Parting Gift (Parts 9 + 10)

Angela was quiet over breakfast. Too quiet. She moved around the kitchen with a deliberate calm, rinsing mugs and setting them down a little too firmly, folding tea towels with knife edge creases, opening and closing cupboard doors, wiping the same patch of draining board twice.

David sat at the table, staring into a cup of cold tea. He felt the tension of last night still clinging to him like static.

A soft, tentative knock at the door broke the silence.

Angela opened the door to admit Michael, who stood with an acoustic guitar strapped to his back and his hair still damp from a shower. He gave a small, hopeful smile. “Thought I’d check in.”

Angela stepped aside to let him in, but her jaw was tight.

Michel entered the kitchen, took one look at David’s face and said, “You alright?”

“I’m fine,” David muttered.

Angela let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “He’s not.”

David shot her a warning look. “Don’t.”

“I’m not doing anything,” she said. “I’m just telling the truth.”

Michael glanced between them, sensing the awkward vibe. “I can come back later.”

“No,” Angela said. “Stay. Maybe he’ll actually talk if you’re here.”

David’s jaw tightened. “Don’t start.”

“I’m not starting,” she said. “I’m continuing. You’ve been drifting for weeks. Months. You disappear, you shut down, you won’t tell me anything.”

Michael took a small step back, hands raised slightly, as if to say I’m not part of this.

David rubbed his eyes. “I’m tired, Ange. That’s all.”

“No,” she said. “It’s not all. You’re hiding. From me. From everything.”

He laughed; a short, humourless sound. “I’m not hiding.”

“You are,” she said. “You vanish for hours. You come back wired or hollow. You won’t say where you’ve been.”

David felt heat rising in his face. “I go for walks. I clear my head.”

“Every night?” she said. “At all hours? David, I’m not stupid.”

Michael shifted uncomfortably. “Maybe I should...”

“Stay,” Angela said, without looking at him.

David snapped, “Don’t talk to him like that.”

Angela turned on him. “Why not? You listen to him more than you listen to me.”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?” she said. “He says jump, you jump. He says gig, you gig. He says you’re brilliant, you believe him. I say the same and you look at me like I’m lying.”

Michael’s face went pale. “Whoa, Angela, that’s not...”

She cut him off. “And don’t think I haven’t noticed the way you two talk about me when you think I’m not listening.”

David blinked. “What are you talking about?”

“You think I’m pushing you,” she said. “Into a life you’re not ready for.”

David opened his mouth, closed it again. “I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to,” she said. “It’s written all over you.”

Michael took another step back. “I really should...”

“OK, best go,” David said, voice cracking.

Michael hesitated, then nodded once and slipped out the door, closing it softly behind him.

The silence that followed was hot and prickly.

Angela folded her arms. “You think I don’t see it? The way you look at him? Like he’s the only one who understands you?”

David felt something twist inside him. “Don’t drag Michael into this.”

“Why not?” she said. “You drag him into everything else.”

He laughed; a short, bitter sound. “Oh, come on. You’re with him as much as I am. Maybe I should be the one asking questions.”

Angela’s face drained of colour. “You think I’d...? With Michael?”

“I don’t know!” David shouted. “I don’t know anything anymore!”

She stepped back as if he’d shoved her.

He paced, running a hand through his hair. “You want me to be something I’m not. You want me to grow up overnight. You want me to be a father when I can barely be myself.”

Angela’s voice trembled. “I want you. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

He shook his head. “This is ridiculous.”

“Is it?” she said. “Because sometimes I wonder if you even want this baby. Or if you’re just going along with it because you’re too scared to say no.”

He stopped pacing. His breath came fast and uneven. “Don’t,” he pleaded.

She swallowed hard. “And you… you disappear. You shut me out. You come back like you’ve been somewhere else entirely. What am I supposed to think?”

He didn’t answer.

Her voice rose, thin with fear. “Are you meeting someone? Is that it?”

“No!” he snapped.

She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. “Then where do you go?” she said. “Where do you go, David? Who are you talking to?”

He exploded before he could stop himself. “Can’t I see my own brother?”

Angela’s mouth fell open. A small, broken sound escaped her. Not a word, just her breath catching on something sharp. Her hand went to her chest as if to steady herself. “Your… your…” She couldn’t finish. Her eyes searched his face, wide and frightened.

David’s mouth opened, closed, opened again. “I didn’t... I just...”

Angela’s eyes shone, her breath coming in short, uneven bursts. “I don’t… I don’t understand,” she whispered.

He grabbed his coat, desperate to escape the look on her face. “I need air.”

“David...”

But he was already out the door and Angela couldn’t move her legs to follow him. She stood in the middle of the room, with one hand on her stomach and the other covering her mouth, breathing like someone who’d been winded: stunned, frightened and suddenly very, very alone.

♫

Dusk was approaching by the time David reached the cemetery. The air was cool, carrying the smell of damp earth and cut grass. He passed between the gates without thinking, his feet finding the familiar path that they’d been walking for years.

He didn’t have to look for the place. His body knew the way to where the trees thinned, the ground dipped slightly and the noise of the road faded until all that remained was the soft rustle of leaves and the distant hum of the city.

Terence was already there, sitting on the rusty bench, elbows resting on his knees, staring at nothing in particular. He looked calmer than usual. Older, somehow. Or maybe just tired.

David stopped a few feet away. “You always get here first.”

Terence gave a small, lopsided smile. “You’re slow.”

David sat beside him, the metal slats cold through his coat.

For a while, neither of them spoke. The sky deepened from blue to violet. A blackbird hopped between the graves, pecking at something invisible.

Terence hummed under his breath; the same half-melody he’d hummed in the living room last night. A snatch from a song that David partially recalled from when he was small and feverish and couldn’t sleep. A tune with no words, no beginning, no end. Something that had always been there, like wallpaper or weather.

David frowned. “What is that tune?”

Terence shrugged. “Just something I remember.”

“It’s familiar.”

“Maybe it’s one of yours,” Terence said. “Maybe you made it up.”

David tried to place it. A lullaby? A radio jingle? Something his mum used to hum while hanging washing? But the memory slipped further away every time he reached for it.

They sat like that for a long time, until the light thinned enough so that the shapes of the graves blurred into one another. David rubbed his hands together, feeling suddenly cold.

“Why here?” he asked quietly. “Why do I always end up here?”

Terence looked out across the rows of stones. “You tell me.”

David followed his gaze. He’d never paid much attention to the more secluded part of the cemetery before, not properly. He always came here to sit, to breathe, to think, but he’d never bothered to investigate the markers. They were small, barely more than plaques set into the ground. Some had only a reference number. Some didn’t even have that.

A section set aside in a quiet corner. A place for things that never had the chance to become anything else.

Something tightened in his chest.

He stood slowly, drawn forward without knowing why. Terence rose too, but stayed a step behind, hands in his pockets, watching him with an expression David couldn’t read.

David walked between the markers, scanning the names. Or the absence of them. The dates were short. Too short. A few days. A few weeks. A single year.

He stopped by one small stone, its surface weathered and bearing a simple inscription.

A surname he knew. A year he knew. No first name. Just: 1948.

His breath caught. He knelt to touch the stone, but couldn’t. His hands hovered uselessly at his sides. He swallowed. “Is this…?” He couldn’t finish the question.

Terence didn’t answer. He stood beside him, close enough that David could feel the warmth of his presence. His face was unreadable: not sad, not relieved, just… present in the moment.

David’s throat tightened. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

Terence’s voice was quiet. “They did. Just not in words.”

A flicker of childhood memories surfaced. His mother’s face when she thought he wasn’t looking. The way she’d sometimes pause mid-sentence as if remembering something else. Or someone else. His father’s sudden silences. The careful way they’d watched him when he was ill, as if waiting for history to repeat itself.

David closed his eyes, trying to encompass a truth too big to hold and too fragile to name.

When he opened his eyes again, the stone was still there. Small and ordinary, but no less devastating.

Terence was watching him with something like tenderness. “You’re not broken,” he said. “You’re just… carrying too much.”

David let out a shaky breath. “I don’t know how to stop.”

“You don’t,” Terence said. “You learn to walk with it.”

A sound came from behind them: the soft crunch of footsteps on gravel.

David turned to see Angela standing a few yards away, her coat thrown on and hair raked back in obvious haste. Her face was pale and her eyes red, but her voice was steady when she spoke.

“David… come home.”

He looked back toward Terence. But the space beside him was empty, as if he’d stepped away while David wasn’t looking.

David wiped his face with the back of his hand. Angela approached him slowly, afraid he might bolt again if she made a sudden move.

She reached out hesitantly, then placed her hand on his arm with the lightest of touches. “Please.”

He nodded and they walked back through the cemetery together, the last of the daylight fading behind them. The tune still lingered in David’s mind: soft, familiar and unfinished. A parting gift.

♫