Wednesday.
No shop today. Mai had it covered.
Mum and Dad's by nine. Dad at the door before I'd got the key out, as if he'd been standing there a while.
October already, and still jumpers in every wardrobe. Sydney will tip into summer any day now and none of us will have noticed. So the big suitcase came down from the top shelf, and the vacuum bags with it.
Winter in, summer out. Wool coats flattened into bags. Cotton blouses shaken out and hung, the pale green one she's worn to every wedding for twenty years.
Mum sat on the edge of the bed and ran the piles herself. Keep. Keep. Keep. I'd hold something up — this one? — and she'd say keep again, a little louder.
A cardigan with a hole under the arm. Dad's thermal vest, gone thin as paper. Two scarves nobody could name. Those went in the big bag by the door. She said that one can go once, quietly, and I didn't ask twice.
After lunch, the pills.
Stood in the kitchen doorway and watched. Properly this time, no pretending to wipe the bench. Glass of water. The little white dish. She took them, swallowed, set the glass down.
Looked at me. Satisfied?
She was smiling when she said it. So was I, a bit.
Then the fridge calendar. Marker in hand, the next few days one square at a time — which day I'd come, which evening I'd ring, what Dad does if anything feels off, and who he rings first. Wrote it big. Dad read it over my shoulder, nodded, took the marker off me and added a tick of his own.
Dropped the bag at the charity bin behind the Eastwood shops on the way home. Felt lighter by about four jumpers.
Home to the sound of a highlighter. Door open a crack, the desk lamp on. Her shoulders up around her ears.
Steamed fish with ginger and spring onion, rice, greens with a little garlic. Put it beside her notes and she ate it in between pages, not looking up. Good enough. Nothing else I can do for her in there. Can't sit the paper for her, can't even hold the cards the way she likes.
So I did the one other thing.
Took the jar of Spa Day mask off the hallway table. The NaPCA Moisture Mist with it.
Mum. I'm reading.
I know, I said, and spread the cream over her face anyway, thin, like icing, the way Ninuo showed me. Only once it was all on did I reach for the mist — a light spritz over the top. She sighed. Didn't fight it.
Did my own the same way, beside her. Mask first, mist after. Took the highlighter out of her hand.
Half an hour, I said. No notes, no phone. The notes will still be there. They always are.
The couch, the lamp turned low, the two of us under the one blanket with our faces gone white and blank. For a while, nothing. Just the fridge humming down the hall.
Her breathing slowed. Mine too.
Then, eyes shut under the cream, so quietly I nearly missed it:
I waited up that night. I wanted to ask you. I was scared to.
I didn't move.
I was scared too, Mum.
All week I'd been so busy being the one holding things up. Hadn't once thought she might be doing the same, from the other side of a closed door.
Found her hand under the blanket. She let me.
Told her I was scared too. She said I know, as if she'd known longer than I had.
The timer went off somewhere in the room.
Neither of us reached for it.