Page 38 of Words We Didn't Say

“Do I? Sounds like your mother’s interfering again.”

“She means well, Dad.”

Dad chuckled. “Her agenda begins and ends with getting you down the aisle and buying a minivan to cart around all your kids. Don’t think I’m joking. She made me walk around the dealership last week.” He held up his beer. “You want one?”

He didn’t wait to see my nod before bending over, opening the mini fridge, and grabbing a fresh beer. He popped off the lid and passed it to me. “Cheers?”

What was there to celebrate? “Not today, Dad.”

He tapped his bottle against mine anyway. “Every day’s a blessing, even if it’s not turning out how you want.”

We didn’t say much after that. We sipped beers. Shared a bit of small talk. Mum disapproved. I’d caught glimpses of her craning her neck, trying to hear what was happening, getting closer and closer to the door as the minutes ticked on.

The screen door snapped open. Mum sailed onto the deck carrying a bowl of sliced onions. She’d had enough of us wasting time.

“John,” she hissed. “Talk some sense into him, will you?”

“About what?”

Her eyes narrowed. “About Eden.” She dropped the bowl beside the barbecue. “She’s not coming.”

Dad tugged at the collar of his shirt. “You’re telling me I wore this itchy thing for nothing?” He grunted. “Figures.”

“That’s what you’re worried about? Your shirt?”

“You seemed pretty worried about it when you made me put it on.”

“John!”

“Come ’ere, Maz.” Dad wound his arm around her waist and pulled her close enough to plant a kiss on her cheek. “You’re getting yourself all worked up. I’ll sort it. You know I will. Head on back inside.”

Nodding, she sniffled and showed Dad her other cheek. Dutifully, he pecked a kiss there, and Mum disappeared back into the kitchen.

“So, what happened?” Dad didn’t look at me, preferring to keep a close watch on the steaks, tongs ready. “You know, with Eden?”

I sighed. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“You two have a fight?”

A fight was something you had over who took out the rubbish. Our problems were much worse. “There’s this…woman…at work…” Our problems were bigger than Michaela, too, but it was a starting point.

Dad’s lips thinned. The tongs clattered onto the metal grill, and he turned to face me. “I raised you a lot damn better than that, young man.”

Does he think I…?“Dad, I didn’t cheat on Eden!”

His chin lifted to inspect my face, and coal-black eyes drilled into mine. He nodded. A decision. Hopefully, he wasn’t about to disown me.

He threw his head back and called out, “Maree!”

“Yeah?” The screen door opened, and Mum’s head poked out.

Dad nodded at the barbecue. “Keep an eye on the steaks for me, yeah? I’m gonna show Zach the new veggie patch we put in.”

A smug smile stretched across Mum’s face. She knew Dad’s code.

‘Showing me the veggie patch’ meant he wanted to talk to me—one of his awkward man-to-man talks. When I was twelve, ‘showing me the new fence’ led to the most uncomfortable conversation ever about sex. Two years ago, ‘showing me the new lawnmower’ meant Dad breaking down because the doctors had found a lump in Mum’s breast. I’ll never forget that day. It was the first time I’d ever seen my father cry.

Dad was down the back stairs and in the yard in a second. I followed him, but even at thirty-five, my steps were tentative on the lawn he kept greener than a golf course with his shed full of tools and contraptions. He stopped by the raised garden bed lining the back fence and gestured at the buds of green sprouting out of piled sugarcane mulch. Tomatoes already flowered nearby.

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