What We Don’t Say

“Sometimes the scariest part isn’t what’s wrong—it’s that no one’s saying it out loud.”

Mum said she was going to lie down “just for a second.”

The words emerged sluggish and half-formed, like her mouth no longer had the energy to shape them properly. They slurred at the edges, softened by the kind of exhaustion that made even speech feel like a task. She didn't bother untying her boots—just kicked them off with two careless jerks of her legs. One landed with a soft, tired thud on the carpet. The other snagged on the edge of the bedframe, hanging awkwardly like an afterthought, its laces still knotted, the heel tilted up like it was bracing for another step that would never come.

She collapsed backwards more than lay down. The denim of her jeans gave a stiff sigh as she twisted slightly to one side, coat still clinging to her like she hadn’t quite remembered she was wearing it. Her left arm draped above her head, fingers loose and open, grazing the headboard like she might be reaching for something in a dream—or maybe letting go.

Her eyes closed before she’d fully settled, lashes flickering once as if in resistance, then still. The change in her breathing came quickly—slower, heavier, edged with the roughness of someone who had fallen asleep from sheer necessity rather than intention. Even in sleep, though, her face didn’t soften the way it used to when we’d watch her doze in the lounge chair back home. There were creases at the corners of her mouth and a tension around her eyes, like she was still trying to hold something back even while unconscious. Worry was etched into her like a second skin, permanent now.

Mack stood still beside the bed, watching Mum. Not just looking—watching, like he was trying to calculate something invisible. The skin around his mouth had tightened again into that flat, unhappy line. His hands balled at his sides, knuckles pale, and I saw the twitch of his jaw as he ground his teeth—a new habit that had taken root somewhere along the journey. He didn’t speak right away, just stared with an intensity that made the room feel even smaller.

Then he looked at me.

There was something behind his expression I couldn’t quite name—more than unease. Something heavier. Something that made my heart speed up, like a quiet alarm sounding somewhere deep inside my chest.

“Come on,” he said, voice low and serious, just above the heater’s mechanical breath.

“Where?” I whispered, the question automatic, though I was already reaching for Ribbons.

“Outside. Just for a bit.”

There was a weight in the way he said it—not quite panic, but something close. A pressure that made it clear he couldn’t stay here, not with Mum like that, not with the light flickering and the walls closing in.

I nodded.

When we pushed the door open, the hinges gave a long, rusty groan that made both of us flinch. The sound stretched into the night like a signal, far louder than it had any right to be in a place where the silence was thick enough to choke on.

We froze. Neither of us breathed.

But Mum didn’t stir.

She remained exactly as she’d fallen, mouth slightly open, chest rising and falling in that new, unsettling rhythm, like she was too deep in sleep to notice we’d gone. Or like she wasn’t asleep at all—just… elsewhere.

Then we stepped outside, the night air rushing at us like water breaking through a dam, cool and clean and real in a way the room had forgotten how to be.

The night was colder now. Really cold. The kind of cold that didn’t just touch your skin but settled inside you, like it was taking up residence in your bones, making itself at home beneath your ribs. It snuck in under collars and cuffs, down the back of your neck, into the spaces between layers where warmth should have lived. Each breath emerged as a little ghost, a pale puff of steam that hovered in the air like a question before fading into nothing. I watched them drift for a moment, wondering if ghosts really did look like that—fleeting, insubstantial, but real enough to make the air feel different.

The step outside the motel room was cracked and lopsided, its surface uneven from too many winters and no one bothering to fix it. My trainers did little to protect me from the chill that seeped up through the concrete, and I curled my toes involuntarily, trying to lift them from the cold without actually moving. It was like the step itself had a memory of frost and loss and wanted to share it.

Beyond the step, the ground was a patchwork of packed dirt, scattered bottle tops dulled by time, cigarette butts worn down to papery husks, and weeds pushing up in wiry tufts like they’d survived a hundred boot soles and still weren’t giving up. A few glinted faintly when the flickering porch light caught them—old metal, sharp edges, the detritus of other people’s nights. One of the weeds had a small flower at its tip, pale and determined, growing defiantly between concrete and bitumen. It looked so out of place I wanted to touch it, but didn’t.

The light above our door wavered once—just a flicker—and then steadied, casting a fragile ring of yellow that reached maybe a metre before surrendering to the enormous dark. That light felt like the only thing keeping the blackness at bay, the only evidence that we still existed in this quiet, sprawling place that didn’t seem to care whether we did or not.

A low hum underpinned everything—not loud, not obvious, but there, like a forgotten note in the air. Maybe it was the light. Maybe something in the pub. Maybe just the hum of the world itself, holding its breath between nightfall and morning. I could hear the whisper of wind brushing past dry grass, the distant hoot of a bird whose name I didn’t know. All the noises were small, but together they made a kind of music—an eerie, beautiful stillness that only existed in places like this.

We sat side by side on the top step, knees drawn up, arms folded tight. The concrete pulled our body heat away like it was greedy for warmth. My jeans didn’t help. I could feel every imperfection in the surface beneath me, every chip and crack and embedded pebble. Mack tugged his sleeves down over his hands and balled them into fists inside the fabric. I copied him, folding my jumper cuffs over my fingers, the wool scratchy but warm.

The sky above us was indescribable.

It didn’t feel like looking up at stars—it felt like falling into them. The sheer number of them was dizzying, as if someone had thrown a bucket of light across the sky and let it settle wherever it landed. The Milky Way spilled across the heavens in that quiet, breathtaking way Dad had once shown me, tracing it with his finger through the car windscreen, calling it “the sky’s river.” He said it led to stories. That if you followed it long enough, it would carry you to the place where you were meant to be. I hadn’t understood him then, not really. Now it made me ache.

It didn’t feel like a story tonight. It felt like a reminder of how small we were, how far we’d come from anything that made sense.

“Mack?” I said softly, my voice small against the immensity of the night.

He didn’t look at me. Didn’t even blink. His eyes were locked on a fixed point out beyond the car park, out where the land dissolved into shadow and the trees stood like ghosts with their arms folded. His jaw was set. His silence felt heavy.

“Mum’s not thinking straight,” he said, flatly. Like he was stating a fact, not opening a conversation. But I heard it anyway—the thin edge of worry, the way his voice caught slightly at the end. He was scared. Trying not to be. But scared.

I nodded, though I wasn’t sure if he saw. The movement let a sliver of cold air creep down the back of my neck where my jumper had shifted, making me shiver. I pulled Ribbons closer to my side, holding her like she might somehow help keep the cold—or the fear—away.

“Is it because of Daddy?” I asked.

The words hung there between us, suspended in the breathless cold, weighted with too much. With all the things we didn’t know about how love could turn sideways. About how someone who used to kiss you goodnight and carry you in from the car could vanish and leave behind a Mum who looked like herself but wasn’t quite. About how hurt didn’t always shout—it sometimes whispered for days, weeks, months.

Mack was quiet for a long time. I could see his breath, slow and even, like he was trying to hold something steady inside himself. He blinked slowly, then rubbed at his face, the sleeves of his hoodie hiding his hands like he didn’t trust them to be out in the open.

“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe it’s something else.”

The way he said it made something tighten in my chest. Like he’d seen or guessed something he couldn’t say. Something he didn’t want me to know.

“She’s… not acting like Mum,” I whispered.

Just saying it felt wrong. Like betraying her. But pretending wasn’t helping anymore.

“No,” he said. “She’s not.”

We both knew it wasn’t just tiredness. Not just the stress of travel or being alone. Something had shifted, deep inside her, like a part of her had been locked away somewhere, and no one remembered the code.

Behind us, in the room, she was asleep—jeans and coat still on, sprawled awkwardly across the covers like someone who’d collapsed rather than chosen to rest. I pictured her face, how it looked now in sleep: too pale, too tight, like her dreams were stitched together with worry. That version of Mum frightened me more than any yelling would have. It was like she was folding in on herself, and we were just watching it happen.

The wind picked up. It slid around the side of the building and sighed past us like a warning. My hair lifted and tickled my cheeks. Dust danced in tiny spirals, rising and falling in the circle of porch light, like even the ground didn’t know how to stay still anymore.

Inside the pub, the last of the lights still glowed behind foggy windows, warm and golden like a memory of something better. It looked safe in there. Familiar. Like the kind of place where grown-ups had stories that made sense and food that came hot, where they laughed because things were okay, not because they were pretending.

Someone laughed. Not loudly, just enough for it to travel to us across the gravel and silence. A kind laugh, probably shared with a drink and an old friend. Then a chair scraped, and a door creaked open. Footsteps crunched away into the night.

I imagined following that person. Pretending I belonged with them. Sitting at their table, warm and full and certain of tomorrow.

But I didn’t move.

“Do you think she knows where we’re going?” I asked, not because I thought he’d know, but because I needed someone to say something. Anything.

He didn’t look away this time. His gaze met mine, full of that quiet, exhausted honesty he carried like armour.

“I don’t think she knows much of anything right now,” he said.

It scared me. But at the same time, it helped. Because it meant I wasn’t imagining it. I wasn’t alone.

A truck passed somewhere out on the highway, its engine loud, then fading as it continued on its way—carrying someone else with direction and purpose and fuel and a destination. A reminder that the world was still turning, even if we’d fallen off the map.

“Are we lost?” I whispered.

Mack turned his face to mine again. His eyes caught the starlight like mirrors, and I saw the truth there before he said it.

“Maybe,” he said. “But we’re lost together.”

He reached across and took my hand. His fingers were cold, but firm. Real.

And I clung to that—because the world might have gone sideways, and Mum might not be Mum, and we might not know where we were going, but Mack was still here. Still my brother. Still holding on.