Meant To Be

Chapter nine - Bell Buckle, Tennessee

The crickets chirped, the night settling into place. Zac staggered up the porch steps. His black tie hanging like a piece of loose rope around his neck. The top buttons of his shirt were wide open. One was missing, and there was a dried out yellow stain blotched over his left breast. The kind that would never wash out.

Zac peered in the kitchen window. Helen was sitting under the light at the foot of the table. Her head bowed, eyes shut, gripping on to a pair of snowy rosary beads. Her lips moving with rhythm. Zac recognised the Hail Mary. His head dropped. He did up the buttons on his shirt, the ones that were still there, and tightened his tie in around his neck, centring it.

A chair screeched across the tiles as Zac opened the back door. Helen appeared in front of him. Her worry eroded, making her face sag. "Zac. Thank goodness." Helen's hand fell upon her heart. "Where did you go?"

"No where." The poisonous stench of alcohol smoked from Zac's mouth. He side stepped Helen moving into the kitchen. She closed the back door and locked it, slipping the key into her pocket.

"I would ask again were you went but that would be a stupid question now," said Helen.

Zac took a glass from the cupboard and put it under the tap, filling it with water. "I don't want a lecture," he said.

"You left Dena's funeral to go drinking."

"10 points," said Zac, his face wicked, smug.

Helen leaned on the back of the chair, pressing hard through her arms. Zac gulped water, refilling the glass when it was empty. Helen lifted the chair, tightening it in under the table and walked towards her son. "Do you really thinking drink is going to help?" When Zac never spoke, Helen drew a breath. "Do you think Dena would want to see you like this? Drinking yourself stupid?"

"Well Dena can't see shit, so I don't have to worry about that do I?"

"You know Zac, this is the cross you've been given. And I know it's hard, but you just have to get on with it. You're still blessed compared to-"

Jacob was sitting at the top of the stairs like a child in his navy pyjama bottoms and grey tee. He heard the back door close, two pacts of footsteps moving into the kitchen. Their words were muffled. Jacob leaned his head against the wall. His eyes were heavy, and Zac was home now. Jacob got up with the intention of going back to bed, but the sudden clip of Zac's tone made him do otherwise. Turning towards the kitchen, he could see Helen standing inside the doorway. She was still dressed in her dark funeral attire, her silver hair knotted at the back of her neck. Zac moved into Jacob's eyeline. His thick hand lifting.

Jacob rushed into the kitchen in his bare feet, yelling. Zac like a fox caught in headlights.

"Are you alright mum!?" said Jacob.

Helen ghosted him; her presence so solid it was like Zac never laid a finger on her. She walked right up to her eldest, her chin elevated. "Go to bed Zac. I'll speak to you in the morning." When she left the kitchen, Zac gazed at Jacob with the kind of hope that would be preserved in the eye of a child.

"You heard Ma. Go to bed," said Jacob, and he turned his back on his big brother, following Helen upstairs.