flicker of domestic ritual, that choreographed interplay of affection and command, I saw it: the shadow of myself in her. That same ability to wear a smile like armour, to keep grief tucked beneath a practised smirk.

My gaze dropped to the half-eaten toast. Guilt curled inside me like smoke.

I thought of Brody.

Of what I’d done.

Of the stupid, meaningless things I used to slip into my handbag like it was a game. Like it didn’t matter. A silver spoon here, a brooch there. Trinkets and lies.

It had started small. And then it wasn’t small anymore.

That shadow—of him, of what I’d caused—stirred again, silent and suffocating, even in the glow of morning light and checked tea towels.

Jumping down from the stool, I let my feet touch the floor with a faint thud, the motion purposeful—like shaking off a cloak that had grown too heavy. The ache of Brody’s memory still clung to me like smoke after a fire, but I wasn’t ready to sit with it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

Time to pivot.

"Hey," I said, the word light, forced breeziness masquerading as spontaneity. My eyes flitted between my parents, their familiar faces anchoring me in something mundane, something safe. "Do either of you know anyone called Cody?"

Dad didn’t even pause, his head already shaking as he reached for his jacket from the hook behind the door—more interested, perhaps, in the bus timetable or the contents of his thermos.

"No," my mother echoed after a beat, her tone clipped but curious, the way she always got when something didn’t quite fit. “Should we?”

"Hmm, probably not. I heard Gladys mention the name last night. He's probably just a work colleague," I replied, letting the words roll off my tongue with an indifference I didn’t feel. I kept my expression neutral, my voice pitched perfectly between nonchalance and mild interest.

But inside, the name still clanged like an unanswered bell.

Cody.

Just a name. Just a whisper. But it tugged at something—at the edge of memory or meaning—like the shadow of a figure just out of sight. I didn’t know why it mattered. Only that it did. And pretending otherwise was the only way I could keep it manageable.

For now, the pebble had been dropped into still water, and though the ripples had yet to reach the shore, I could feel them coming.