EPILOGUE

It was 9:13 in the evening. A woman, a man, and a boy ate in silence. Aluminium cutlery clicked against ceramic plates.

The boy was bent over a piece of meat on his plate, trying to cut it with a knife and fork. The man, with food still left before him, watched in amusement.

The woman noticed the same thing, but her attention kept drifting to the phone beside her plate.

“And what good value will using this useless cutlery instil in me?” the boy protested.

“Table manners,” the woman said. That seemed to end the protest for a while. The man returned to his food with a smile.

Silence settled again. About five minutes later, when the boy was done eating, he said, “I can't believe I became more intelligent by using a fork and a knife, and I just can't seem to thank you enough!”

“You'll be thanking her sometime in the future when you realise this is a useful skill, and when that time comes, the appreciation will not be sarcastic,” the man said.

“Can't wait,” the boy said. He stood up, cleared the plates from the table, and moved them to the kitchen.

“I see you're still worried,” the man said to the woman. “He does this every time. He'll be fine.”

“I've been trying his number for hours now; it’s switched off,” the woman said. “His battery is probably dead. He'll call you when—”

The phone on the table rang just then, and a look of relief on the woman's face was all the man needed to know who it was on the other side of the call.

“I told you to call when you get to school; what took you so long?” the woman said as soon as she picked up the call, before the person on the other side could say anything.

“Yes, it is; who am I speaking with?” the woman said.

The man lifted his head from his phone, surprised by the turn of the conversation.

“Who's that?” the man asked.

The woman did not reply. The boy stood transfixed at the kitchen door he had just exited, looking intently at the woman just as the man was.

“No, no, no,” she said.

“It cannot be!” she cried out as tears began to form in her eyes.

The man sprang to his feet as he collected the phone from the woman's hand.

“Who's speaking?” the man said with all the strength he could muster.

“That's right,” the man said to the person on the other side of the call.

In about thirty seconds, the man wore a look of helplessness.

"Text me the address," the man spoke into the phone with a much weaker voice than when he took it from the woman. He sank into the chair and dropped the phone on the dining table.

With the current mood in the room, the boy could quickly tell what sort of news his parents had received. He hoped it wasn't what he thought it was.

He went around the dining table and looked at the caller’s identity on the phone his father had just dropped.

My brother’s number, he thought to himself, but he was not the one at the other end of the call…