"Where are you going to go, Luka?"

He looked across the table to his mother, her grey hair pinned back behind her head in a tight bun that, on schoolteachers, looked strict but on the rotund form of his mother, looked simply homely. Her dark blue eyes bore into his like lasers across the stretch of wooden table that separated mother and son and he looked away from her, shrugging.

"I don't know."

Silence enveloped them again and he tuned his ears to the music coming from the small wireless radio on the kitchen window, the plastic casing reflecting the sun's rays into the stifling back kitchen.

"Running away won't solve your problems, son," she said after a while and he looked up at her, a wry smirk on his face, his eyes empty.

"I'm not running away, I'm moving on."

"It's running away Luka."

He watched her as she stood up, gripping onto the table as she did so. He knew that her arthritic joints caused her trouble when she sat for too long and it had taken him almost two hours to explain to her why he was leaving, what he was going to do when he found somewhere to settle down and seeing her struggle to stand, he almost regretted it.

"Majka, let me help you," he muttered as he stood quickly and rushed to her side but she flapped him away, her tubby fingers contacting his sweaty neck.

"I will be fine, Luka." She struggled up and then hobbled over to the sink and stood before it, leaning against the worktop, her fingers digging into the wood. "When your father died…"

"Majka…" He interrupted but she spun around quicker than he thought possible and raised her hand to him.

"Let me finish, Luka." He nodded and leaned back against the mahogany centre table, his long legs stretching out before him, his toes catching a few rays from the sun. "When your tata died, I wanted to leave. Well, in all honesty, I wanted to die too. He didn't deserve to die like that Luka and the thought of living without him was… overwhelming. All I wanted to do was lie in bed all day, or get up and drive out of here – to anywhere. I'd have crossed the borders, Luka. But I didn't. Because of you, Luka. You and your brother made me get up out of bed and see that the world hadn't ended. Now I'm just trying to return the favour."

He was silenced for a few moments. Danijela, Marko and Jasna… images flashed across his mind, their broken bodies before him, his broken dreams vanishing in the midday Sun. He felt, for the first time in three months, tears sting the back of his eyes and he blinked furiously, trying to rid them from him but he failed.

"I'm not as strong as you, majka…"

He felt her arms around his lowered body and he dropped his head into the crook of her neck, whiffing in that scent that she always eluded but he had never been able to place. It was a comfort but nothing – apart from the return of his family – could fully comfort him now. He was broken, tarnished, empty.

He was lost.

"I don't think I can stay here, majka…" he murmured to her as she gently rocked their bodies. "I see them everywhere I turn. Every family I see… reminds me of what I've lost."

"No matter where you go, Luka, there will be a family that will remind you of them. You can't escape it, no matter how far you run."

He took in a deep breath and stood up straight, startling his mother slightly but she recovered quickly.

"When does your flight leave?" She asked as she observed him moving around the table in the kitchen to pick up his duffle bag that he had brought with him when he arrived.

"Whenever I get to the airport," he replied, not looking up at her.

"You will call me when you get to wherever you are going?"

He looked up at her again, his eyes red rimmed and heavy, his long, greasy hair falling in front of his eyes, masking them from her view.

"Of course, majka," he whispered and moved towards her slowly.

He leaned down and kissed her cheek lingeringly and then pulled back, smiled slightly and turned and left.

She watched as he trailed down the long path trodden into the grass towards the gate and his friend's car just beyond.

"Was that Luka?"

She turned and saw her niece, Mirjana, walk into the kitchen from the long hall leading to the front door. She nodded, blinking away the tears in her eyes.

He'd experienced something that she would never wish on anyone, not even her worst enemy.

"Where is he going?"

She sniffed slightly and rubbed at her eyes.

"He's leaving Croatia."

Mirjana said nothing but stepped closer to her aunt and wrapped her amrs around her as she watched her broken cousin drive off to nowhere.

TBC