Free The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta Page A

nephew’s turned out to be.”
    Lucia and her sister, Bernadette, are twenty-five minutes late. “Don’t be critical,” Lucia protests.
    Georgie shrugs. “I would never get away with being twenty-five minutes late,” she says.
    “Kids . . .”
    “Give you an excuse to be late.”
    “You have no idea. . . .”
    “And it also gives you permission to say the words, ‘you have no idea,’” Bernadette says. “She was supposed to pick me up half an hour earlier.”
    Lucia looks disgruntled, but then she spots the blackboard. “Since when have they had food here?”
    “Six months. But only two choices.”
    Tom comes out of the kitchen, and Georgie beckons him over again. He leans over to kiss Lucia and Bernadette.
    “Why is there no vegetarian dish?” Georgie asks.
    He shrugs. “I think the boss wants to do things slowly.”
    Georgie sees Stani, and her hand goes up in a beckoning wave before Tom grabs it.
    “Don’t call him over and tell him off about the menu,” he warns.
    “Don’t tell me what to do, Tom. It’s ridiculous that there’s no vegetarian dish.”
    “More ridiculous that you’re
not
a vegetarian. Sam’s been cooking protein all week.”
    This seems to interest Lucia and her sister, who exchange a quick look that doesn’t go unnoticed by Georgie.
    When he walks away, Lucia stares after him. “I don’t remember him looking that much like Dom. It’s freaky. How’s he doing?”
    “Him or Dom?”
    “Both.”
    Georgie shrugs. “They all need to be together. They’ve never been good without one another.”
    Lucia’s doing that probing stare thing. It’s part of her arsenal. Wearing Georgie down emotionally with an empathetic stare and then trying to sort out her life.
    “So Sam’s cooking for you?”
    Georgie doesn’t respond.
    “No one’s being critical, Georgie.”
    “Well, that pisses me off,” Georgie says angrily. “Seven years ago it was all fire and brimstone and everyone telling me to forget about him, and now . . . now I should give it a go. Would you, Lucia? Would you take Abe back?”
    Lucia doesn’t respond for a long while and then sighs. “I don’t know what I’d do, Georgie. Probably what you did. Lose my mind a bit. Be angry forever. But things aren’t exactly the way you put it.”
    No one ever dares say the words to Georgie, but she knows they want to. That it wasn’t behind her back. They were having a break, called by her. Because back then Sam was a bear with a sore head for so long, the time came when she said, “I want you to go, Sam. I want you to just work out what you want, because sometimes I don’t think it’s me.”
    “You’ve got it wrong,” he had said with a sigh, getting into bed.
    But she insisted on it. There was no talk of it being long-term or forever. In her heart she felt she was giving him the room he needed to work out whatever it was that was weighing him down. There was never any talk of them going out with others. Of having drinks on Friday night after work and sleeping with a colleague. Of starting a relationship, a five-minute relationship, that meant absolutely nothing to him. There was never any talk of Georgie finding out through the inner-west gossip network about the affair, or three months later finding out about the pregnancy. People said Sam’s hair went straight to gray after that bit of information, but nothing beat what it did to Georgie.
    “I would not forgive him for
the suit,
” Bernadette says.
    The suit.
The title for the mother of Sam’s child. Lucia had known
the suit
when they both worked with Sam years ago, and somehow Sam’s son and Lucia’s son, Daniel, have ended up at the same primary school, in the same class.
    “How can you stand seeing her at Saint Michael’s, Lucia?” Bernadette says.
    Lucia doesn’t like Bernadette’s tone. It’s written all over her face. “So I have to take Daniel out of school? Bernie, I have Sam’s kid at my house most weekends. Through Sam, not
the suit.
I