A Reason to Exist

Chapter 44

'It's strange,' the officer said, sitting at a large computer screen. He checked his notepad. '10.16pm we see a brick go through the window. Not exactly a midnight attack, is it?' He scanned through the footage. 'Here. 10.16pm Friday night.' He pressed play. The camera was on the other side of the street, so it was hard to see anything in detail. We could see a brick fly through the gallery window. Soon after, a small figure walked over and stopped and looked around. The officer paused the video and zoomed in on the face.

'He doesn't look like a man to us,' he said. 'He looks like a young boy or a teenager. Do you recognise him?'

Dad screwed up his eyes and leant in closer to the screen. 'It's hard to tell,' he said. 'It's so fuzzy.'

I leant in too. I couldn't see the person's face clearly. However, that 'Fortnite' hoodie was familiar. It looked like the one Tate got earlier in the year at the Victoria Market. My heart plummeted forty feet and splayed paralysed at the unsanitary tower block of shock.

'It's not Rex,' dad said. 'I know that for sure. It's not his physique. Rex is tall and his shoulders and chest massive. It's definitely not Rex.' He shook his head and ran a finger along the back of his right ear. 'Shit. How am I going to tell Rex his works have been slashed? I almost wish it were him. Bugger.' A look of dread came over dad's eyes. 'I'm up shit creek,' he said, quietly.

Dad's cursing was background noise. A blender was pulsing my thoughts to breadcrumbs. Is it Tate? Can I know for sure? Why would he do it? And if he did do it, do I tell? I gasped for air. Order became chaos. My breath, impenetrable steel. My ears, hot flushes. My nose, an empty cave.

Dad placed his hand on the back of my neck . 'I have to get her home. Sorry, I can't help you more. But it's definitely not Rex.'

He steered me out through the open plan office. It was mostly empty, except for a couple of officers sitting at their desks. Someone unlocked a door for us.

'You okay?' dad asked on the street.

I summoned a breath from the dead. 'Of course. It was just strange. I've never been in a police station before. It was like being in a TV series or something. I don't know. It was weird. I kept waiting for a director to appear and say "cut".'

'Yeah, I guess it was weird. I haven't been in a cop station either, except to get a justice of the peace to sign a form.'

We walked back to the car. The day was still, the breeze in stop motion. Dad lapsed into silence, I slipped into dread. That Fortnite hoodie was a murder weapon left at the crime scene. My brother is the prime suspect. What the hell? Why would he do that? What was he doing Friday night? I can't even remember. I'd been so preoccupied with my own life, lately, I didn't even know what my little brother was doing. He said in his text message he had a Mary Poppins rehearsal on Saturday, but what was he doing Friday night?

'What are you going to tell Rex?'

'This is a nightmare,' dad replied, 'It could all blow up.' We paused beside his car. Dad's face was a landslide. 'I recognised that figure in the video. I think you did too.'

'Tate,' I said.

Dad leant his back against the car and crossed his arms. He looked up at the sky. 'I can't believe it.'

'Neither can I.'

'How can he hate me so much?' dad asked.

My heart broke for him. 'He doesn't hate you.'

'Then how could he have done this? I can't comprehend it. How could he have done this? I almost have no words. Jesus Christ. My own son.'

The father-son relationship had been brutalised. Tate's heart had turned to stone. Years of bad-mouthing had festered in Tate's ears, until he'd wanted to attack the man who cradled him in the bath as a newborn, who read him stories, who cheered when he took his first steps, who tweezered a sultana out of his ear, who went through a rubbish bin of used nappies to find a sushi soy sauce lid he'd eaten, just to make sure no vital organs were punctured. Dad wanted to be there to keep Tate safe. His only failure was he couldn't keep our mother happy. But nobody could keep that woman happy. Nobody.

'She made him do it,' I blurted out. 'Mum.'

'No,' dad shook his head. 'She's bad, but she would never suggest such a thing. She'd be worried about broken glass and cut tendons.'

'It's years of her bad mouthing. She's turned Tate against you. This is her fault.'

Dad's shoulders rose. He curved his back, bowed his head and made a sound I'd never heard before. It was the sound of my father crying. It was staggered and short, more of a whimper than a cry. It was the sound of someone being torn up inside, of years of pain escaping through a blowhole. It was sadness that had hibernated, hopelessness submerged, it was bleak and gloomy and dim of light and it frightened me.

My big, strong father was broken. Fathers don't cry. Fathers have tools to fix things. Fathers are steady, the happy face, the words of wisdom, they deal with huntsmen spiders and possums in the roof, they know how to sharpen knives and change downlights. When they hurt themselves they make a joke. They don't express emotions. Every father cliché shredded to pieces, standing there watching my dad cry.

I didn't know how to comfort my father. I stood there silently while he made those noises, scrunched his eyes up and hurled his misery at the batting cage of life.

When his sobs subsided, he straightened his back and reached into his pocket for his key lock and said, 'Alright then, let's go.'