-- Chapter 5 --

The funeral was held three days later.

It had all been prearranged by Julie; small and simple, just as she had wanted it. A quiet service with Amazing Grace and How Great Thou Art being sung, followed by a graveside service, then a gathering in the church hall.

A few neighbours came. Two women from the office where she had worked. People from the church. People Matt did not know, people who knew pieces of Julie’s life that he had never seen.

Levi stood at the front of the church, in dark jeans and a black shirt that was slightly too big for him. Matt stood beside him, because no one had told him where else to stand. Luke stood on Matt’s other side, close but unobtrusive. Matt’s parents sat behind them, his mother crying quietly into a tissue.

People looked at Levi. Then at Matt. Then back at Levi.

Matt saw recognition pass over more than one face. The resemblance was not subtle.

Levi noticed too. His shoulders stiffened each time someone whispered.

At the graveside, he did not cry. Not once. He stared at the coffin as though daring the world to take anything else from him.

Afterwards, people said kind things. Useless things. True things, maybe, but useless all the same.

‘She loved him so much.’

‘She was very brave.’

‘At least she’s not suffering now.’

Levi endured them all with a blank expression. When one woman reached out to hug him, he stepped back.

Matt saw the hurt on the woman’s face, then watched Luke smoothly step in with a quiet thank you and with enough warmth to soften the moment.

That was Luke all over. Always noticing the emotional tripwires before Matt did.

*   *   *

Finally, the house had gone quiet.

For most of the evening there had been movement somewhere – dishes being washed, the murmur of low conversations in the kitchen, the creak of footsteps in the hallway – but now, even those sounds had faded away. The old home seemed to settle around itself with little sighs and groans, the pipes ticking softly in the walls. Sounds that Matt had grown up with.

Matt stood alone in the kitchen for a moment, one hand resting against the bench.

The funeral had drained everybody. Levi most of all. Or maybe not.

That was the thing Matt couldn’t stop thinking about. The boy had barely reacted all day.

He had stood beside the grave in his black shirt and tie with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, jaw clenched tight, staring at the coffin as though refusing to blink. People had spoken softly to him. Told him how sorry they were.

Levi had nodded politely at every single one of them. No tears. No anger. Nothing.

It was only the woman who had tried to hug him that had generated any reaction at all.

Even now, hours later, he had barely spoken during dinner before quietly excusing himself and disappearing into the back bedroom.

Matt rubbed a tired hand across his face. Maybe this was all normal. Maybe shock hit everybody differently.

His mother had died only days ago. The kid’s entire life had been turned upside down.

Matt switched off the kitchen light and headed down the hallway toward the back door, and the flat beyond it. He had almost reached the doorway when he heard it. A muffled sound.

He stopped.

At first, he thought it was the television from another room, but then it came again. A choked sob.

Matt froze. For several seconds he simply stood there listening.

Another sob followed, quieter this time, as though Levi was desperately trying to smother the sound into his pillow.

Something inside Matt twisted painfully. The instinct to go to the boy came immediately.

Just go.

But then another thought followed close behind. Maybe the kid wouldn’t want him there.

Hell, they barely knew each other. Blood didn’t magically make them father and son overnight. Levi had spent fifteen years without him. Maybe this was private. Maybe barging in would only embarrass him.

Matt stood motionless in the dim hallway, caught between the two instincts.

From inside the bedroom came another broken sound.

Not loud. Not dramatic. Just the sound of someone who was utterly shattered.

That decided it.

Matt moved quietly to the door and knocked softly once before easing it open a fraction.

‘Levi?’

There was no response.

The room was dark except for the bedside lamp. Levi lay curled on the bed with his back toward the door, shoulders trembling beneath Matt’s old faded Dragons’ hoodie.

For a second Matt almost backed away again.

Then Levi made a small gasping sound that sounded far too young for a boy trying so hard to be grown up.

Matt stepped inside and gently shut the door behind him.

‘Hey,’ he said quietly.

Levi scrubbed furiously at his face without turning around. ‘I’m fine.’

The words came out cracked and wet. Matt’s heart broke a little.

‘No, you’re not.’

Silence.

Matt stayed where he was for a moment, giving the boy room to tell him to leave if he wanted to.

Levi didn’t. Another shaky breath escaped him instead, and Matt crossed the room slowly and sat on the edge of the bed.

For several seconds neither of them spoke.

Levi kept his face hidden against the pillow, humiliated by the tears he couldn’t stop. Matt could see him fighting for control, trying to drag himself back together.

‘You held it together all day,’ Matt said softly. ‘That’s a hard thing to do.’

Levi let out a small, broken laugh that immediately collapsed into another sob.

‘I didn’t wanna do it there.’

Matt nodded gently. ‘I know.’

‘I just . . .’ Levi swallowed hard. ‘Everybody kept looking at me.’

Matt understood that feeling better than Levi probably realised.

The room fell quiet again except for Levi trying unsuccessfully to steady his breathing. Then, after a long hesitation, Matt carefully rested a hand between the boy’s shoulder blades.

Levi stiffened at first. Matt almost pulled away. But then the tension suddenly drained out of him completely.

The boy folded in on himself and started crying properly at last – exhausted grief that seemed to be dragged up from somewhere deep, as if buried for days.

Matt felt utterly helpless against it. And yet at the same time, something else settled quietly inside him too.

Certainty.

This was his son.

Not a legal responsibility. Not a complication left behind by an old relationship. His son.

Matt moved closer instinctively and Levi turned suddenly, almost without meaning to, pressing into him as though he simply couldn’t hold himself upright anymore.

Matt wrapped both arms around him.

Levi cried against his shoulder while Matt held him there in the half-dark room, one hand gripping the back of the hoodie gently, the other rubbing slow circles between his shoulders like it was the most natural thing in the world.

‘You’re alright, mate,’ Matt murmured quietly. ‘I’ve got you.’

The words slipped out before he even thought about them.

Levi said nothing in return. But he didn’t pull away either.

*   *   *

Luke had to return to Thompsonville the next morning. Work, the house, their life. The life that now felt as though it had somehow just been expanded, without him even having a say in it. That night, after the funeral, he packed slowly, while Matt was up in the main house, helping Levi settle in . . . if that could even be something that could happen this soon.

Luke pulled some clothes for the next day from his suitcase and laid them on the bed, then placed his already worn clothes in it, just before hearing a sound behind him. He turned and looked at the doorway into the kitchen area to see Matt standing there.

‘I wish I could come back with you,’ Matt said, even though he knew he couldn’t.

‘No, you don’t. And you shouldn’t.’

‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’

‘That’s probably a good thing,’ Luke said. ‘It’ll mean you’ll be thinking about everything you do with him. It’ll mean you’ll be paying attention.’

Matt huffed.

Luke crossed the room and took Matt’s hands in his.

‘How is he now?’

‘He’s sleeping. Poor kid is totally wrung out. Probably the first time he’s slept in a real bed in weeks.’

‘You need to stay. Help him. Sort what needs sorting. Let him get used to you being there before we even think about the next step.’

‘What if he doesn’t want the next step?’

‘Then we listen to what he does want.’

Matt nodded. Luke’s expression softened.

‘But don’t assume that just because he is scared, that his fear means no to whatever is set to come next.’

They made love that night, slow and with great tenderness. They wouldn’t know how long it would be before they slept in the same bed again, so it was a parting gift for each of them.

*   *   *

The next morning, as Luke hugged Matt goodbye in the driveway, those words from the night before echoed in Matt’s mind . . . don’t assume that his fear means no to whatever is suggested. If Matt and his son were going to bond, there was going to be a good lot of negotiation needed. That was going to be lesson number one for fatherhood, he realised.

Levi watched them from the back verandah of the house, with his grandmother standing behind him, her hands on his shoulders.

Matt didn’t know whether that was good or bad, and he guessed there would be questions about Luke that would follow soon enough.

After Luke left, everything seemed quieter. Levi retreated to the small back bedroom he had been given to make his own, at least until they could work things out about what came next.

When he had moved into the room, Matt’s mother had changed the sheets, cleared drawer space, and placed a towel neatly on the end of the bed. Levi had brought only the few belongings he’d been carting around in a backpack; a change of clothes, some toiletries, the bible that had sat beside his mother’s bed, a couple of paperbacks that he had already read three times over. Not really much to show at all.

Everything else was still at Julie’s house. Or what had been Julie’s and Levi’s house.

When Matt drove Levi there two days later, the real estate sign was already out the front.

FOR SALE it said. The words standing bright and cheerful against the fence; almost obscene given the circumstances.

Levi stared at it through the windscreen.

‘She didn’t tell me they’d put that up already.’

Matt turned off the engine.

‘She must have arranged it before.’

‘Yeah. I know when she arranged it.’

Matt said nothing.

Levi’s voice sharpened.

‘She had no right.’

Matt looked at him carefully.

‘I think she was trying to make sure things were handled.’

‘But it’s my house now, isn’t it?’

‘I guess, yeah. But that will all be spelt out in her will. Can you remember if your mum had anyone else visit her while she was in hospital . . . like a solicitor?’

‘Yeah. There was. I can’t remember his name though. I heard something about how they would come and talk to me after . . .’

The words hit hard, but Matt let them.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We’ll let them come and talk to you when they are ready. If I knew the name of their firm I could track them down, but your mum didn’t tell me that . . . only that she wanted me to be the executor of her estate.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means that she wanted me to be the one to make sure her wishes were followed. She told me that everything goes to you, but there are things like loans that need to be paid out once the house gets sold. I hope you can understand that’s how it works?’

That seemed to disarm Levi more than an argument would have. Everything was his, except it wasn’t really. For Levi, that might take a little bit to get his head around, Matt figured.

They went inside.

The house smelled like Julie. Matt had no other way to describe it. Laundry powder. Vanilla. Medicine. Something floral. Something fading.

Levi stood in the entryway for a long moment, then walked straight down the hallway to his room.

Matt did not follow immediately. Instead, he hung back, before beginning to slowly move through the lounge, feeling like an intruder. There were photos on the shelves. Levi at different ages. School photos. Birthday photos. One of Julie and Levi at what looked like a Christmas lunch, both squinting into the sun. All the moments that Matt had missed out on while Levi was growing up.

That hit hard. But then he saw something that hit even harder.

He stepped closer and looked at the photo of himself, tucked into the edge of a photo of Levi, almost mirroring his pose, showing off the similarities between father and son. There was no mistaking them.

It was old, creased slightly at one corner. Matt, about seventeen, leaning against a fence in school uniform, grinning at whoever had taken the photo.

Julie, probably. He couldn’t remember.

Matt stared at that younger version of himself. He looked carefree. Happy. Unaware.

Behind him, Levi spoke.

‘She said you didn’t know.’

Matt turned. Levi stood in the hallway holding a cardboard box.

Matt nodded. ‘No. I didn’t.’

‘She said you would have come if you knew.’

Matt’s throat tightened.

‘Yes.’

Levi looked at the photo, not at him.

‘I didn’t believe her.’

Matt absorbed that. Then nodded again. ‘That’s fair.’

Levi’s eyes flicked toward him.

‘Is it?’

‘Yeah,’ Matt said quietly. ‘I think it probably is.’

For a moment, neither of them moved. Then Levi looked away. ‘I need boxes.’

‘I brought some from Dad’s shed.’

‘Okay.’

They packed in silence for most of the afternoon.

Levi began the process of choosing what to keep with a fierce decisiveness. Clothes. Books. A battered football. A small stack of notebooks. Some photo albums. Julie’s dressing gown, which he shoved quickly into a bag and pretended Matt hadn’t seen.

Matt pretended not to.

By sunset, they had barely made a dent.

On the way back to his parents’ house, with the boot and the back seat of Matt’s Commodore piled up with boxes, Levi held a shoebox on his lap and stared out the window. It was filled with small items from his mother’s room.

*   *   *

At the hospital the next morning, Julie’s remaining possessions were handed over in a plain plastic bag with her name printed on a label.

It seemed impossibly wrong. Impossibly final. A life reduced to paperwork and a bag.

Levi took it before Matt could.

In the car, he opened it. There was a purse. A set of keys. A folded cardigan. A small bottle of perfume. Some paperwork. A toiletry bag, and a small jewellery box.

Levi went still. Then he opened the box carefully. Inside lay a medium-sized gold cross on a gold chain, and three simple rings.

For the first time since Julie’s death, his face changed completely.

Not grief exactly. Recognition. He lifted out the chain and the gold cross as though it were something holy.

Matt watched silently as Levi unclasped the chain with trembling hands and went to fasten it around his own neck.

‘You could add the rings to the chain as well, if you wanted to,’ Matt suggested.

Levi simply shook his head and said, ‘No, I think I’ll just keep them safe.’

Then, with his fingers still trembling slightly, he tried to fasten the chain around his neck, but it proved difficult. After watching a couple of tries at it, Matt reached across and said, ‘Here, let me,’ and quickly succeeded in fastening the chain.

The cross settled against the black fabric of his t-shirt, and Levi closed his hand around it.

‘She wanted you to have it. Asked me to make sure you got it in fact.’

Levi looked at him sharply.

‘She told you that?’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘A few days before.’

Levi looked down at the cross again, his thumb moving over it.

‘Mum said Nan gave it to her,’ he murmured.

‘Yeah,’ Matt replied, keeping his voice gentle.

‘She believed I’d see her again some day.’

‘And do you believe it?’

‘Yeah, I do.’

Matt didn’t quite know what to say to that.

He had never been good with faith. He had nothing against it, not really. It simply hadn’t been part of his life in any meaningful way. He and Luke lived quietly, decently, lovingly. But churches, prayers, crosses, heaven – they were a part of other people’s beliefs, and certainties.

Now his son sat beside him, clutching a gold cross as though it were the only piece of solid ground left in the world.

Matt chose his words carefully.

‘I hope that helps you.’

Levi’s mouth tightened.

‘You don’t believe in it.’

‘Mate, to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure what I believe, other than the fact that I believe in love.’

‘Even if the bible says that kind of love is wrong?’

Matt didn’t quite know how to respond to that, at first. He looked through the windscreen at the hospital entrance.

For a while, they sat in silence, before Matt eventually said, ‘There are different kinds of love, Levi, and each of us has to find the kind of love that we can live with. I know your mother loved you deeply. If believing you’ll see your mother again helps you breathe right now, then I’m not going to take that from you, just as I would like to think that you can let me live with the kind of love that I have in my heart.’

Levi’s hand tightened around the cross. He didn’t answer. But he didn’t argue either.

Matt took that as a very small victory. He knew that there would be many walls that he would need to break down, but at least this was a start.

*   *   *

Back at Matt’s parents’ house, Levi went straight to his bedroom – which had once been Matt’s room at a similar age to what Levi was now – and closed the door.

Not slammed. Just closed.

Matt stood in the hallway for a moment, listening to the quiet on the other side.

His mother appeared from the kitchen. ‘Is everything alright?’

Matt looked at the closed door.

‘Not entirely,’ Matt answered.

His mother nodded sadly. ‘No. Of course not.’

Matt glanced down the hallway, then back at her.

‘He got Julie’s cross back today and has put it on.’

His mother’s face softened. ‘Oh.’

‘I don’t know what to do with that.’

‘With what?’

‘The whole religion thing. Faith. Whatever it is to him.’

Matt rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. ‘What if he thinks Luke and I are . . . I don’t know. Wrong. Or sinful. Or it was something Julie never had time to explain properly.’

His mother studied him for a moment.

‘Has he said that?’

‘Not in so many words.’

‘Then don’t go putting words in his mouth before he’s had a chance to find his own.’

Matt sighed.

‘I just don’t want to make it harder for him.’

‘You won’t make it harder by loving him.’

From the back room came the faint sound of movement. A drawer opening. A floorboard creaking.

Levi was there. Not settled. Not safe yet. But there. Finding his place in this new world.

Matt looked at the door and felt the full weight of what Julie had left him.

Not problems. Not duty. A boy. His boy. A lost, grieving, angry, and frightened boy, carrying a gold cross against his heart like a promise.

Matt took a slow breath. One step at a time. That was all any of them had.

To be continued . . .