Free Black Dog Summer by Miranda Sherry Page B

health food.”
    Bryony slides the paint shard beneath another fingernail, testing to see how hard she can push it.
    â€œGigi, I just want you to know that we all understand how upset you are, and what a horrible thing you’ve been through, but we worry about you. You really are going to have to eat something.” The duvet mound remains utterly still. Adele turns, and, once more, Bryony notices how thin her mother’s skin has become lately, like paper that’s gotten wet. Maybe it’s from all the crying.
    â€œI’m heading out to Woolworths to get some groceries now, Gigi, but I’ll be back again soon,” she says, and then to her daughter: “Bry, you going to come with me?”
    â€œâ€Šâ€™K.” Bryony follows her mother out of the room and down the stairs, relieved to be away from the duvet mound. “Is Gigi going to be all right, Mom?”
    â€œOf course she is. She just needs a good meal.”
    Bryony thinks back to her father jumping up from yesterday’s breakfast table: She’d been hunched over her dead mother for who knows how long. The blood had dried over the both of them, for Christ’s sake. She remembers how the goops of egg yolk from her dad’s knife had later solidified into shiny yellow scabs on the kitchen table.
    Yellow yolk. Red sand. Toenails.
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    â€œShe didn’t eat it, Mom.” The muesli bowl is heavy in Bryony’s hands as she offers it to Adele to check. It feels as if it is filled with cement rather than a disgusting lump of congealed cereal. Her mother’s lips pinch together.
    â€œMaybe she just doesn’t like muesli,” Tyler mutters as he flicks through the TV channels and back again, sound muted. “Wouldn’t blame her. The stuff’s gross.”
    â€œWhat’s gross?” Liam asks as he walks into the room. He’s still wearing his golf shoes, and Bryony notices that there’s a small clump of soil and grass sticking to the bottom of the left one. She smiles up at him, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Bryony wants to ask Did you have a good game, Dad? because that is what she usually does, but she doesn’t.
    â€œThe muesli that Mom tried to make Gigi eat,” says Tyler, eyes still glued to the TV.
    â€œYou gave her muesli?” Liam asks Adele. His nose is pink from the sun and there are still sweat patches darkening his pale blue shirt.
    â€œI tried,” Adele says. “Sally was always on some kind of healthy organic mission, so I thought it would be the kind of thing Gigi’d be used to.”
    â€œWith milk?” Liam asks, forehead crinkling even further.
    â€œWell, of course with milk, what else?”
    â€œBut Gigi’s a vegan,” Liam says.
    â€œA what?” Bryony asks, but no one answers. Tyler is looking at Adele, who is looking at Liam, who is suddenly looking at the turf clump on his shoe. There is a long, horrible silence.
    â€œAnd just how exactly do you know that, Liam?” Adele finally asksin a sharp, frightened-sounding voice. The room is very quiet except for the whispering murmur of the muted TV. “Because the child hasn’t said a word in three days. In fact, she’s barely been conscious.” Bryony wishes she could put the bowl down; it’s starting to feel odd and slippery between her fingers and it would make an awful mess if it fell on the kilim rug. “And you’ve either been at work or at your beloved golf course since she got here . . . So please, how is it that you’re on intimate terms with her lifestyle choices?”
    â€œChrist, Addy,” Liam mutters, lifting his golf cap and rubbing a hand through his damp, flattened hair. “It was on her hospital chart.”
    Adele looks down at the knot her fingers are making in her lap. “Well, seeing as you’re the expert, you can tell her that she’s expected to join us for dinner at the table this