The Piper's Son

Dominic mutters something about the little shit and squeezes in next to her, and Sam and then Lucia and Abe and Jonesy arrive, and she bursts into tears the moment she sees them.

“It’s fine. She’s okay,” Lucia says forcefully the moment Sam suggests they go home.

Georgie wonders if one of them should say something. To make a toast to Tom Finch, but she knows that none of their friends would dare because that was always Dominic’s thing. For a moment she catches her brother’s eyes and it’s as if he’s reading her mind, but he shakes his head.

“When are your parents coming down again?” Abe asks.

“Next week,” she says quietly. “Grace wants to be here in case the baby comes early.”

“How are they?”

She shrugs. “They’re with friends and Auntie Margie Finch is driving down so they’ll be together. She was pretty emotional.”

Because Auntie Margie Finch would never forget her little brother, Tom Finch. “Wives can replace their husbands, Georgie,” her aunt once told her. “But sisters can’t replace their brothers.”

“And when does he . . . get returned?” Jonesy asks, on his best behavior without a mobile in his hand.

“They say it could be anywhere between two to four weeks,” Dominic says. “There’s a lot of ID rigmarole.”

Then some of the vets arrive. Word has got round quick and they’ve come from as far away as the mountains. They had always frightened Georgie as a child, with their wounded eyes and trembling hands. Although they’re of the same generation as Bill and Grace, they look as if they’ve lived one thousand years more. These fragile men, the last to ever see her father, are so emotional as they squeeze in with them. They want to tell their story of the day they had to move on and leave one of their own behind. Then it gets a bit quiet and she looks up to where Tom is standing on the counter.

“I want to make a toast,” he says, his voice so strong, so powerful. There’s still a bit of noise and next minute Francesca Spinelli is on the counter next to him. “Shut up,” she yells.

Then there’s silence. Francesca is watching everyone like a hawk and Tom is looking over everyone’s head, at Georgie’s table.

“I want to make a toast on behalf of my family,” he says. “On behalf of my father, Dominic, and my aunt, Georgie, and my na

The silence accentuates the beauty of him. The beauty of this first boy of theirs.

“A toast to Tom Finch and this is the perfect place to make it. Because he fell in love with Na

Georgie can hardly breathe.

When the toast is over, some of the uni kids approach them shyly and ask the vets and Dominic and Georgie if they could buy them a beer and she’s anxious the whole time that Dom will want one. Of all times, he’ll want one now because he’s shaking from emotion. And then Tom’s there, squeezing in between her and Dom, shaking the vets’ hands and she sees the tears in the old men’s eyes, the same tears she sees in Auntie Margie Finch’s, because opposite them is the young Tom Finch they remember, sitting alongside the Tom Finch he would have grown up to resemble.

When they get home, she sits with Dominic on his bed in the study. They can’t speak about Tom Finch because only Bill and Grace can provide the memories for them, so they speak of the one they haven’t been able to get out of their minds since the phone call.

“There are probably a million things I’ll never forgive myself for,” Dominic says quietly, “and one is leaving you to take care of bringing back Joe. Sam’s told me some of it. About the hospitals and the press and the other families. And the survivors. And what they remembered and how the worst thing he’s ever had to tell you is that there was no body. He said he’d kill me if I asked you anything more now. But I need to know, Georgie.”

“Even if it’ll break your heart?”

“I need to know if he had regrets,” he says. “We’d seen him upbeat all his life. I need to know if he was having a good life. Was he happy that week? Was he in love with his girl as much as we thought he was?”

She wonders how to tell him the good and the bad, because it’s what Joe’s last couple of hours were about. Fate too. Bill told her a story about fate once. That he had known Tom Finch from the time they were born. It was how their mothers met. In the hospital. One was born before midnight, the other after. Those hours between them meant nothing at all for most of their young lives. Until the draft.

“The day before . . . he had a fight with the great Ana Vanquez,” she begins. “Ana couldn’t remember what it was about. I think he had stayed out too long or had been drinking after indoor cricket and she wanted him home and they had a big blue. So he left for work that morning with both of them so angry at each other.”

Georgie takes his hand because he’s going to need her strength now, more than ever.

“He went back, Dom. He went back to say he was sorry. You know Joe. He hated any kind of conflict. How many times did he say, ‘Let it go, guys. Not worth it’?”

Dominic nods and there’s a smile there too and it kills her to see it. “And because he went back to make things right, he missed his train, Dom. And he got on the other one.”

And she doesn’t realize how much she needed to say those words to Dominic. That those words bring her solace. That’s what he would have been thinking of, her little brother. That he had made good with his love, the great Ana Vanquez. He would have had a cheeky grin on his face thinking of her, the same grin he would have had as a kid, when they told him he had done good. He would not have known the anger and rage of a young man standing next to him. He would have been oblivious.

“Remember when we were kids at the Easter show,” Dominic asks, “and Bill ripped into me for losing Joe? Shit, that was the belting of a lifetime. But do you want to know the truth, Georgie? I didn’t lose him.” He’s shaking his head. “I didn’t lose him. Not accidentally, anyway. I let go. On purpose. On purpose, Georgie. I let go of Joe’s hand on purpose because I was so pissed off at Bill.”

And then Dominic’s sobbing. “I let go, Georgie. I let go of Joe’s hand and he was so small. It shouldn’t have been him. It should have been —”

“Don’t. Don’t you dare say it, Dom.”

But he just shakes his head and says it anyway and she cries at the sound of those words spoken.

“It should have been none of us,” she says fiercely. “None of us. We didn’t deserve it. No one does.”

“Christ, Georgie, just say I lose Tom,” he says, beating a fist against his temple, as if he wants to hammer the thought out of his head. “Just say I lose my boy.”

Since his talk with Will, he finds himself itching to e-mail Tara and ask her about that night in her parents’ house. He doesn’t like this thing called fate getting in the way. Worst-case scenario is that she’ll stop speaking to him again. Except the one thing he’s come to realize over the last couple of months is that worst-case scenario is the last thing he wants. So he chickens out. He’s not sure he can go through any more emotion this week. Last night he had sat on his front porch listening to Georgie and his father talking about Joe. Sometimes the way Georgie cries rips holes into Tom. Hearing what his father said was a thousand times worse.