Free When the Night Comes by Favel Parrett

shepherd—the children gathered around her, gathered close, under one of the old chestnut trees where kids played conkers at recess. And they all sat down. Mrs. Davison had papers in her hands.
    Mr. Peters stopped reading. He put the book away but I kept looking out of the window. Even when other kids were busy working on projects, I just sat and looked out of the window. And my brother’s class stayed out there under that old chestnut tree all day. They had lunch together, and in the late afternoon they walked back to their classroom with Mrs. Davison leading the way.
    They were all still holding hands.

HIS NAME WAS TOM
    T he priest called him Tomas, but my brother called him Tom. He was Tom, and they shared a language that was silent to everyone else but them. I would hear them laughing from my room. Little giggles, little stories about things I would never know.
    The coffin was small and white and people stood up one by one and laid flowers on top. There were so many flowers that some fell to the floor and were left behind when the coffin was carried out of the church.
    My brother sat still and Mum cried and I could feel the cold from the stones below my feet move up my legs. My body was going to sleep—becoming stone like the floor, like the walls. The darkness was getting in.
    After the ceremony, my brother stood with some other boys from his class and Tom’s mother talked to them. I couldn’t hear the words, but her eyes were soft. They seemed to be filled with peace—some kind of love. She touched my brother’s curly hair with her hand and smiled. Then she bent down and grabbed him up tightly in her arms. She held him close, my brother’s body limp and stiff. Her mouth was moving like she was singing in my brother’s ear. Like she was praying. It seemed to go on for a long time. And my brother’s body softened, his arms reached up and wrapped around her. He hugged her back.
    When she let my brother go, her face was puffy, her eyes half-closed.She stood up tall and touched my brother’s hair one more time, then she turned and walked away.
    Mum put us in the car and told us she wouldn’t be long. We were in our school uniforms and were meant to go back to school for the afternoon, but I hoped we didn’t have to go. It was getting late and it didn’t seem right that my brother should have to go to school today.
    Well-dressed people in suits and in dresses and hats walked to their cars. I saw the principal of our new school go past. She had a beehive hairdo. She always wore it up like that—in a beehive, like my grandmother did.
    â€œI just feel bad for her,” my brother said.
    â€œWho?” I asked, but he didn’t answer. He sat there looking down. The bells of the church rang out in a chord—a simple harmony, over and over.
    â€œI hope we don’t have to go back to school,” I said.
    My brother shrugged. I saw Mum come out of the church. She wiped her nose on a white tissue then stuffed it back up the sleeve of her cardigan. She always had a tissue up her sleeve in case she needed one.
    â€œI just feel bad for her,” my brother said again, and he looked right at me—right in my eyes. “We’re not dead but Tom is and she won’t ever see him again.”
    The bells of the church kept on ringing.

SNOW DAY
    A week after the funeral it snowed. I could smell it before I even opened my eyes. Snow, thick and solid in the window box. So much of it that it covered half my bedroom window.
    It was really there.
    It had begun to fall softly in the darkness the night before, just as bedtime loomed, and Mum told us that it wouldn’t last.
    â€œIt will melt away and be gone by morning,” she said. “It’s nearly summer!”
    And it was nearly summer. It was November. A school night.
    We stood together on the back deck and felt the snow melt on our skin and dampen our hair. It was so silent. A blanket of