Being there without trying to fix someone

Being there without trying to fix someone is a form of support that acknowledges suffering without making another person responsible for removing it. In the novel, the distinction emerges through Ava Spirini and Gideon’s exchanges about grief, Robbie’s guidance to Gideon, the changing ways Ava and her family speak to one another, and Nola’s explanation of grief in therapy. Care matters here not because it restores what has been lost, but because it can make room for pain, connection, and choices that remain the sufferer’s own.

The Difference Between Help and Repair

Robbie gives Gideon the clearest formulation of the principle: he can show Ava his own cracks if he wants to, because they are part of him and might help her; helping her, however, is not the same as fixing her. The distinction resists turning Ava into a damaged object that Gideon must put back together. Gideon takes the point inward, recognizing that he should not treat her as something fragile to be handled or repaired. She remains Ava, a whole person whose pain is real, and whose openness to him has grown within the circumstances of their lives after Kelly Waititi’s death.

The metaphor makes care reciprocal without making the two people’s experiences identical. Gideon’s own vulnerability can give Ava a way to recognize that she is not alone, but it does not give him authority over her recovery. Robbie’s image of cracks being filled with gold extends the idea of mending, while keeping the work with the person who bears those cracks. Support can help someone live with what has happened; it cannot undo the loss or take over the other person’s life.

Listening Without Taking Over

Gideon’s restraint is also apparent when Ava speaks about Kelly Waititi as being greater than any inventory of her qualities. He answers simply, without offering an explanation, reassurance that claims to know exactly how Ava feels, or unsolicited advice. Ava finds that response refreshing. She then asks why he has not asked her more about Kelly, and Gideon explains that he thought she would tell him if she wanted to, and that the subject was hers to share. When Ava gives him permission to ask, he agrees. His approach respects her control over when and how her grief becomes a conversation.

The same principle appears in the advice Robbie gives Gideon about Ava: he can be present and offer what is part of his own experience, but he must not assume that sharing will fix her. Gideon and Ava make that care mutual when Gideon begins apologizing for bringing his own difficulties into their relationship. Ava points out that he has been dealing with hers, too, and suggests that perhaps they are meant to deal with each other’s problems. Their exchange does not promise that either can resolve the other’s pain. Instead, it gives their closeness a basis in shared responsibility and the willingness to remain present.

Grief in Families and Relationships

Ava’s relationship with Ava’s father shows how loss can change the conditions for honest support. Before Kelly Waititi’s death, their conversations left out parts of Ava’s life; afterward, they talk more openly, with Ava telling him what is happening and him listening before giving his view. After dinner, he notices that she has barely eaten and asks about Lincoln. He urges her to be careful, while also recognizing that Lincoln is navigating significant difficulties and may not be himself. His concern is neither a simple prohibition nor a claim that he can settle the situation for her: it is a warning grounded in attention to both young people’s circumstances.

Ava’s connection to Kelly Waititi’s family is more complicated. Tina had once been almost like a mother to Ava, but after Kelly Waititi’s death Ava comes to feel that Tina cannot bear to have her around, perhaps because Ava reminds Tina of her daughter. Ava visits only when Tina is absent, partly because she does not want to upset her. Yet the familiar house, where Ava knows the kitchen and even which floorboards creak, gives her a sense of ease amid the upheaval. The house offers comfort, but it cannot remove the grief or the tension that now surrounds that comfort.

That tension changes during a moment when Ava and Lincoln’s shared grief becomes impossible to keep at a distance. Ava’s distress surfaces as she confronts the painful pattern between them and says she misses Kelly Waititi. Lincoln admits that he misses his sister too and believes she would hate what their conflict has become. When Tina enters, she shifts her attention to Lincoln, comforts him, and recognizes Ava’s pain as well. Lincoln’s father joins them. The scene offers care through presence and recognition rather than a solution: the adults do not settle the loss, but the family’s grief is no longer borne in silence by just one person.

Support That Respects Choice

The novel also presents professional support as an alternative to advice that assumes a single answer. At TAPs, Nola tells Ava that therapy is not meant to force her to speak or act in a particular way. Nola does not know Ava or the people in her life except through what Ava chooses to tell her; their work is to find strategies for feelings Ava does not want to be overwhelmed by. That explanation sets boundaries around the therapist’s role: she can help Ava explore ways to cope, but Ava determines what she shares.

Nola’s graph makes the same point about the course of grief. She marks Kelly Waititi’s death as the beginning, then draws irregular, squiggling lines rather than a standard upward path. She tells Ava there is no typical route and no date by which grief must become easier, though it may eventually become less awful. Ava responds with relief. The irregular drawing gives visible form to a process that cannot be managed by a timetable or corrected by someone else’s instructions.

Gideon’s work with Robbie offers another small example of support attentive to what is happening in the moment. After talking through a frightening episode and an attempt to parallel park, Robbie asks Gideon about the good things. Gideon mentions the letters he has been writing. The question does not erase the difficult material they have discussed; it makes space for something else to be noticed alongside it. In this way, care in the novel is neither silence nor rescue. It can take the form of listening, asking permission, offering a warning, making room for a positive experience, or staying beside someone while the grief remains unresolved.