For a second, I can’t find the words. It’s easier in Girdwood, sitting on Cedar’s bed with the hall light coming in, his hand squeezing mine. But then it comes to me, and one line leads to another. When I get to the chorus, I can just make out Cedar’s voice singing along in a whisper, far far away.

At the finish, he calls out, ‘Thanks, Mike,’ and there are shuffling, clunking noises as he gives the phone back to Wade.

‘Good job, Mike,’ Wade says, his mouth too close to the phone. He’s trying to speak quietly. ‘Boogiemen gone. You have saved the day. Or night, in this case. I will leave you to your vacation.’

I put the phone down on the counter. The song is still in my head. My right hand is still clenched. I’m not a natural singer. Or maybe my hand was just holding Cedar’s. Lacy is looking at me, suds running down the brush she’s holding.

‘My beer-garden bogan side comes through again.’

‘Saving the day,’ she says. ‘My beer-garden bogan superhero.’

Cedar will sleep now. There’s every chance of it. Some of the sounds when he passed the phone to Wade were him rolling over towards the wall, pulling his sheets up and bunching them around himself, his eyes already closed. I know precisely the way his hair is on the pillow, the expression on his face, the calm that comes when he decides the crisis has gone.

‘Here’s how it feels to me.’ I turn to face Lacy properly. ‘We have a child. That’s how it feels. He might call me Mike and call someone else Dad, but he gets me to sing to him across the Pacific Ocean. Me. What I’m doing feels a lot like parenting. I’m okay with it, with what we’ve got. I’m okay with Cedar. If he’s the only person I ever parent, and I never appear on any documentation that says I’m doing it, I’m okay with that. Okay’s the wrong word. I’m . . .’ There’s no good word, just a feeling. ‘Complete.’ It’s a Hallmark-card word, a movie-of-the-week word. ‘I’m good. We are the family I need.’

Lacy nods. She scrunches her eyes closed and her cheeks go blotchy. ‘Yep.’ She takes a shuddering breath in. ‘Yeah.’

I reach out to her, put my hand on her arm. She takes a step towards me.

‘We’ve got a good future, the three of us.’ The song is gone but my head is still cluttered. ‘If that’s how it is. Cedar growing up, you and me getting old and having adventures. Coming back here, going places we’ve never been. Never trying to sell a single blade of bento grass or trying to dominate the world market in anything.’

‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I want that.’ She takes the sleeve of my T-shirt in her hand, presses it against her eyes and shakes her head at the damp blotches she leaves behind. ‘Yeah.’

‘We’ve got to make the most of it.’