"Dad will you play catch with me?" Owen asked, blue eyes wide and puppy dog. He had two mitts and a large white baseball, just about bigger than his hand, the same size his little league team used to play with.

"Sure," Cal agreed, getting up from the couch where he was attempting to read the paper. No rest for the wicked. Gillian had gone shopping and when she got home Cal was going to demand some return time alone. With the paper. Eight year old Owen thrust one of the mitts against his father's chest and ran for the glass sliding door. It was decorated with a variety of stick on figurines so the kids knew when the door was open or closed; robots, dinosaurs, cars, monsters and other various cut-outs.

It was sunny and warm outside, but windy, and on the horizon Cal could see dark grey clouds that would probably mean rain. He'd cut the lawn earlier in the morning, so the heavy smell of summer was in the air. The grass felt a little damp underfoot as Cal went to stand dutifully on one side of the yard, where Owen directed him. Cal slipped the mitt onto his left hand and pulled on it so it fit the right way. He flexed his thumb a few times, opening and closing the grip.

"All right I'm ready," Cal called to his son, who was really only a few meters away, on the other side of the grass. Owen tossed the ball awkwardly and it went wide to the left. Cal shot out his hand and grazed the edge of the curve, at least stopping it to thunk on the ground, rather than the fence. Cal stooped to pick it up and turned to see Owen hopping from one foot to the other. "Are you ready?"

"Yep," Owen nodded.

"Are you sure? Cos it looks like you're havin' a dance." Cal thought about adding something about Owen taking the sport seriously and then told himself to calm it the hell down. He didn't need to turn into a scary Soccer Mom.

Owen stood still and raised his mitt. "I'm ready." Cal tossed the ball back in a lazy arc. It went slightly to the right and Owen stuck out his hand but the ball did not meet the mitt. If he had moved just a foot to his left he would have made the easy catch. "You're meant to throw it to me," Owen protested as he stooped to the ground.

"You're meant to catch it," Cal retorted. "The ball isn't gonna magically appear in your hand durin' a game." Owen gave a little pout. "You move towards it," Cal instructed. Owen threw the ball back and it went high, way over Cal's head. Who taught the kid to throw a ball?

Cal picked it up and went back to his spot. He waited for Owen to raise his mitt again and purposefully threw the ball outside of his son's range. He encouraged Owen to move his feet and the eight year old took a sudden lunge to his right and made the catch. "That's great!" Cal enthused. Owen threw the ball back, which hit the ground two feet in front of Cal, bounced up into his shins, then rolled around his feet. If this baseball team Owen wanted to play for had trials, Cal wasn't sure the kid would get in.

Once Owen seemed to get the hang of actually going for the ball, Cal moved on to throwing properly. He went over to show Owen how to chuck it, and at what point to let go, not somewhere at the clouds, but when his hand was pointing towards his father, where he actually wanted the ball to go. Then Cal moved back to his spot and held up his mitt, right in front of his stomach, which was probably just asking for trouble, and told Owen to aim right there. Owen practically pitched a strike on his first go. The next few were wide and weird again but he soon settled into an easy rhythm. They tossed the ball back and forth easily enough. And then Lewis came out.

"Want to have a go?" Cal asked the thirteen year old. Lewis shook his head and took a seat on the bench in the sun. Cal checked his watch. He'd forgotten about Gillian. "Is Mum home?" Cal asked Lewis, moving his hand from near his mouth to near his ear. Lewis shook his head.

"Dad did you play catch with your Dad cos you're real good," Owen spoke up.

"No," Cal admitted. "My Dad didn't play with me or Thomas very much." He used his right hand to make a "Y" hand shape and twist it back and forth at the wrist, then moved both hands away from each other for 'much'.

"How come?"

"I'm not sure," Cal admitted with a shake of his head. He moved a few feet closer to Lewis so he could hear better. It was far too awkward to sign with a catching mitt on his hand. "I don't think my Dad knew how to be a very good Dad. There were lots of things he didn't teach us or talk to us about."

"You talk to us about everything," Owen noted with what looked like a slight eye roll. Cal threw a sharp quick ball that Owen was unprepared for and had to scramble to gain control of.

"You must be a better Dad than your Dad," Lewis noted.

Cal turned his head to the teenager, impressed, surprised, pleased. Owen chose that moment to throw the ball back and it smacked into Cal's leg. "Were you ready?" Owen asked him. "Cos you didn't look like you were ready!"

"I wasn't ready," Cal grumped. That actually really hurt. He bent to pick up the ball. "Why do you say that Lewis?"

Lewis gave a shrug. "Cos I think you're a good Dad."

Heart swelling and lungs struggling and warm tingly sensations.

"You always have time for us and you talk to us about things. You don't tell us we're too little for stuff," Lewis added, moving his hands in the sunlight that brought out the natural golden streaks of his hair.

"Yeah and you play with us!" Owen added, bouncing again on the grass, waving a very enthusiastic "Y" hand around.

Cal didn't know what to say. Words were actually a bit of a struggle. It was one thing to hear it from his wife, or from his adult daughter, and entirely another to hear it from the mouth of his thirteen year old son, and echoed by his eight year old.

Owen leapt and danced his way over to take the ball from his father's hand. "You're fun," he added and then attempted the sign with the ball in his hand. He dropped it, abandoned the sign, and bent to pick the ball up.

"Thank you," Cal had to clear his throat. "I wanted to be a betta Dad than my Dad. And I hope you're betta Dad's than I am. That way it always gets betta right?"

Lewis nodded but Owen took a second to think about it before agreeing.

"How come you never talk about Nana?" Lewis asked next.

Oh geeze now there was a conversation Cal had already put off once. About four years ago. But Owen was still just a wee man back then. And now? Well... Cal took a seat on the bench next to Lewis and pulled the mitt of his left hand. It was sweaty and hot and smelt like warm leather; yuck. "Well," Cal started. Lewis turned his head to listen. Owen plonked himself on the grass right at his feet, fidgeting with the ball. "I don't like to talk about my Mum much because... When I was little she was very unwell a lot of the time and so I have a lot of memories of her like that, which aren't very good ones and the good memories are ones I don't always think of first."

That was probably a bit complicated.

"You know last year Lewis you had that teacha you didn't like?" Cal turned towards him as he signed to Lewis knew he was talking to him.

Lewis nodded.

"And wheneva you think about her you always think of the times she was mean to your or was yellin' at the otha kids?"

Lewis nodded again while Owen looked up at them intently, listening.

"But sometimes she was kind of cool and she did some fun things with you guys like when you made those boomerangs?"

Lewis nodded again.

"I wish I got to make a boomerang," Owen noted wistfully.

"It's a bit like that with my Mum. I rememba lots of times that make me feel bad but cos she's my Mum, I don't want to."

"Was your Mum mean?" Owen asked.

"She was not very well a lot of the time," Cal repeated.

"Did she have a bug?" Owen again.

"No," Cal answered slowly. He often liked to prepare for these kinds of conversations with his kids, but to be honest, most of the time, it was actually better to wing it. He was forced to answer more honestly that way and the boys often directed the conversation anyway. "She had a different kind of sickness. It was a sickness in her head. It made her feel very badly, all the time, very sad and sometimes she'd have lots of energy and couldn't keep still. A bit like you Trouble," Cal nudged the boy's knee with his foot. Owen gave a kind of laugh and shifted backwards out of reach. "But most of the time she was very sad and tired. It's very hard to explain," Cal went on. "And when you're olda you'll undastand. But I don't know how to make you undastand now."

"Was she mean to you though?" Lewis asked.

"She could be... Sometimes she would get really upset and frustrated. And she would yell. But she didn't know how else to be. She felt very shitty inside." Cal realised he had just sworn. "Don't repeat that," he warned while Owen giggled and Lewis smiled. "She felt really awful and there was no way to make her betta." He paused. "It would be like walkin' around all day with a nail in your hand and not bein' able to take it out. It'd make you a bit mad wouldn't it?"

"That'd hurt," Owen pointed out. "Like 'the lion and the mouse'?"

"Yes like that," Cal agreed. Good analogy. That would be one they would understand. The lion roared and made a lot of noise all day long. All the other animals were afraid of it. Until a brace mouse asked the lion what was wrong and the lion showed the mouse that it had a thorn stuck in its paw that it couldn't get out.

"But didn't your Dad help her feel better?" Lewis pushed.

"No," Cal answered honestly. "He didn't know how to. My Dad wasn't very good at talkin' or..." Cal paused. Now how was he going to word this one? "You know how sometimes you get so mad and so frustrated with somethin' that's happened you need to go sit in the time out or go to your room for a minute, to just walk away and calm down a bit and get it togetha, maybe figa out what you want to say, and then come back?"

Both the boys nodded because they were allowed that respite from the situation as well as their parents. Usually only when the situation got really bad, but there was that window of being able to take five minutes, then coming back to face the music.

"My Dad felt like that a lot so he would leave. But he didn't come back to talk things through. He just left my Mum to try and figa out things on her own." Cal stopped again. The boys were silent, listening and probably wondering. And Cal thought about telling them the rest of it, about his mother's death. They had asked him years ago and that was probably the only thing he had fobbed them off about and been grateful when they woke up the next morning and hadn't remembered that they had asked. Four was too young to understand death, let alone what suicide was. But when was the right age really? Even when Cal had told Emily at sixteen he felt like she was too young to know. He wanted to protect her from that. Just like he wanted to protect his boys.

But then there was also chickening out.

"My Mum felt very lonely," Cal spoke again. "And she was very sad inside. You know sometimes we have days where we feel a bit 'down'?" The boys nodded. "My Mum felt like that every day. But ten times worse. And you know how if someone's feelin' sad we give them lots of hugs and be nice to them, to make sure they know that we love them?" More nods. "No one did that for my Mum."

"How come you didn't do it?" Owen asked.

"Because I didn't know that's how she felt. Not until I was olda. I was just a little boy Wen. Younga than you. And no one taught me how. I didn't know that was how she felt inside."

Wholly crap he felt like crying.

"My Mum felt so badly she decided she couldn't keep feelin' like that," Cal went on. "And she didn't want to be alive anymore. So one day she took a lot of medicine and went to sleep and she didn't wake up again."

Cal suddenly realised that Gillian should be here for this conversation. He should have waited. Oh crap. Too late now. He hadn't meant to.

"That's how my Mum died," Cal added gently.

It seemed even the crickets had fallen silent.

And that ugly grey cloud was getting closer, swallowing up the bright blue sky.

Cal looked from Owen, who was giving him wide baleful blue eyes, to Lewis, who was staring at a spot on the grass, pensive. They were outside but the air felt heavy and claustrophobic; a storm was coming. Cal felt the need to get his phone and dial his wife and have her here with him.

"She died on purpose," Owen broke the quiet.

Cal nodded. "Yes," he answered softly. Lewis looked over at him and Cal wasn't sure what he was seeing but it was like sympathy and compassion but also grief and guilt. Cal put his arm around his son's skinny shoulders. Owen got up from the grass and came to stand between his father's legs to hug him. Cal put his other arm around the boy's petite back and clung on tightly, letting his children make him feel whole again.

"That's a sad story," Owen noted. Lewis gave his brother a gentle nudge and Owen pulled back to repeat the sentence, coupled with signs this time.

"Yeah Dad," Lewis agreed. "That's a sad story. Sorry I asked."

"No," Cal started to object.

"We don't have to talk about your Mum anymore," Owen added.

"No I'm glad you asked. You should ask. She's your Nana and she's family and we don't have secrets right? I'd like to talk about her some," Cal countered. "So you can get to know her a little bit. You can ask questions. I don't mind. But sometimes it makes me feel a bit sad to think about. I could tell you some good stories."

Owen nodded with a pout. "We'll give you lots of hugs to make you feel better."

"We love you Dad."

"Thanks boys. You're lovely wee men," Cal hugged them again, pulling them in tight, feeling the weight of them ground him. It was a relief to have it out there, but now he would worry about what he'd told them, the way the words had come out, and how they would be thinking about it. Unfortunately, the more suicide was talked about, the more it seemed to spread. "I love you too," he added.

And now, where was Gillian? Because she would want to add to this conversation. There needed to be more. But Cal didn't know how to do that. He loosened up his grip a little on Owen and suggested they go back inside now. "Let's call Mum and ask her to come home. I think I need more cuddles."