“Why? Because he’s choking the life out of you?”

She forgets about the news and walks away, but he can tell she’s laughing.

“Maybe Snow Patrol,” she answers from the door. “You know? ‘Set the Fire to the Third Bar’ or ‘Chasing Cars.’ Or something by the Silversun Pickups. He likes them.”

“Guitar work will be hard for both.”

She shrugs. “Lucky I know a good guitarist or two.”

To: taramarie@yahoo.com

From: anabelsbrother@hotmail.com

Date: 1 August 2007

Dear Finke,

Bit surprised because I always took you for a practical Times New Roman font girl, so when you sent me that heartfelt note using the GlooGun font, I said to myself, you never really know someone.

Anyway, I thought you should know, since you were always interested, that there’s a chance Tom Finch is coming home soon. There’s a lot of talk going on about those old-timer vets and the government finally digging up the seven bodies that were left behind. Don’t know if you heard about the two they’ve already returned, but Tom Finch could be next.

I notice more of his stuff around the place these days and I think it’s part of Georgie’s preparation to bury him. Things like scapulars and his swag and his books. Although I can’t see it being a priority in my father’s life at the moment, it was always his obsession. Joe’s too, funnily enough, because Joe didn’t belong to Tom Finch. But Joe was a history fanatic and he was used to working with evidence and it was one of the things he shared with my father. I know that’s why the thing with Joe not being buried properly hit my old man hard.

I’ve never really wanted to ask my pop Bill a lot of questions in the past because he might have thought I didn’t respect him just because he wasn’t my dad’s father. But Tom Finch has never felt like my grandfather. How can you look at someone whose last photo was taken when he was twenty-one and consider him to be anything more than some poor bastard my age, born on the wrong day? But I love him, you know. Can’t explain how I love someone I’ve never met, but I do.

Just between you and me, I think my father and Georgie have always been a bit hard on Bill. My mum reckons that I’ve always seen my pop as a mellow older guy, but he’ll be the first to admit he was tough on my father. They used to have it out on the front lawn, according to Georgie, back when they were seventeen. “You’re not my fucking father, you bastard,” my father would yell. But I think Bill loved them all the same, and never favored Joe over the others. Everyone said it killed him when Georgie dropped the Mackee name and sometimes I actually think she regrets the decision and misses it, but I think she was angry at Bill and Nanni Grace twenty years ago for moving down to Albury and taking her little brother with them. It was the only way she could get back at them.

When I saw Ulysses on Georgie’s bedside table and Tom Finch’s name written on it in a scrawl so like my old man’s, I felt that I wanted to read it as a preparation for what’s about to happen to us all. I understand where the brawny part of my father and I come from — Bill. I’m not saying Bill’s not smart, but my old man is a pretty intelligent guy and that kind of intellect came from Tom Finch. I want to turn the pages he turned. But honestly I’m actually finding it hard. I think that the whole world has lied and nobody has read the book completely. It’s a conspiracy up there with Roswell.

Wish you’d write.

Love, Tom

Shit! He went to the sent box, praying that somehow the e-mail got rejected. No such luck. Twenty seconds earlier anabelsbrother sent taramarie a message, not with the word cheers or see ya or whenever. But signing off with the word love.

The grief hits her hard one day. The way it can’t be controlled. The way that yesterday can be good and so can the day before, and so can the week and fortnight before that, but then today comes and she’s back to zero. How she can’t type words into her computer or even press the in-box for her mail. The effort it takes to walk. How words can’t form in her mouth and how her blood feels paralyzed. For the first time since she can remember, she finds herself dialing Sam’s number but hangs up the moment she hears his voice because too much emotion goes into keeping Sam at an arm’s distance.

In front of them is a couple. They’re Serbian, and for a moment she panics and thinks they’ve got a Bosnian translator by mistake. She sees their mouths move but hears nothing.

Her co-worker reaches over and touches her hand. “Why don’t you go home, Georgie?” he asks gently after they’ve left.

She’s too listless to even shake her head.

“Georgie,” one of the girls from the next desk says, holding the phone in her hand and covering the mouthpiece. “It’s your brother.”

She picks up the phone in an instant.

“Joe?”

She hears a sigh of such depth that she doesn’t know if it’s hers or his.

“Georgie?”

“Dominic,” she whispers.

It’s just been e-mails until now. She hasn’t heard his voice for almost twelve months. Before that, she’d hear it every day of her life. She’d swear to others that she heard it in the womb for those nine months.

“Where are you?” she asks.

“Central. Can I come and stay with you?”

She wants to weep, but she’s too emotionally tired.

“That you even have to ask,” she says.

She goes home via Coles at Norton Street Plaza to grab some groceries. It gives her purpose. Purpose is good at the moment. Milk, bread, toilet paper, and the newspaper give her something to do that doesn’t require emotion or contemplation. Although she has fewer than eight items, she lines up anywhere, and with a shaky hand she texts Jacinta and then Lucia to tell them that Dominic’s home.

“Hi, Georgie!”

On the line in front of her is Sam’s kid, Callum. Dressed in his school uniform and smiling shyly up at her. Sam says he goes into infantile mode when Georgie’s around. Some kind of six-year-old’s crush, where he talks like a baby. He has a cardboard box around his arm and then Georgie sees a hand touch the cardboard box. It’s the suit’s hand. Georgie and the suit never cross paths, surprisingly enough. The last time they spoke was at a function where Sam worked about eight years ago. She was all smart, tailored, slimline fitted suits and straightened hair. She said “mate” a lot and “matey,” mostly to the guys. The suit came from the school of thought that whatever you wanted, you went out and got, regardless of whether it belonged to someone else. Grace and Bill’s lesson was that you had the right to go and get what you wanted, unless it hurt others. Unless people got stepped on. Unless lives were ruined.

Apart from that, there wasn’t much of a difference between Georgie and the suit, so no big room for analysis of why Sam had gone out with her, or whatever it’s called when people sleep together for a month without actually dating. The suit was younger, but not young enough for it to be one of those younger woman things. The suit was attractive, but Georgie had never been coy about her own looks. She had inherited them from Grace and felt comfortable with the uniqueness of them. Georgie had never quite felt at ease in the suit’s presence. Not a premonition that this woman would cause the end of her relationship, but an irritation that whether in the presence of women or men, the suit had to prove she knew more about pop culture, more about the latest trends and what was happening on the sports field. That no one was more down-to-earth than her. That no one was more up-to-date. She was the type who hogged the pen and paper at a trivia night. No one was more capable.