{Mel}

It was mid-morning before Mel fought through the smothering fog of tiredness and got out of bed. The house was quiet. She guessed Pete had made breakfast for the girls and they had gone outside to play while she slept and he worked. Their summer routine, such as it was. She drew her old sweater across her body and shuffled into the kitchen. She wasn't hungry, but she was supposed to eat something with her pills.

She stood at the window, looking out at the backyard. The so-called flowerbed was a jungle of weeds and bare patches of dirt. Weeks of dry, hot weather had turned their patch of lawn a lightly toasted brown. Mel closed her eyes, her breath sighing through her nose. Her mother's garden would be lush and green this time of year, the roses climbing over the arbour gate and spreading their heady fragrance through the entire yard. There had been no money to spare to go east for a visit this year, and she felt thin and stretched in this strange, dry city.

Bea burst in through the back door, her hair a wild tangle at the back of her head. Her soft face lit up at the sight of her mom standing in the kitchen.

"Mumma! You're up! We wanna do a sprinkler—can we please please please?"

"Do we have a sprinkler?" she asked slowly.

"Tabby got it. She just needs help to get it on the hose." Bea's little hand grasped hers and tugged. "Come on, Mumma, just take a minute."

She followed Bea out the back door, blinking in the sun. A breeze pushed her hair off her face, bringing with it the smell of wheat dust and asphalt. She screwed the hose end onto the sprinkler and dragged it to the middle of the backyard where the girls and the grass could get the most good out of it. When Tabby cranked the faucet open, a spray of mist caught the back of Mel's calves, and she jumped and found herself laughing a little breathlessly.

She sat on the edge of the deck, pulling her loose pyjama pant legs up around her knees so her feet and calves emerged, pale and strange as underwater creatures. She shaded her eyes with her hands and watched her girls play in the sun.

Weeks had passed, she realized, since she had been outside. Depression had moved in like a heavy, low-hanging cloud, and she had lost track of the days. The realization slowed her thoughts to a crawl and she was tempted to turn around and curl back up in her bed for the day.

Mel?

Her husband's voice cut through the fog, and she straightened and turned to the house.

Pete came out the back door, his bearded face strained with worry. His cheek was swollen, tight and red, incongruous above his clean, collared shirt.

"Peter—what happened to your face?"

His mouth twisted. "Is it obvious?"

"No-o," she said hesitantly. His beard covered some of it. "A little," she admitted.

He swore under his breath, and her eyebrows went up. It took a lot for her husband to revert to the language he'd used in his 20s. "We had the meeting with the lawyer today, and I had to restrain Cary after," he said in a tight undertone. "He didn't mean to hit me—I should have just let him punch the bus shelter down."

Mel gave a strangled half-laugh. "Oh, no."

Pete took a breath, and she saw him pulling on his business face, the kind, neutral expression he wore when he was dealing with hard things. "I have a lunch meeting. Can you check the cuts on Cary's hands and call the transit people? We need to make arrangements to pay the fine. I'll send you a picture with the bus stop number." He pulled out his phone, pausing to check the notifications on the screen. His mouth tightened. "I need to go. Sorry, love."

She followed him back into the house. Cary was at the front door, on one knee lacing up his steel-toe boots.

"Where are you going?" Pete's question was sharp.

Cary hunched his shoulders. "Work," he said.

"I want you home for the day." Pete said. "I texted your site manager already. Let Mel take care of your hand. Eat something."

Cary locked eyes with him, his nostrils whitening.

"I'll see you at supper." Pete said shortly.

Cary ducked his head, his ears bright pink in his dark hair. The door thumped closed, and he tore the laces out of the holes in his boots and chucked them in the bottom of the closet. Mel retreated to the kitchen, keeping an ear to the hallway. She heard a door shut and then the squeak and rush of the shower starting. She let out her breath.

She rifled through the cupboards for something Cary and her children would like to eat for lunch. Pete had filled the cupboards with ramen noodles and pancake mix. She started the water to make noodle soup.

She heard the shower stop and doors opening and closing in the hallway, but Cary didn't appear.

She went to his room and rapped on his door. It was partly opened, like he usually left it, and when he didn't answer, she pushed it wider. Cary was lying on his back on his bed, his arms crossed over his body, staring at the ceiling.

"Lunch is ready," she said.

He didn't even blink.

She held up the Ziploc bag of first aid supplies. "And I need to take a look at your hand."

He sat up with a creak of the mattress and put his bare feet on the floor beside his bed. His knees came up around his bowed shoulders, and she wished they had a bigger bed to give him. She came in and sat cautiously next to him. "Which hand is it?"

He put a hand on his knee, and she saw he had dabbed his swollen knuckles with ointment already. When he turned it over, she bit her lip. There was a cut on his wrist too deep to simply treat with ointment. It was still bleeding, a thin trickle curving around his arm.

She took his hand in her own two. "So you're a lefty?" She asked lightly.

He flinched and turned his face away from her.

"Am I hurting you?"

"No." His voice was as soft and dry as the grass in her yard.

She put her tongue in her teeth and set the butterfly bandage over the cut to hold it closed, then wrapped that snugly in gauze. "There. I'm getting better at that. Do you want me to do the knuckles too?"

He took his hand back, holding it in his lap. "They'll heal better open."

She looked consideringly at him, at the hair curling over his ears and falling over his face. "I'd like to trim your hair if you're home today," she said. "You need a haircut before school."

He stayed still a moment, and she wondered if she had missed something. "Don't like my head being touched," he mumbled.

"I'll be careful," she said. "You can't exactly go the rest of your life without a haircut."

He didn't move a muscle in response, and she patted his knee lightly. "Come for lunch first. Something in your stomach will make you feel stronger."

The girls came in from outside and filled the meal with conversation so Cary didn't have to speak at all. For once, Mel felt like their little voices were giving her some life of her own, instead of sapping her energy. When Cary got up to do the dishes, fumbling with one hand, she got up to wash so he could dry.

When the dishes were done, she found the clippers in a drawer and pulled out a chair. "Sit down." He gave her a wary, sideways glance, and she smiled at him. "This won't hurt a bit."

He lowered himself gingerly into the chair, leaning forward with his feet braced against the floor.

She bit the side of her mouth—he really did look like he expected the roof to fall in. She left the clippers on the table and smoothed her hand over the top of his head, lightly moving one piece of hair to the side to tidy up his part. He took a slow, unsteady breath, holding still.

"You have lovely, thick hair, Cary," she said in the soothing voice she'd used to calm her alarmed toddlers. "My boy Judah had thick hair like yours. Always in a mess like yours too." She combed her fingers through the hair on the back of his head to check the length and her fingertips brushed what felt like a knot on his scalp. He twitched and put an arm out to hold onto the edge of the counter.

Mel hesitated. "Does that still hurt you? Is that something that still hurts?"

"It's fine—I'm fine." He sounded like he was short of breath. "An old scar. Just do the thing."

She didn't use the clippers. He kept his eyes squeezed shut tight while the neat snick-snick of scissors went around his ears and over the back of his neck. She stroked her hand through his still damp hair, snipping it off his face, off his neck, tidy around his ears. She trimmed up the nape of his neck but left the hair on the back of his head long and thick.

She pulled the towel off his neck and shook it out on the kitchen floor. "All done." He straightened in his chair, letting go of the counter and drawing in a breath. "You might want to shower again to wash the little bits of hair off."

He got up, brushing his hands over his shoulders. "Thanks, Mel."

"How on earth did you get your hair cut before?" She had to look up to see into his face now.

"My mom done it," he said. He pushed his hair back from his face, touching her eyes with his for a second. Her forehead wrinkled, thinking of the woman in the beautifully tailored suit and heels, hands folded next to Cary's father in the courtroom. It was hard to imagine her with a hair out of place, let alone covered in stray hairs giving this boy a haircut. "Was she good to you?" Mel asked wistfully. "Sometimes?"

Cary dug the heel of his hand into his chest. "As good as she could be. It wasn't like living here." His eyes wandered out the window where the girls were in the sprinkler, shrieking and leaping through the spray. "Felt like living in a forest fire. We were never safe. She was always...afraid." His mouth pulled down, making deep unhappy lines—one of the first real expressions she'd seen on his face today. "I think she still is."

"Are you?" Mel ventured. "It's okay if you are. It takes some...getting used to. Knowing you're safe."

Cary dropped his eyes, spreading his hand over his chest like he was checking. "I think I'm okay," he said slowly. "Sometimes that old sh—stuff—pulls me back under..." he ran a hand over the back of his head, clasping his neck for a second. "...and I forget. That I live here now."

She pulled her sweater around herself, standing beside him at the sink and watching her girls out the window. "You and your mother...had a very frightening time. I'm glad you had the strength to speak out and bring an end to it for you both. You're a very brave person, Cary."

He made a dry noise. "Can't hold still for a haircut."

She reached out without looking, touching his arm for a moment. "A small thing for someone else. Big for you."

He turned his head to look down at her face. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"Are you okay?"

She lifted her eyes to his face and saw him watching every shift in her expression, his dark eyebrows drawn together with worry. She lifted her shoulders, folding her arms a little tighter around herself. "I am okay." She tried to use her even, mom-voice. "This has been a hard year. I haven't been feeling up for much beyond...surviving."

"Are you?" he asked in his dry, soft voice. "Surviving?"

She let out her breath, closing her eyes a moment. Her August birthday had come and gone, marking another year of distance between her and her child. Maybe it was just the depression that made it hard to keep going on those days. The feeling that she should be a better mom to the children who were left. That maybe God took Judah because he knew she wasn't going to be good enough. That voice had been loud lately, making it hard to hear anything else. "I'm living."

It was quiet in the kitchen, and then Cary put his arm around her shoulders, its warm weight tipping her off-balance so her face bumped into his ribs. Mel put her arm around him too.

"You're a good mom, okay?" The words rumbled through his ribcage. "You got things to do here. Every life, right? Every life is valuable." He let her go as quickly as he had reached out, checking her face.

She lifted her chin, trying to smile. "I'm supposed to be the one who tells you that."

One side of his mouth pulled up. "Figured you knew to say that to me because one time you needed to hear it."

It unnerved her that he had seen that, and she wondered if all the scars he wore made him more aware of the hurts of others. "You're wise beyond your years—you know that?" she asked quietly.

He was still, his eyes on her face like he was trying to read the words there to understand them better. She patted his wrist, his scar smooth and dry under her thumb. "You are."

*What do you think about the contrast between Cary's relationship with Jon's mom Mel, and his own mother? Neither of them are perfect... Why is Mel so good for him? Do you have 'adopted' moms or aunties in your life?*