#dom mackee

[leaningonthesideofwonder]

And that was the problem with Dominic Mackee. That he could promise the meaning of life with just a look in in his eye and a tone to his voice. Tom would have followed the bastard anywhere.

The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta

[leaningonthesideofwonder]

He feels the wad of money in his pocket. 'Do you want me to come along?' 'Where?' his father asks. He shrugs, facing him. 'With you and Bill. To bring Tom Finch home.' His father stares at him. 'To Hanoi?' Tom nods. An in-between man. Keeping the peace and dialogue going. That would be a good profession to go into. Union reps keep families united. Maybe that was his calling. 'I don't have the money for both of us, Tom.' 'Got my own. And Bill reckons the government will pay anyway.' His father doesn't speak. Just nods and then says, 'I think Nanni Grace would love that.' Tom goes to walk out again, but something stops him. 'Would you though?' he asks his father. 'Would I what?' 'Love it? Not just Nanni Grace. Would you love it?' His father seems confused by the question, but then Tom realizes it's not confusion he reads on his face; it's disbelief. 'How could you ask me that, Tom? I'd give anything for you to want to come along with my father and me.' Tom doesn't ask which father Dominic's talking about. It can't be that confusing loving more than one.

The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta

[leaningonthesideofwonder]

‘I liked your choices tonight,’ his father says. Tom shrugs. ‘We didn’t know what else to play.’ But he’s lying and there is a part of him that hopes his father knows that too. The part that doesn’t have to explain away sentimentality. That doesn’t have to tell him the way he feels. He hopes, somehow, that ten minutes on a stage does that because he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to say it with the proper words.

The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta

[leaningonthesideofwonder]

'I rang and spoke to four very polite computers who gave me all these options and then cut out on me. Then I tried the post office, because they were advertising, and I spoke to another computer. Very rude, that one. Don’t think it recognized "Are you shitting me?" as an option.'

The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta

[leaningonthesideofwonder]

He doesn't know how to follow the piper anymore because it's a path Tom has lost faith in. And the piper knows it. Tom can see it in his father's eyes now. And the more he stares, the clearer it becomes. He wonders if that guy who put explosives in his backpack and blew up Joe's train imagined that two years later, on the other side of the world, his anger would come to this. That the piper didn't know who to be anymore, because he wasn't Joe's brother, or Tom and Anabel's dad, or Jacinta Louise's husband. It made Tom want to weep all over again.

The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta