Broken...

Luke found that life adjusted to the absences; first Andy's, now his parents'. He still went to school until he could find a job. He studied. He existed. And at the end of every day, he still went to pick up Becca. Now she was at the high school as well, wearing the pleated skirt and blazer of a senior student and part of the gang of girls who ran the school. In his eyes, though, she was still the disorganised one in the family, the one who needed his help. Each day he would go to her locker and make sure she was ready for the night and the next day.

“Becca,” said her friend Lanie, “why does he meet you here every day?”

Becca blushed, conscious of any difference to her school mates. Luke felt the comment even more than Becca, just as the girl intended.

“I don't know, he just does.”

Her other friend, Anna, took a turn to twist the knife a little, as teenage girls know best.

“Doesn't he have his own friends to hang out with?”

Luke could sense Becca turning to look at him as she answered. He could feel the sneer that had been growing more and more common on her face since she fell in with this group of girls.

“He used to,” she responded. “They all got themselves arrested to get away from him.”

Luke slammed the locker door and turned around to face her, angry. When he opened his mouth to talk back to her, however, her innocent face disarmed him. Instead of the preening teenager she was, he saw the little girl he remembered, the sweetness, and he saw suddenly that she had exactly the same eyes as Andy. He couldn’t fight against her. He turned and walked away instead.

When he got home, the letterbox was stuffed with letters. He removed them and shuffled through, relishing the task. It was usually the one chore that Becca could be trusted with and she took great pride in being the household postman. He wondered how she could be so different at home and at school. Luke jiggled the keys a little in the lock, making a mental note to fix it, and stepped into the house. He turned to close the door behind him, the juggling act of keys, letters and bag becoming too much and the letters tumbled to the floor. As he crouched to pick them up, a handwritten note caught his eye. It was addressed to the family. Without pausing for thought, Luke ripped the envelope open. He recognised the handwriting.

It was a brief note scribbled on a photo. Three lines that set his pulse racing.

Hi all. Everything fine. In touch. A.

Another message from Andy, the same words as the last but this time a different photo showing a deeply tanned hand against an indiscriminate background. Luke stood and walked to the kitchen, setting the other mail on the hall table before sitting down to study the letter before Becca arrived home. He didn’t have long.

Within minutes there was a noise at the door, the sound of opening and closing. Luke shoved the letter into the pocket of his school blazer. He got up without a word as she burst into the kitchen. He began to prepare their dinner while she studied him in silence for a moment. He had just taken the vegetables from the refrigerator when she finally spoke.

“Lukie, why didn't you wait for me?” she asked him, clearly aggrieved.

Luke didn’t turn away from the bench where he had begun to chop food.

“You're big enough to walk on your own now,” he finally said.

“But you always walk with me,” she protested. “What else have you got to do? Apart from following me around, I mean. In fact, what do you ever do, Lukie? Why don't you have a job yet?”

Luke snorted. The sting was taken out of her nastiness when there was nobody else there. At home, he could hold his own.

“Because of you, actually,” he bit back. “If you could tie your own shoelaces and remember your head without being constantly reminded, I'd go and get a job. But no, Baby Becca needs a babysitter, and we need someone who can actually manage to do some housework. So here I am. Nanny, chef and cleaner, all rolled into one helpful package.”

He had long been bitter about the way his family had assumed he would look after the house, look after Becca. Hannah had been allowed to go and get a job. Andy had worked. Why he had to stay as a housekeeper he couldn’t understand. The extra money would surely have been useful, once Andy’s wages had stopped coming in. He'd fought Hannah for the right to stay at school, but he'd conceded to himself long before that he wouldn't finish.

“I don't know why we don't just employ someone. Anna and Lanie do.”

That brought Luke’s preparations to a halt. He placed the knife on the chopping board and slowly turned around to study her.

“What?” she demanded, disconcerted by his staring.

“Bec, what rock do you live under?”

“What? All the girls at school have maids and cooks. Why can't we?”

“Because we're not rich, Rebecca. Why else do you think that you never saw Mum or Dad or why Hannah isn't here, why I'm leaving school? It takes more than Hannah can earn, just to keep us in food, clothes, power. The only reason we go to that damned school is because we were the token local paupers on scholarships. Didn't you ever notice?” Becca shook her head.

“Notice what?”

Luke stared at her a little longer, then sighed. “Just forget it Becca. Don't worry your pretty little head.” He turned back to the food and picked up his knife once again, unable to stop himself from shaking his head a little. The thought of the photo in his pocket gave him some pause, but he decided not to tell her about it. She would hardly care now, it seemed.

Broken

It was a grey day, just like in all the cliches. There were a small group of mourners for the funeral, a sad indicator of just how much impact on the world the adult Turners had had in their lives. Apart from the priest, there were the three children, a distant cousin and a couple of co-workers. As the service finished, the others drifted past and offered words of little comfort. The priest didn’t even try to console them, in spite of Becca’s sobs. He turned and walked away from the paupers’ graves where the bodies now lay. Luke stood between his sisters, one clutching each hand. He didn’t have the words either.

“Come on, then,” Hannah finally said. “We’d better head home.”

Later that night, Luke spread his books on the table. Funeral or no funeral, he had exams to study for. With only months of schooling left, the pressure was on him to get good grades. Hannah was doing the housework for a change, drying the freshly washed dishes by the sink. As she set the last glass on its open shelf, she turned to look at Luke, taking in his concentration and the hand flying across the page as he took notes. She sighed.

“Lukie, I need to talk to you.”

He looked up from his studies and, when he saw her serious face, set down his pen. Hannah moved to the table and sat in their mother’s seat, next to him.

“Lukie, you need to get a job.”

Luke seemed dumbstruck, fumbling for words for a moment as he adjusted to the unexpected topic.

“But school, Becca, the housework - they take up all of my time. When am I supposed to work?”

Hannah hit the table. She’d been forced to shoulder more than she could contemplate since the accident. She needed to share the load, the grief.

“Dammit, Luke, we were barely keeping afloat when there were four of us working. How the hell do you think we're going to survive now Mum and Dad are gone too?”

“But you work for the government,” Luke said, still dumbfounded.

“Yes, I work for the government and it's killing me. I get paid next to nothing to do a horrible job that I can't believe I do.”

“Ssh. Someone will hear you.”

“Let them bloody hear me!” she yelled. “It's no secret that I hate what I do. I do it because I have to. You've already had more time at school than Andy or I had. It's time you left and got a job. And Becca can look after herself. We're going to lose the house, Luke.”

Luke was once again stunned into silence. He hadn’t thought about the house payments. It had come as a shock to him to learn that his parents owned only a tiny percentage of the family home. He’d always assumed that the reason they’d lived in such a dump for so long was that they couldn’t afford anything better. He never realised that it was because they couldn’t even afford what they had.

“But what can I do? I'm not qualified for anything.”

“We'll find you something, somehow. We've got no choice, have we, since our sainted brother ran off. Heard from him lately, have you?”

Luke paused, suddenly remembering the photo, still in his pocket from the night it had arrived. He had never gotten around to sharing it with any of them. The accident had happened that night.

“There was something in the mail the other day,” he said quietly. Hannah looked at him disbelievingly.

“What, a photo of Paris, was it? A letter from Rome? Tokyo? New York? Johannesburg? Where has he been all this time then?” Her voice was harsh and bitter. She had never spoken of Andy since he disappeared. Luke hadn’t understood before just how much she resented him for leaving. They’d always been close until then.

“It was just a photo of desert, and a foot in the bottom corner.”

Hannah sat down at the table in surprise. The news seemed to mean more to her than it did to Luke.

“Andy's in the desert?” she asked in a whisper. The anger was gone now, replaced by worry.
“Yeah, it looks that way. Why?” Luke couldn’t understand her sudden change in mood. She buried her head in her hands, looking much older than her twenty-two years. Suddenly Luke could see his mother sitting in that chair, in the same pose, the morning that they had realised Andy was gone. He hung his head to hide the sudden tears the memory evoked.

“Don't you know what's in the desert, Luke? That's where the camps are supposed to be. the camps for the Vanished. There's stories that there are other camps there too. Not run by governments.” Hannah’s voice sounded weary.

“You think he's –?” Luke trailed off, unable to voice what Andy might have become.

“Yeah, I think he is." They sat silently at the table for a few moments. Eventually, Hannah ran a hand through her hair and got up from her seat. "Go to bed, Lukie. You've still got to go to school tomorrow, whatever happens after that.”

She pushed her hair back from her face and offered him a half-hearted smile. Luke began to tidy his books. He piled them together and scooped them off the table as he pushed his chair back and turned to walk from the kitchen.

“And Lukie?” Luke stopped in the doorway and looked over his shoulder at his sister.

“Don't tell Becca. She's too little to know this.”