Tina

Tina is the mother of Kelly Waititi and Lincoln, and her grief after Kelly’s death alters her relationship with Ava Spirini, Kelly’s closest friend. For much of Ava’s account, Tina is an uneasy presence at the edge of the family home; in a later moment of shared grief, she becomes a source of comfort to Lincoln and recognizes that Ava, too, is bereaved.

Family and Earlier Closeness

Before Kelly’s death, Ava and Tina had got along well. Ava remembers Tina as having been almost like another mother to her, and the Waititi home remains familiar enough that Ava knows where things are kept and how to move through the house quietly. That former ease makes the changed atmosphere there especially painful: the home still feels connected to Kelly and to Ava’s past, but Tina’s presence now seems difficult to face.

Tina is also Lincoln’s mother, and Kelly’s death leaves her grieving within the same family as her surviving child. The account does not give Tina’s own explanation of her feelings. Instead, Ava encounters the effects of the loss through strained access to the house and later through Tina’s response to Lincoln’s distress.

Distance from Ava After Kelly’s Death

About a month after Kelly’s funeral, Ava begins to feel that Tina cannot bear to be around her. Ava’s father suggests that Ava may remind Tina of Kelly, a possibility Ava understands even as she misses the closeness they once shared. Ava does not claim to know what Tina thinks; her sense of rejection is an interpretation formed amid a household transformed by bereavement.

The practical result is that Ava visits only when Tina is away. She is also afraid Tina would react badly if she learned about Ava and Lincoln becoming involved. Ava does not want to upset Tina, yet she continues to seek the comfort of a house that feels familiar to her. The tension is therefore not simply between welcome and exclusion: Ava feels attached to the family home while believing that her presence may intensify Tina’s pain.

Supporting Lincoln in a Moment of Grief

Tina’s response changes the emotional meaning of her presence when she enters Lincoln’s room during an intense conversation between Lincoln and Ava. The two have been crying over Kelly and over the painful, confused ways they have been coping with her death. Tina first lifts Ava’s hand from Lincoln’s shoulders, then takes Lincoln’s weight as he turns to her and sobs in her lap. She strokes his head and reassures him that things will be all right.

Lincoln’s father joins them, kneeling beside the family with a hand on Lincoln. Tina is crying too. When she looks directly at Ava, Ava recognizes that Tina is broken by the loss and understands Ava’s own pain. The scene gives physical form to a recognition that had been missing from Ava’s earlier account: Tina’s withdrawal had seemed like rejection, but in this moment the two share an understanding grounded in grief.

Character and Narrative Significance

Tina is characterized less through explanation than through how she responds to the people around her. Ava’s early account shows the distance created by loss and by uncertainty about what Tina can bear; the bedroom scene shows Tina caring for Lincoln without concealing her own sorrow. Her recognition of Ava does not establish that their earlier closeness is restored, and the narrative offers no explicit resolution between them. Instead, it complicates Ava’s impression of being shut out: Tina’s grief and Ava’s grief can coexist, and a moment of mutual recognition can emerge without making either loss disappear.