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Pale late-afternoon sunlight shone down on the caramel-colored Craftsman-style house. The yard was a disaster, forgotten in the year of Katie’s cancer. He parked in the garage and led the way into the house, where the faint scent of illness lingered in the fabric of the drapes and the woolen strands of the carpet.
“What now, Dad?”
He knew without turning who would have asked this question. Lucas, the boy who’d cried at every goldfish’s death and drawn a picture for his dying mother every day; the boy who’d started to cry at school again and had sat quietly at his recent birthday party, unable to even smile as he opened his gifts. He felt everything so keenly, this boy. Especially Lucas, Kate had said on her last, terrible night. He won’t know how to miss me so much. Hold him.
Johnny turned.
Wills and Lucas stood there, standing so close their shoulders were touching. The eight-year-olds had on matching black pants and gray V-neck sweaters. Johnny had forgotten this morning to make either boy take a shower and their shaggy haircuts were unruly, smushed in places from sleep.
Lucas’s eyes were wide and bright, his lashes spiked with moisture. He knew his mother was Gone, but he didn’t really understand how that could be.
Marah came up beside her brothers. She looked thin and pale, ghostlike in her black dress.
All of them looked at him.
This was his moment to speak, to offer comforting words, to give them advice they would remember. As their father, it was his job to turn the next few hours into a celebration of his wife’s life. But how?
“Come on, boys,” Marah said with a sigh. “I’ll put Finding Nemo on. ”
“No,” Lucas wailed. “Not Finding Nemo. ”
Wills looked up. He took hold of his brother’s hand. “The mom dies. ”
“Oh. ” Marah nodded. “How about The Incredibles?”
Lucas nodded glumly.
Johnny was still trying to figure out what in the hell to say to his wounded children when the doorbell rang for the first time.
He flinched at the sound. Afterward, he was vaguely aware of time passing, of people crowding around him and doors opening and closing. Of the sun setting and night pressing against the windowpanes. He kept thinking, Move, go, say hi, but he couldn’t seem to make himself begin this thing.
Someone touched his arm.
“I’m so sorry, Johnny,” he heard a woman say, and he turned.
She stood beside him, dressed in black, holding a foil-covered casserole dish. He could not for the life of him remember who she was. “When Arthur left me for that barista, I thought my life was over. But you keep getting up, and one day you realize you’re okay. You’ll find love again. ”
It took all his self-control not to snap out at this woman that death was different from infidelity, but before he could even think of her name, another woman showed up. She, too, thought hunger was his biggest problem now, judging by the size of the foil-covered tray in her plump hands.
He heard “… better place” … and walked away.
He pushed through the crowd and went to the bar that was set up in the kitchen. On the way, he passed several people, all of whom murmured some combination of the same useless words—sorry, suffering over, better place. He neither paused nor answered. He kept moving. He didn’t look at the photographs that had been set up around the room, on easels and propped up against windows and lamps. In the kitchen, he found a clot of sad-eyed women working efficiently, taking foil off casserole dishes and burrowing through the utensil drawers. At his entrance, they stilled, quick as birds with a fox in their midst, and looked up. Their pity—and the fear that this could someday happen to them—was a tangible presence in the room.
At the sink, his mother-in-law, Margie, put down the pitcher she’d been filling with water. It hit the counter with a clank. Smoothing the hair away from her worry-lined face, she moved toward him. Women stepped aside to let her through. She paused at the bar, poured him a scotch and water over ice, and handed it to him.
“I couldn’t find a glass,” he said. Stupidly. The glasses were right beside him. “Where’s Bud?”
“Watching TV with Sean and the boys. This isn’t exactly something he can deal with. Sharing his daughter’s death with all these strangers, I mean. ”
Johnny nodded. His father-in-law had always been a quiet man, and the death of his only daughter had broken him. Even Margie, who had remained vital and dark-haired and laughing well past her last birthday, had aged immeasurably since the diagnosis. She had rounded forward, as if expecting another blow from God at any second. She’d stopped dyeing her hair and white flowed along her part like a frozen river. Rimless glasses magnified her watery eyes.
“Go to your kids,” Margie said, pressing her pale, blue-veined hand into the crook of his arm.
“I should stay here and help you. ”
“I’m fine,” she said. “But I’m worried about Marah. Sixteen is a tough age to lose a mother, and I think she regrets how much she and Kate fought before Kate got sick. Words stay with you sometimes, especially angry ones. ”
He took a long sip of his drink, watched the ice rattle in his glass when he was done. “I don’t know what to say to them. ”
