Laughter filled the dusky air as the shadows of the day crept along the street.
Rebecca could just see her three boys, Peter, Ethan and Liam, kicking at the water, their faces welcoming the spray, their clothes clinging to their bodies.
A burst water main was their source of fun on the first clear day in weeks.
Their joy was too much. Rebecca flung open the front door and stormed onto the verandah.
"Stop," she yelled, as hot tears streamed down her face. "It's too soon."
They stood still, their smiles replaced by looks of confusion.
Rebecca wished she could reel in her words but before she could offer an apology, Peter, her eldest, her brightest, lifted his arms up and yelled back at her.
"Why Mum? Why?"
That was the ultimate loaded question, the question to which there could never be an answer that would mend their broken hearts.
It was barely two months ago that they lost Tom, on a day of endless rain.
He had stayed home from work, claiming tiredness from his latest project. Rebecca had been out shopping and she called to him as she dumped her purchases on the dining room table.
No answer.
She went to their bedroom and looked in, where he lay on top of the quilt in the middle of the bed. He looked as if he was just asleep so Rebecca said his name again. He did not stir.
As she walked up to the bed she could see his whole body was still. A pill bottle was half tucked under his pillow.
Time stalled. Rebecca felt she was watching someone else trying to save Tom. Frantic hands pushing on his chest; clumsy fingers keying triple zero; a scream bouncing off the walls; tears dripping onto his face.
The rain outside drummed louder on the roof, as if it were competing with Rebecca's anguished screams. It never stopped, not even for the funeral, where Rebecca and her boys clung to one another under a large umbrella, a united front against the bitter sky and the dark earth.
The boys had been full of questions but they were questions that were all a version of the same one. Why? Rebecca had not known what to say so she told them the bare minimum.
"Your Dad went to sleep and he didn't wake up."
She wanted to tell them the truth but she had to try and face it herself first. One thing was certain. When the time came she was not going to hide behind euphemisms. As gently as she could, she was going to say it - suicide - for she firmly believed it should be named and talked about, and not in quiet whispers behind shocked hands.
She searched her memory for signs. They say there's always signs but they only appear with twenty-twenty hindsight.
Tom often complained he was tired but he'd been doing that since they first met. His mother often told the story that he was yawning when he came out of the womb. Rebecca had even jokingly said once, "God I'm tired will have to go on your headstone". Those words horrified her now, but Tom laughed at the time.
The more she pictured Tom in those last few weeks, the more unsettling images of him surfaced. Pushing his dinner around the plate, piling it in a corner to make it look like he had eaten more of it than he actually had; insisting he wanted a quiet weekend instead of dinner with friends; early nights and struggling to get out of bed the next morning. She had blamed fatigue for all of it.
An image of Tom that now stayed fixed in Rebecca's memory was a recent Saturday night. He was at the barbecue, staring out into the night sky. She called out to him.
"Tom, how are the snags going?"
He turned to her, his eyes glistening with tears but before she could ask, he had an answer.
"Just smoke from the barbie, love. That's all.
"The snags won't be long."
He turned back and flipped the sausages over.
When he came inside a few minutes later, he kissed her on the cheek, smiling as he handed her the plate.
The boys came barrelling in and she was swept up with boy talk and dishing out food, her uncertainty about Tom pushed to the back of her mind.
These were the signs Rebecca missed or blamed on something else but Tom had hidden it well too, even up until his last day with them.
She had struggled to understand how he had kept her on the periphery of his pain and not asked for help.
It was something she would never know. What she did know was that her and the boys needed to survive their pain, together.
Now as Rebecca stood on the verandah looking out at her boys, the most tangible reminder of Tom, she knew it was time to tell them the whole truth about their Dad, to tell them that it's OK to not always be happy but it's equally OK to tell someone, to ask for help.
She left the verandah and joined them on the street.
Fresh tears mingled with the spray on her face as she held them to her chest.
"I'm sorry I yelled at you. I'm really sorry, boys."
One after the other, the boys said "it's OK, Mum", trying to reassure themselves as much as their Mum.
Rebecca knew it wasn't OK and it wouldn't be for a long time.
"I want to talk to you about your Dad."
"But first we're going to have some fun, because that's OK too."
She took a step back and stamped her feet in the water, splashing all three boys at once.
They needed no encouragement, scooping up handfuls of water and throwing it in the air.
Laughter filled the street again as water rained down on them.
