Jack Karnaghan, Ready to go (SINGLE SHOT 2026)

My father has been dressed since five thirty. Suit pressed, tie straight, hands folded in his lap – ready for an hour and not going to mention it. The television murmurs. Its glow finds him in the dark – he likes to save electricity. He sits there, patient in the way that only people who have waited a long time for things know how to be. Down the hall, my mother is still at the mirror. She's taking her time, the way she always has – making herself presentable, unhurried, unbothered by the quiet that has settled over the house like it does every evening. She knows he's waiting. He knows she knows. This is just what they do. There's a whole life in the space between these two rooms. Decades of the same quiet negotiation, the same unspoken rhythms. He dresses early. She finishes when she's ready. They leave together. They always leave together. But there's something about tonight – the stillness of him in that chair, so still, so dressed, so at peace with the wait – that makes the word 'ready' feel like it carries more weight than either of them intended. Like it means more than dinner. Like it has always meant more than dinner, and they both know that too, and neither of them is going to bring it up. Mum, dad, happy 30th anniversary.

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