Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14 — BOOK I

 

Folded In

 

(Sydney, 2000)

 

The year turned without announcement.

 

Sydney did not mark the change with ceremony—just a soft return to routine. School uniforms pressed and unpressed. Traffic thickened. The harbour resumed its daily work of carrying ferries and forgetting them.

 

Life continued.

 

What changed was not the rhythm, but the number of people moving within it.

 

Lachlan Sullivan arrived in Sydney on a Saturday morning.

 

He came lightly—one suitcase, a backpack slung over one shoulder, and the unstudied confidence of someone who had already crossed one ocean and decided another was manageable. Hijau met him at Kingsford Smith Airport with the kind of smile that answered questions before they were asked.

 

Introductions followed quickly.

 

Delima assessed him with polite precision.

 

Awan asked practical questions and listened closely to the answers.

 

Uncle Rusaldi shook his hand once and nodded.

 

Auntie Nuryani smiled and asked whether he had eaten.

 

Lachlan adapted.

 

He spoke when invited. He laughed easily. He listened more than he filled space. When he did speak, it was without pretence—about Toronto winters, about university, about architecture and how landscapes carried memory if you let them.

 

Geoffrey watched from the edges of the room.

 

Not with suspicion, but with curiosity.

 

Later, when the noise softened and the evening settled, he found Embong on the balcony.

 

“So,” Geoffrey said, leaning against the railing, “this is him.”

 

Embong nodded.

 

“Yeah.”

 

There was a pause—comfortable, unforced.

 

“Kak Hijau didn’t go easy on him,” Embong said, matter-of-fact.

 

“He said something cheeky. She pushed back. He didn’t sulk or disappear.

 

That’s how you know he was worth keeping.”

 

Geoffrey smiled.

 

“Guess that runs in the family.”

 

Embong glanced at him.

 

“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe we just don’t keep people who can’t listen.”

 

The words landed quietly, but Geoffrey understood their weight.

 

It was only later—over tea, when the house had thinned back into small conversations—that Geoffrey asked about the beginning.

 

“How did they actually meet?” he said. “Before all this.”

 

Embong smiled slightly.

 

“ICQ.”

 

Geoffrey blinked. “You’re kidding.”

 

“I’m not,” Embong said. “Group chat. University friends. Early internet chaos.”

 

He told the story without embellishment: Lachlan typing something clever and half-considered. Hijau responding without raising her voice. The moment when the chat paused—not because it had gone wrong, but because it had shifted.

 

“He listened,” Embong said. “That was the point.”

 

Geoffrey nodded. He knew something about that.

 

The household continued to grow.

 

In October 2000, Auntie Nuryani gave birth to her daughter, Suriwangi.

 

The baby arrived quietly—dark hair, strong lungs, eyes already observant. The house adjusted itself around her without instruction. Meals were timed differently. Voices softened. Even Geoffrey learned to step more lightly.

 

The following year, Nuryani attended her MBA graduation at UTS, balancing ceremony with motherhood as if the two had always belonged together. She stood in her gown with Suriwangi in her arms and Galang at her side, calm and unhurried.

 

Later, she returned to study—this time Hospitality Management—not because she needed to prove anything, but because she wanted to build something of her own.

.

Geoffrey watched all of it from close range.

 

He had not grown up in a house that expanded this way—through addition rather than replacement, through patience rather than upheaval. Here, people arrived and stayed. Children were welcomed without reshaping the ground beneath them.

 

No one was displaced.

 

Lachlan stayed.

 

He did not impose himself. He learned names quickly. He listened to Delima. He argued football with Hijau and lost on purpose only once—after which she informed him he would never be forgiven for the insult.

 

Geoffrey found himself laughing more often than he realised.

 

One evening, as they walked back from the shops, Lachlan asked casually, “So how long have you two known each other?”

 

Geoffrey glanced at Embong.

 

“Depends how you count,” he said.

 

“Long enough,” Embong added.

 

That seemed to satisfy him.

 

What Geoffrey noticed most was not the arrival of new people, but the absence of threat in their presence.

 

Nothing here asked him to shrink.

 

Nothing required him to compete for space.

 

He was not a guest waiting for his welcome to expire. He was simply there—folded into conversations, included without announcement, expected to stay.

 

Across the river of time—between letters and arrivals, between grief remembered and life continuing—Geoffrey felt something settle.

 

Not relief.

 

Belonging.

 

And for the first time since leaving Los Angeles, the future did not feel like something he had to brace for.

 

It felt like something he could walk toward.

 

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