Sarah had bundled their bags by the front door and returned to the table. They had taken longer than he’d wanted to pack, and now this was it, the last dinner he would eat before leaving this place for good. He had not bothered visiting his father, nor had he called his mother to see how he was. It was past Amy’s bedtime. They would eat and he would shove the bags in the car and she would fall asleep on the way to Devonshire. In the morning things would be different.

Sidney spared a glance around the kitchen he had grown up in. All his father’s talk of duty and family responsibility had gone up in the same fire that engulfed the shed. There was no excuse for endangering the family the way his father had. Sidney found himself resenting the man for his entire childhood. He thought of everything he would do differently as a father.

They ate quickly. Sarah was just getting up from the table when the front door cracked open and in came Brendan, covered in blood. Startled, Sarah took a few steps backwards and Brendan seemed perplexed at her reaction, as though he’d returned from any normal night at the pub. Then he looked down at his shirt, his hands, and hurriedly put his arms across his chest in a futile effort to hide the red. Sarah went to lift Amy out of the highchair.

Sidney found himself looking down on his brother for the first time in his life. All the power and menace seemed to have been stripped from him––it was clear in the way he held himself.

‘Can you come out to the car, please?’ Brendan said, arms still crossed. A drip of blood fell from his fingertip. He didn’t seem in pain, at all, so Sidney assumed the blood wasn’t his. And didn’t want to know what he’d done.

‘Why?’

‘Because you need to come to the car.’

Sidney looked at his daughter, his wife. ‘We were just leaving. We’re done with all this.’

Brendan swelled then, one of those baboons in the jungle, puffing himself up as he stomped toward them. Sarah left the room with Amy in her arms before Brendan reached him. He grabbed him in a headlock Sidney knew well from their youth and marched him to the front door.

‘Like, I said, you need to come to the car, Sid,’ he said, the last word forced through clenched teeth.

‘Alright, alright, damnit, get off me.’

Sidney could smell the blood, could feel it in his hair. His viewpoint only of his shoes, the verandah, the steps, the gravel walkway. The cool air bit into his back. One of his ears felt like it was being ripped clean off. He kept squeezing at the arms that held him, even though he knew it was no use.

At the car he was released. He stood up, rubbing his neck.

‘In there,’ Brendan said.

Sidney bent down and looked in. In the darkness he saw Judah in the front seat, staring straight ahead.