Tom could see that the memory was vivid and painful, but then again, any thought of Joe was.

“And we lost him. Dominic was holding his hand and somehow he lost Joe in the crowd, and it took us and the police three hours to find him. Your father was inconsolable. And I hated Bill for this part of it, because the moment we got home, the belt came off and Dominic got it so bad. Joe and I cried and cried, begging him to stop.”

“What did Nanni Grace do?”

“Nothing. The discipline was always Bill’s thing and if there was one thing Nanni Grace agreed with, it was that Joe and I were to be looked after. ‘You’re responsible, Dom. Responsibility, Dominic.’ It’s all he ever heard, so it’s no wonder he ended up captain of his primary and high school and everywhere he’s been since. That’s not to say he didn’t have a bit of a bastard bullying streak, but thank God he used it for good, because he could have been a real prick, you know.”

“But never one to Mum and Anabel.”

She sighs, wrapping her arms around her body to block out the cold. “He was tough on you,” she says, looking over to him.

Tom’s shaking his head.

“No, he was,” she insists. “He was just like Bill. They both treated their wives like princesses, but their sons were different.”

“How come Bill didn’t treat you like a princess?”

She gives him a droll look and he laughs.

“Come on, Georgie, it’s because you don’t give people a chance to treat you that way.”

“Not true. There are some women who get away with being princesses and I’m not one of them.” She looks at him closely. “Did he ever hit you?” she asks quietly.

Tom doesn’t speak for a moment.

“Not like you said Bill did to him that time when he lost Joe. Except maybe a bit of shoving around in those last years of high school.”

Tom could tell Georgie about the days after his mum and Anabel left, but he preferred not to. He couldn’t deal with anyone’s judgment of his father, no matter what.

One morning he had asked, “Do you think that’s a good idea?” after watching his father pour a glass of scotch.

“Do you have a better one, Tom?”

“Yeah, actually I do, Dominic.”

He got a backhand for that. It split his lip and made his head spin.

“Shit,” his father muttered, grabbing Tom to see what he had done, but Tom stepped away, tasting blood in his mouth. He watched his father stumble. “Come on, Tommy. Just let me look at it.”

It began a pattern between him and his father. And on the very day Tom woke up hoping that he didn’t have to go through that ritual of watching his father down a scotch just to get him through the morning, or that he didn’t have to stick his father’s head under a shower spray and sober him up for a meeting between the Labor Council and industry bosses, that he didn’t have to kid himself that a mug of black coffee would work a miracle — on that very day that Tom woke up wishing it would all go away, it did.

Georgie’s stare pierces into him, jolting him back to the present.

“You know you’d make your mum happy if you rang her,” Georgie says.

“I was pretty cut when she walked out on him,” he says, relieved to be thinking of something else.

“She didn’t walk out on him, Tom. She took Anabel to Brisbane so Anabel wouldn’t have to see him at his worst. She did that for Dom, not for herself. It was a horrific year and Dom just crashed. It was the hardest decision she’s ever had to make. But she didn’t leave him and she didn’t leave you, Tom. She wanted you to come up with her. She begged you to.”

“So what about before? When I was in Year Eleven and things were just beginning to get bad?” he asks again, not wanting to remember the look in his mother’s eyes when he wouldn’t say good-bye a year ago.

She shrugs. “Who knows? I think when Jacinta had to go back to work, it killed them both for a while.”

“I thought she wanted to work.”

“Anabel was only eight, and your mother had worked all through your primary years, so I really think she wanted to be home for Anabel. Pick her up from school, turn up to sports carnivals, be a real at-home mum. I think Dominic felt he failed her by not being able to support you all on a single wage, but your parents were mortgaged to the hilt and interest rates were ridiculous. Plus his job was always so full-on and he had little to show for it, especially when the government came down hard on the unions.”

“So he regretted dropping out of uni?” he asks.

“Why ask that?” she snaps. “So you can blame yourself and say you being born stuffed up their lives? Well, it didn’t, and once he got into the union, he never looked back. It was like he was born for that job. There were no regrets, Tom. A bit of guilt from Jacinta because she thinks your father missed out on something, and a bit of guilt from him because he thinks she missed out on something.” She smiles. “But there was nothing wrong with their marriage. I could be a fool for believing this one hundred percent, but there was never anyone for Dominic but Jacinta and vice versa. They knew they’d get through the shitty part.”

“But they didn’t,” he argues.

“They’re not divorced, Tom. That marriage is not over.”

“Georgie, they’ve been living apart for more than a year and we don’t have a clue where he is.”

And there it is. A look that tells him everything and nothing. All of a sudden he’s pissed off. Not quite sure who with, but somehow Georgie gets in the way.

“Where is he?”

She sighs, getting up from her chair. “Let’s not do this now.”

“You have no right to keep it from my mother. You’ve always thought you were more important than her when it comes to him, but you aren’t,” he says angrily.

She stops walking. Can’t hide the hurt.

“Where did that come from?” she asks angrily. “I would never keep anything about Dominic from your mother, and he would never be in contact with me before being in contact with her. Sisters and daughters come second in this family, Tom. They always have. So if you want to find out anything about your father, pick up the phone and speak to your mother.”

“I didn’t mean to —”

“Yes, you did,” she says, cutting him off. She’s crying and it makes him feel like a piece of shit.

“Georgie, I’m sorry!” he shouts as she disappears inside, but all he hears is the sound of her footsteps and the slamming of her door.

He goes for a walk and finds himself two blocks away in Temple Street, outside the house he grew up in. It’s a semi, much smaller than Georgie’s, with a tiny garden path and a bit of lawn and a border for planting roses. His father was a stickler for keeping it perfect. At the moment, they rent it out and everything’s dead.

It’s a bad place for memories. Some of the best moments of his life happened here and some of the worst. It’s where his father broke the news that Joe was probably dead. Tom remembers Dominic standing on this very veranda, waiting for him, saying, “Tom . . . Oh, God, Tom.”

He crouches down to where a dead stem is buried in cracked dirt and crumbles the soil inside his fist.

“I called police!” He hears a voice from next door.

He peers around the hedge and smiles. The light’s on and he can see their tiny neighbor, clutching her quilted dressing gown around her.

“Hey, Mrs. Liu. It’s me, Thomas. Thomas Mackee.”

Her face registers shock and then joy. “Oh. Oh. Thomas. Very sorry.”

She steps onto the lawn, and he climbs over the hedge and into hergarden, bobbing down to kiss her cheek. When he was at school, she used to walk up the main drag of Stanmore with a white mask over her mouth as if the SARS virus was in the neighborhood. Sometimes his father would have to go up to the shops with her to translate. It’s not as if Dominic knew how to speak Mandarin, but somehow both Mrs. Liu and the person behind the counter seemed happier when his dad was patiently repeating what the other had to say.