Jerome Malachi Smith

July 26, 2018 AD

A Language Without Words

Jerome Smith's Thursday at the wildlife sanctuary brings Taryn Papathanasio through the door late, furious at Adelaide's bus network, and ready to talk her way through every enclosure cleaning on the roster. Between possum faeces and carrot chopping, she draws him into a conversation about Ghost that cuts closer to the bone than Jerome intended. Then a school group arrives, and Jerome finds himself in front of thirty children with a blue-tongue lizard — surviving the performance, but quietly undone by one boy who reminds him of someone he used to be.

July 27, 2018 AD

Before the Day Lands

Jerome wakes before dawn with an aching arm and a mind still processing yesterday's weight. In the quiet dark, with Millie warm beside him, he allows himself the rare luxury of not being ready yet.

Being Still

Jerome Smith has always been better with things that don't talk back. Insects pinned by heat to a windowsill. A garden dragged from soil that didn't want to give. A dog so traumatised she flinched at her own shadow. He grew up fifth in a household built on faith he couldn't feel, and he learned early that the safest way to belong was to be useful without being loud. The silence that makes him good at what he does is the same silence that lets everyone forget he's even there."

July 29, 2018 AD

Borrowed Wisdom

Potatoes need scrubbing and carrots need peeling, and Jerome's hands know the work well enough that his mind keeps circling back to Megan's question. Charles catches him staring at a vegetable—and then offers an unexpected theory about Hamish Marsden and the gap between confidence and certainty that nobody's supposed to admit exists.

July 26, 2018 AD

Built for a Life He'll Never Have

Before dawn, Jerome Smith drives into the Adelaide Hills to begin his volunteer shift at a wildlife sanctuary. The routine is familiar — temperature checks, feeding schedules, the quiet discipline of caring for creatures who can't advocate for themselves. But one patient won't cooperate with the plan. A tawny frogmouth raised with too much human kindness has lost the fear that would keep him alive in the wild, and Jerome is running out of reasons to believe the damage can be undone.

July 29, 2018 AD

Convenient Proximity

Nate approaches Jerome in the corridor, needing to say something that can't be said aloud. But before they can finish, Megan appears—and she's done waiting for Jerome to figure out what he feels. Two conversations collide in an empty hallway, and Jerome discovers that sometimes the truth you don't have is the only one worth offering.

July 29, 2018 AD

Convincing Imitation

Charles offers unexpected wisdom in the preparation room—maybe the sacrament works regardless of whether anyone's paying attention. It's a comforting thought for someone about to speak sacred words while uncertain they mean anything at all. Jerome's mouth knows the prayer by heart. What he doesn't know is whether that's enough.

July 29, 2018 AD

Couch Rules

The driveway is empty when Jerome returns from walking Millie. The house belongs to them now—at least until his parents return. Millie stations herself beside the forbidden couch with patient hope, and Jerome weighs the rules against the quiet rebellion of an unsupervised evening. Sometimes, when the bigger questions won't resolve, the small transgressions are all you have.

July 25, 2018 AD

Court Positions

Jerome arrives at the chapel for young adult basketball, navigating the familiar rituals of combined ward activities whilst picking up fragments of a cryptic conversation that hints at something stirring at stake level. As teams form and unspoken protocols play out around him, Jerome watches more than he participates—observer to a social architecture he's never quite decided whether he belongs in.

July 27, 2018 AD

Dead Air

Jerome wakes to a day already in progress and an overheard phone call that surfaces names his family rarely speaks. Something is wrong with Paul—and suddenly Luke exists in the house again, if only as a possibility.

July 26, 2018 AD

Deimatic Display

A school group descends on the sanctuary, and Jerome finds himself thrust into the spotlight with a blue-tongue lizard and thirty expectant faces. He survives the performance—but it's a quiet boy at the back of the room who leaves the deeper impression.

July 27, 2018 AD

Delivery from the Ministry

A forgotten packet of marshmallows becomes an excuse for connection when Jerome recruits Charles for an unannounced delivery to their parents by the dying fire. What could have been their own fireside treat becomes something else—a blanket draped over Mum's shoulders, an underarm toss that lands soft, and a retreat before anyone has to acknowledge that any of it mattered.

July 26, 2018 AD

Different Frequencies

Taryn arrives late and in a mood, but the rhythm of unglamorous work has a way of turning complaints into conversation. Jerome finds himself saying more than he intended—and being seen more clearly than he's comfortable with.

August 1, 2018 AD

Eight Days

Jerome sits by a fire pit with his older brother and learns two things in quick succession. And when Luke finally comes back with their clothes, a different piece of home arrives with him, and Jerome watches his father be his father again, briefly, for the first time since the wall of colour.

July 29, 2018 AD

Every Sunday, Just in Case

Jerome Smith reads the chapel car park the way he reads any ecosystem — vehicles in their usual positions, families assembling in predictable patterns. He spots Megan Ashworth near the entrance and lets Samuel redirect him toward the side door, grateful for the escape even as the cowardice settles in his stomach. A flicker of eye contact with Nate Baker confirms what neither of them can say aloud. And standing alone in the corridor before the service begins, Jerome asks himself the question he's been circling for months: why does he keep showing up to a faith he's not sure he still carries?

July 29, 2018 AD

Every Surface Hides a Depth

Sunday morning finds Jerome Smith standing in front of a mirror, adjusting a navy tie he can't explain choosing carefully. Charles catches him at it and presses the obvious button — trying to impress someone at church? — and the blush that rises to Jerome's face only makes things worse. Then Eli lands the same assumption from across the Pacific on a family video call: whatsername from the singles ward. Everyone sees the same shape. Nobody sees what's actually inside it — which is nothing. No longing, no wanting, no secret crush. Just the growing awareness that the machinery everyone else runs on simply isn't there.

July 25, 2018 AD

Fog and Fade

Jerome returns to the cultural hall carrying knowledge he can't share, watching as everyone—including himself—slips back into their expected shapes. Cryptic fragments about temple timelines and invitations accumulate alongside quieter observations, and the ride home with his father reminds him that some silences are inherited.

July 27, 2018 AD

Full Immersion

What should be a simple task becomes an ordeal when Jerome's injured arm meets Millie's full-body resistance. Jug by jug, the smell of something dead gives way to artificial lavender, and somewhere in the repetitive work of soap and water, a small truce is negotiated—though Millie gets the last word.

July 25, 2018 AD

Ghost-Light

Jerome navigates the quiet tensions of a family dinner, observing younger brother Charles retreat behind his phone while their parents maintain careful composure. A well-meaning jab lands harder than expected, leaving Jerome wondering how to reach someone who seems to be slipping away.

July 29, 2018 AD

Hidden Sorrow the Eye Can't See

Jerome sits through a combined lesson on quiet ministry and feels every word land on a secret he never asked to carry. Brother Leake talks about noticing rather than fixing, and Charles — of all people — says something unexpectedly wise about simply not looking away. When Nate approaches Jerome in the corridor afterwards to acknowledge what his silence has meant, Jerome understands the weight of what he's been holding.

July 29, 2018 AD

Invisible Thread

Millie believes every Sunday might be the one where the rules finally bend, and Jerome recognises something in her refusal to accept precedent. The drive to church passes in familiar silence, but Jerome's thoughts keep returning to Nate—and the uncomfortable question of why carrying someone else's secret feels less like burden and more like recognition.

July 29, 2018 AD

Invitation Only

Sunday roast unfolds with its usual choreography—lamb, potatoes, Millie's hopeful vigil near the carving board—but something is off. Jerome has been cataloguing the small anomalies all day. When he finally asks the question that's been building since the car ride home, the answer doesn't clarify anything. It just confirms that his parents are carrying something they're not ready to share.

July 30, 2018 AD

Light Duties

An afternoon on restricted duties was meant to be the easy shift — the kind of quiet hours where his arm could heal and his mind could catch up to a weekend that had refused to settle. Then a young wombat's breathing changed, and Jerome discovered that the hardest work at the Haven was the work his hands couldn't do.

July 27, 2018 AD

Natural Habitat

Millie explodes from the bathroom in a blur of damp fur and reclaimed dignity, leaving Jerome to survey the flood zone and change into dry clothes that carry their own memories. Brotherly banter about canine psychological manipulation offers a moment of easy normality—but Jerome can't quite make himself believe in it.

July 29, 2018 AD

Nothing to Reveal

A video call with Lisa brings teasing from across the Pacific—Eli's casual assumption about "whatsername" landing with precision that makes Jerome's face burn. But the flush isn't about being caught wanting something; it's about the impossibility of explaining that the machinery everyone assumes is running simply isn't there. Luke knew what he was hiding. Jerome just has empty space where the secret is supposed to be.

August 1, 2018 AD

One at a Time

A stranger pulls Karen away. The Portal goes dark, then comes back for somebody who is not Luke. In the hour that follows, Jerome meets the other two Guardians of Bixbus, watches them do something he has no framework for, and heads back to the settlement with a brick of stolen cash under his arm, still working out whether he is supposed to have an opinion about it.

August 1, 2018 AD

Paul was Here First

Jerome arrives on red earth in his bare feet and his tracksuit pants and a brother he hasn't seen in two years comes jogging across the dust to meet him. The hour that follows teaches him three things about the world he has been brought to, and none of them are the things he came looking for.

July 25, 2018 AD

Reading the Weather

An evening dinner in Adelaide, seen through two pairs of eyes that are watching the same cracks form from opposite sides of the table. A mother reads the emotional weather of her family the way she always has — in untouched toasties, in the pink rising at the tips of a teenager's ears, in the silence that falls after a careless remark lands too hard. Her eldest son still at home reads the same room like tracking wildlife — subtle shifts, small tells, the instinct to intervene battling the knowledge that his timing is never quite right. The dinner holds together. Barely. And what follows it is lonelier for both of them.

July 29, 2018 AD

Rules for an Unsupervised Evening

Sunday roast comes together with its usual choreography — lamb, crispy potatoes, Millie's hopeful vigil by the carving board — but Jerome has been cataloguing anomalies all day, and when he finally asks why his parents are still in their church clothes, the answer only deepens the mystery.

July 29, 2018 AD

Sacred and Ridiculous Share a Pew

Jerome Smith blesses the sacrament with words his mouth knows by heart while his mind asks whether anything is listening. Then a Goodwin toddler in the pew ahead declares war on his composure and Jerome and Charles nearly destroy themselves trying not to laugh under Greta's guided-missile glare. But when Bishop Hahn's talk shifts into something cryptic about standing on the precipice of a new chapter, the lightness drains.

July 31, 2018 AD

Seizure

Jerome has spent years learning the shape of Millie's seizures — the whine before the storm, the stillness after, the moment his body understands what's happening before his mind does. Today's episode runs longer than any of the others. By the time the post-ictal confusion lifts enough for her to stand, he already knows he's taking her to Dr Turner. And Greta, at the kitchen table, is carrying the kind of quiet that doesn't ask to be named.

July 26, 2018 AD

Six Hours

Still raw from the morning's loss, Jerome volunteers for a rescue callout he probably shouldn't take. A wedge-tailed eagle tangled in barbed wire doesn't care how tired he is—and neither does the work.

July 29, 2018 AD

Someone Else's Rescue

A lesson on quiet ministry lands differently when you're carrying a secret you didn't ask for. Jerome sits with the question of whether simply seeing someone—without fixing, without judging—counts as rescue or cowardice. Then Charles raises his hand and says something unexpectedly wise, and Jerome realises his brother has depths he's never bothered to notice.

July 27, 2018 AD

Something Magnificent

A backyard fire and an unanswered question about whether dogs feel things the way we assume they do. The family moves around what nobody's saying, and Millie—oblivious to human complications—finds her own source of joy behind the compost bin.

July 31, 2018 AD

Something Much Bigger

There are evenings when your family is going through something larger than you have the information to understand, and the fact of its largeness is what you hear rather than any of its content. Jerome heard fragments. He did not have the frame for them. What he came away with was a worry whose shape he could not quite describe, laid over the worry he already had, and a plate of food he had no particular appetite for.

July 26, 2018 AD

Staying for the Stillness

Jerome Smith has been avoiding the ringtail possum in enclosure ICU-7 all day. Three weeks of care, three weeks of small improvements that reversed into seizures and decline, and now Dr. Groves is ready to have the conversation Jerome already knows the shape of. The tests confirm what the chart has been whispering: the damage is progressive, irreversible, and the only kindness left is the one that ends things. Jerome chooses to stay — to hold Pip through the quiet, unheroic work of letting go.

July 30, 2018 AD

Still Here

The chair wasn't made for comfort. The room wasn't made for company. And the work, once the emergency passes, is the slow discipline of staying — of counting a small wrong breath against a clock that refuses to speed up. Jerome has spent his life being useful quietly. Tonight the Haven asks him to be something else: present without fixing, patient without answers, and — eventually, when the time comes — willing to walk away before he's ready.

July 29, 2018 AD

Sunday Afternoon, Altered

The drive home from church feels different and Jerome can't say why. His parents' hands find each other on the centre console while Charles wages war over gluten-free cross-contamination. Dad holds a book he isn't reading. Mum disappears behind a closed door. Something happened in the Bishop's office, and the house is carrying it — not in noise, but in the particular quality of silence between two people who share a secret. Greta prepares herself for a gathering she can't explain. Jerome watches, and waits, and wonders what truth is about to surface.

July 26, 2018 AD

Surviving Wrong

In the pre-dawn stillness of the wildlife sanctuary, Jerome finds the clarity that eludes him elsewhere. But one patient refuses to behave the way it should, and some problems can't be solved with patience and protocol.

July 26, 2018 AD

The Cost of Keeping Hold

The call comes in just after two: a wedge-tailed eagle tangled in barbed wire on a property near Williamstown, fighting since morning. Jerome Smith volunteers for the rescue he's too hollowed-out to take, and the bird repays him with a talon strike that opens his forearm. Back at the Haven, while Dr. Groves cleans and closes the wound, Margaret Ashcroft arrives with something harder to treat — the quiet observation that Jerome might be one of the people this work was built for, and a warning about what that costs.

July 25, 2018 AD

The Dripping Tap

Jerome stumbles into a moment he was never meant to witness, and finds himself face-to-face with someone's worst fear come true. Memories of his estranged half-brother guide his response—sometimes the kindest thing you can do is choose what not to see.

July 25, 2018 AD

The Fog Between the Walls

Jerome Smith walks into a bathroom and straight into someone else's secret. What he finds — Nate Baker and Ryan Holloway in a moment neither expected to be witnessed — forces him into an impossible position. Not because of what he believes, but because of what his family's beliefs already cost his half-brother Luke. Carrying that knowledge back into the cultural hall, Jerome navigates cryptic conversations he wasn't meant to hear, connections he can't sustain, and a silent drive home.

August 1, 2018 AD

The Gate That Rattled

Jerome walks with his family across a desert to the thing Paul keeps calling camp. The thing has a fence. The fence has a gate. The gate has a warning on it that none of his family look at properly. By the time his parents go with a stranger into her caravan to change out of their pyjamas, Jerome has understood, without having been told, why the fence is there.

July 29, 2018 AD

The Missing Engine

Sunday morning rituals unfold with their familiar choreography—shower, shirt, the careful selection of a tie that's supposed to mean nothing. But a brother's teasing question in the hallway sends Jerome searching for answers he's not sure he wants to find, and the blush that rises to his cheeks has nothing to do with who he's hoping to see.

July 27, 2018 AD

The Name Nobody Says

Jerome Smith sleeps through his mid-morning tutorial and wakes to a throbbing arm, a missed class, and a house that feels wrong. Downstairs, Greta is on the phone — tense, clipped, talking to a police officer about Paul. Claire thinks he's fled to Adelaide after an argument, but Greta hasn't seen him. Then Greta says a name the family hasn't spoken in months: Luke. The call drops before she can finish, and Jerome retreats to his room carrying a question about brothers — the missing one, the invisible one, and what it means to lose someone who's still alive.

July 25, 2018 AD

The Naturalist on the Court

Jerome Smith arrives at the chapel for Wednesday night young adult basketball, reading the car park like a naturalist reads a habitat — who's here, who's missing, what it means. Inside, the cultural hall runs on its usual fuel of cheap cordial, diplomatic team selection, and the unspoken social architecture of two combined wards. Jerome watches more than he plays, notices more than he says, and overhears two things he wasn't meant to: a cryptic conversation about the temple presidency outside the Bishop's office, and a quiet verdict from the sideline about young men who haven't served missions. One lands as a mystery. The other lands as a bruise.

July 26, 2018 AD

The Ones Who Stay

As Jerome's wound is treated, Margaret Ashcroft offers him something harder to bandage—the recognition that he might have what it takes to make this work his life. Whether that's a gift or a warning, he's not sure yet.

July 27, 2018 AD

The Shake That Settled Everything

The Smith family gathers around a backyard fire pit on Friday evening, moving carefully around what nobody's saying. Greta is distracted, Noah builds the fire, and Charles eats everything in reach. Then Millie discovers something magnificently dead behind the compost bin and commits to it with her whole body. Jerome hauls her inside for a bath that becomes a one-armed ordeal of lavender shampoo, soaked socks, and full-body dog resistance. By the time Millie explodes from the bathroom to terrorise Charles and his BBQ Shapes, the evening has found its rhythm — loud, damp, and almost convincingly normal.

July 29, 2018 AD

The Side Entrance

Jerome reads the chapel car park like any ecosystem—patterns beneath the surface, familiar presences in their usual positions. He spots Megan near the entrance and lets Samuel redirect him toward the side door, grateful for the escape even as the cowardice settles. A flicker of eye contact with Nate confirms what neither can say. And underneath it all, the stubborn hope that one day the performance will stop being performance.

July 25, 2018 AD

The Simplest Algorithm

As the basketball game intensifies, Jerome finds brief clarity in physical movement—until an overheard conversation reminds him of the quiet judgments that follow young men who haven't served missions. A kind gesture from Megan Ashworth offers connection, but Jerome isn't sure he knows how to accept it.

August 1, 2018 AD

The Text from Salt Lake

Jerome wakes into a morning that already has something wrong with it and takes the better part of an hour to understand why. The piece that eventually arrived in the shape of understanding came via text message from his brother in Salt Lake City, and said something that did not agree with the shape his life had been in until that moment.

August 1, 2018 AD

The Voice Called Him Jerome

Jerome goes to the kitchen because his mother is the softest target he has, and leaves the kitchen with fewer answers than he went in with. What comes after that happens fast, because people who move fast enough do not have time to talk themselves out of things.

July 31, 2018 AD

Tolerance

Dogs on phenobarbitone build a tolerance to the drug eventually. Turner had said this when Millie was first prescribed it, six months before the Tuesday afternoon Jerome carried her into the clinic with the seizure still fresh in her body. Knowing, as these things go, did not turn out to have prepared him for it.

July 29, 2018 AD

Tractor Beam

A toddler in the pew ahead has found his audience, and Jerome and Charles are powerless against the precision of his comedic timing. But when Bishop Hahn's talk shifts into something cryptic, the lightness fades—and Dad's expression suggests he already knows what's coming.

July 27, 2018 AD

Two Sides of the Hallway

Greta rises at 5:47 and begins the quiet war of holding a household together through kettle steam and scripture — but the scriptures go untouched, the prayer gets interrupted by a toaster, and the son who leaves for seminary doesn't look back. Down the hall, Jerome woke a minute earlier with a bandaged arm and a mind that isn't ready for what the day expects of him. She hovers at his door. He feels her there. Neither speaks. The house holds its breath between them — full of love, full of questions, and not a single one asked aloud.

July 31, 2018 AD

Until the Morning

Saying goodbye to an animal who will not remember the goodbye is one of the small private rituals of having lived with them long enough. Jerome had not done it before. Karen, who had done it with a hundred other people's dogs, knew how to give him the room. What Jerome did in that room, and what Millie did not hear him do, was one of the quietest acts of his life.

July 29, 2018 AD

Unturned Pages

The car feels different on the drive home, and Jerome can't say why. His parents' hands find each other on the centre console; their eyes speak in a language built from decades together. While Charles wages rhetorical war over gluten-free bread contamination, Jerome watches Dad hold a book he's not reading and wonders what truth is waiting to surface.

July 26, 2018 AD

Warm and Held

Jerome faces the conversation he's been avoiding, and learns that sometimes the kindest thing you can do is stay present when there's nothing left to fix.

August 1, 2018 AD

What Life Does

Jerome walks out to the Drop Zone with a woman he does not know, pushes trolleys with her across red ground, and tells her more about himself in the space of forty minutes than he has told anyone for a long time. She listens the way nobody has listened to him in longer than that, and by the time Luke comes back through the Portal with enough food to feed the settlement for months, Jerome has begun to understand that the life he had been building at home may not, after all, have been the life he was going to have.