Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.
The second hand on the clock seemed unnaturally loud and sharp, like an axe into wood, like a cane against flesh, like a knife across bone, each stroke landing like a physical blow, dividing time and life and body and soul into precise, even slices and carving them away to discard on tiles the color of old bone, slipping through the fingers and dissolving into irretrievable, irreparable fragments of dust. To catch even one would be to try and hold moonlight, to return it to whence it came to try and reverse the Big Bang itself. Time marched on, the world kept turning, and the afternoon slipped away like water through an oil slick.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.
Reading would have been tricky at the best of times, especially in Mrs Howell’s class where any and all aids were anathema, but today, letters and words seemed to swim before Melanie’s eyes, clouding her exhausted brain with sounds like the chittering of weasels. She had studied hard, she knew the answers, she was sure of it. She just wasn’t sure which questions were which, and concentrating was a struggle. Especially with the clock so loud. She wished she was sitting anywhere else in the room, somewhere the scratch of pencils on paper would overwhelm the mechanics of the clock, but like the beating of a hideous heart, it swallowed all other sounds.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.
A black shadow cut across the page before her, dark and ominous, and Melanie glanced up to see Ms Dawson slipping into the room. A few other students stole quick glances at her, then went back to their papers, but Melanie tracked her as she tiptoed over to the desk, bent down, and murmured into Mrs Howell’s ear discreetly. Mrs Howell frowned at her, and her response was not discreet. “In the middle of their exams?”
Crack.
The lead on Melanie’s pencil broke as she pressed too hard on the paper. Beside her, Jon’s head had also jerked up, and he sat perfectly still, the tip of his pencil hovering a mere micrometer above the page as he focused on Ms Dawson. She murmured something again, and Mrs Howell stubbornly shook her head. “When they finish.”
Crack!
Several people jumped as Jon slammed his pencil down on the desk hard enough that it broke in half, standing in the same fluid motion with his paper clutched in his free hand. Melanie, too, scrambled to her feet and swiped her half completed paper, leaving the now useless pencil where it had rolled. Multiple startled faces looked up as Jon strode to the front of the room, tossed the paper into the tray on Mrs Howell’s desk, and announced in a tight, pointed voice, “We’re finished.”
CRACK!
There were a couple of shrieks, and Mrs Howell actually flinched back in surprise, as Melanie slapped her own paper down hard and firm on top of Jon’s. Something gave sharply under her hand, and she realized that she had accidentally broken the solid plastic bottom of the slightly elevated tray with the force of her blow. She didn’t care, she didn’t, and she pressed her lips tightly together to keep from muttering the expected apology and stared Mrs Howell down for just a second, just so she knew Melanie meant business and wasn’t to be messed with, and then she turned on her heel and followed Jon and Ms Dawson out of the classroom.
BANG!
Several heads popped out of the surrounding doors as Melanie yanked the door closed behind them with enough force to rattle the windows and shake plaster dust from the ceiling. Mr Dumphrey was in the nearest one, and he had a disapproving frown on his face, his mouth already open to scold. It faded into sympathy when he saw them, however, and he actually stepped out of his classroom and closed the door softly behind himself before coming over to give first Melanie, then Jon a quick hug. To Ms Dawson, he said quietly, “I’ll take care of any complaints before they get to you.” When she nodded, he turned and went back into the classroom. Just before the door closed behind him, Melanie heard him say, “It’s all right, class…”
Tap, tap, tap.
Ms Dawson’s heels were too loud against the tiles. She wasn’t letting them run, but at least she wasn’t making them walk slowly. Melanie caught up to Jon and took his hand tightly in hers, mostly so she would know he was there. He squeezed back hard enough to hurt. She was glad for it. The pain provided a connection, provided a bit of grounding, reassured her that both of them were alive and well. And it made her feel slightly better about the fact that she was possibly digging her nails slightly into the back of his hand. He didn’t mind the pain, or he wouldn’t be doing this himself. He wasn’t like that. Jon was better than that. They stayed silent the entire way to the front office.
Tap, tap, tap.
Three quick raps on the inner door, and Mrs Cromwell, for once looking sympathetic and not disapproving, opened it and nodded down at Jon and Melanie. She stepped aside, and Melanie prepared to step in, but their dad stepped out first. Just like when she’d seen him before leaving for school, he wore his suit—the brown one, which meant he was meeting an established client—and a plain tie, which meant he wasn’t facing down an opposing lawyer. His face was extremely pale, almost as white as his hair, and there was a blind look in his eyes. He didn’t even try to smile when he saw them, nor did he say anything. Instead, he nodded what might have been thanks to Mrs Cromwell and Ms Dawson, then put one hand on Jon’s shoulder, one on Melanie’s, turned them around, and steered them out of the office.
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.
They’d gone down to London the week after Easter, for the sales, and they’d all got new shoes, among other things. Jon and Melanie had got fancy dress shoes because they were likely to be going to dances and other formal events in the coming year, and their dad had got a pair of brogues that were the right color to go with his brown suit. They were smart and sleek and very good quality, but he didn’t wear them often, so they were still stiff and the left one squeaked. Melanie couldn’t remember their mum’s secret trick for getting shoes to stop squeaking, and she always forgot to ask. She always told herself she would remember, and then she never did. She kept consoling herself with the fact that there was plenty of time.
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.
The hinges to the Harlequin really needed to be oiled. All of the doors protested when they tried to open them, and Jon’s stuck slightly when he tried to tug it closed. When he finally managed to get it moving, Melanie half expected it to slam into the frame as hard as the classroom door had, but it closed with the normal amount of force, leaving them to wrestle with the seatbelts. That done, their dad turned the key in the ignition, and the car started up quietly enough.
Clunk.
The column shift engaged with a solid mechanical noise, and they pulled away from the curb smoothly. Melanie quietly reached across the backseat for Jon’s hand; he took it back and squeezed quickly, three times in a row, one two three. She returned the gesture. It didn’t make her feel completely better, but it helped, as it always did. They sat in silence for most of the drive, a drive they didn’t normally make because it wasn’t that far to walk, really. Their dad’s office, or at least the office that wasn’t in the house, the one where he met with clients and took depositions and all of that, was about half an hour’s walk from home, on the other side of town, but these days he needed to be able to get home in a hurry if…well, if. So they drove. Melanie almost wanted to squeeze Jon’s hand again, but she made herself not. Do it too often and it would lose its power. The silence was killing her, though. It must have been killing Jon, too, because he finally spoke, in a low, carefully controlled voice that said he was trying to keep his voice from cracking like it was starting to, especially in moments of intense stress or emotion. “Dad?”
Clunk.
Their dad threw the Harlequin into park, but didn’t take his hand off the shift. Instead, he just sat there for several long moments, his head bowed, his shoulders stiff and tense. The air in the car was charged. Melanie was terrified of what he was going to say. Her mind threw up dozens of possibilities. Somehow, the six words that finally came out of his mouth were worse than anything she had come up with on her own. “Your mother wants to see you.”
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The world outside suddenly seemed fuzzy and far away, sound curiously muffled. The only thing Melanie could hear clearly anymore was her heartbeat echoing in her ears. Not pounding. Not yet. It was regular and steady and normal. She was just very, very, very aware of it, as aware as she’d been of the clock and the footsteps. She didn’t want to let go of Jon’s hand, but she had to, she wouldn’t be able to undo the seatbelt if she didn’t, and it would be hard to get out of the car if she managed. She couldn’t help it, though, she clung on a little longer. Jon understood, or maybe he didn’t want to let go either, because he held on for just a minute, too, before he reluctantly slid his hand free.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
It was raining, and that would be good for the flowers they had carefully planted right under the window so the bright flowers would tickle the glass and bring sunshine on a dreary day, but it also seemed fitting. Melanie normally would have raced Jon to the front door, both from excitement and to get out of the wet, but instead she came around the car and reached for his hand again, and he took hers in his and gave one long squeeze, not three short ones, and she returned the squeeze because she wouldn’t, she wasn’t going anywhere. They were going to face this together. Their dad didn’t have to say anything. They knew.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Two steps and the porch, hollow hardwood that had been replaced the previous spring by a local contractor who sent his apprentices and new hires on little jobs around town to judge both the quality of their work and their ability to deal with people, and Colin must have passed the test because she’d seen him as part of a work crew heading out just a couple weeks ago. He’d even saved one of the boards that wasn’t too bad, sanded it, stained it, sealed it, and carved Thorn Valley in a really fancy script onto it, the sign that now hung off the beam over the entrance to the porch. Sometimes Jon and Melanie would jump the steps and try to slap it with their hands, but only sometimes, never when it was raining. Today didn’t seem like the day anyway, because what if they tripped and fell and hurt themselves? Melanie took a deep breath and moved a little closer to Jon as their dad opened the door.
Clunk.
The dull, hollow sound of a bottle being placed on a table was also, unfortunately, very familiar to Melanie by now. She’d also got pretty good at judging how full it was by how it sounded when it was set down, and from the sound of it, it was almost empty. That wasn’t good, but it did explain why they had been summoned home. Melanie swallowed against a suddenly dry mouth and throat as she stepped into the cool, dim interior of the house. The lights were low, and there wasn’t much light coming from the open windows—some, but not much—but there was enough light for Melanie to see the kind, motherly woman in the white starched overall and cap straighten from the side of the monstrous amalgamation of metal and plastic that, though it didn’t take up much space, seemed to dominate the living room.
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.
Their dad crossed the living room to the other side of the bed and smiled lovingly down at the occupant. The pain in his eyes was palpable now, though. Melanie didn’t need to ask why, didn’t need to second guess anything. Their parents had never lied to them, ever, and they had been included in conversations and had things explained to them—not just by them, but by the medical staff, although that was at least partly because the nurse in charge of the unit had turned out to be one of the nurses who’d tended to their mothers after the first surgery and remembered them, fondly as it turned out. They didn’t see him so much these days, but he’d personally asked for the woman who was in charge of coming over and had vouched for her partner, so that was all right. At least that part was. The entire situation sucked, but at least they weren’t going into it completely unprepared.
Tap, tap, tap.
The nurse gathered a few supplies, murmured softly to their dad, and disappeared into the kitchen, her sensible rubber soled shoes brisk and efficient as she tried to walk out of the room as quietly as possible. Melanie inhaled deeply, turned to meet Jon’s eyes, saw a reflection of her own emotions in them, and slowly let the breath out. She turned and crossed the room, letting go of Jon’s hand only when she got to the bedside and reached tentatively for the hand atop the sheets. “Hi, Mum.”
Bang!
There was a muffled curse from the kitchen and Skimbleshanks came skittering out, catnip mousie clamped firmly in his jaws and ears laid back, and darted down the hall. Paddiwack, from his habitual perch on top of the piano, watched him go by, tip of his tail twitching in counterpoint to the gentle sway of his upper body, eyes narrowed in what looked like disapproval. Cosy, who was folded into a compact loaf over their mum’s abdomen, didn’t even flinch, merely shifted her chin to rest more comfortably against her rib cage. Their mum reached out with a fumbling hand to stroke her head briefly, then turned and gave Melanie a soft, dreamy smile.
“There you are, Little Moth.”
In that moment, Melanie stopped being aware of any other sounds, not even her heartbeat. There was only here, and now, and the person on the bed and the words being spoken. All else was silence. She tried to return the smile but wasn’t sure her mouth and cheeks were cooperating. Everything hurt. Everything was numb. Both of those things were true, and they shouldn’t have been true, and she didn’t know how to stop them from being true, and she didn’t know if she wanted them to stop being true.
“Where’s your brother?”
The words were slurred, rolling off a tongue that was losing feeling. Maggie had been careful to explain to them that the painkillers would make her sleepy, but so would the process that was going on, and that they should expect that. They’d been warned about the confusion and the numbness and the nausea. They’d been warned what some of the physical changes would look like and also warned not to force her to eat or drink if she could no longer swallow. Jon came up very close to Melanie’s side. “I’m right here, Mum,” he said as he reached for the hand resting on Cosy’s back.
“Oh, my Little Flame.”
Their mum’s smile widened, less like the muscles were tugging it and more like they’d loosed their hold on it. Her fingers didn’t seem to work properly, but eventually she managed to wrap them at least partway around Jon’s and Melanie’s. Despite everything, Melanie had to fight not to squirm at the sensation. As her organs, beginning with her kidneys, shut down one by one, the fluid began backing up into her limbs—out of the range of a diuretic, Maggie had said—and made her hands, her legs, and even her face swollen and puffy. It meant that all the slight ridges and textures in her hands were, essentially, gone, leaving the skin too smooth and almost rubbery, and they were too, too cold. Melanie would rather have not touched her ever again than have that sensation, but it was important to their mum, so she let it happen.
“I’m so glad you…came.”
Jon slipped his free arm around Melanie’s waist; she did the same, needing the comfort, needing the warmth, needing, frankly, the distraction provided by rolling the slightly starchy texture of a fold of his school shirt between her thumb and forefinger. He gently curled his hand a little more securely around their mum’s hand, clearly not wanting to hurt her. “Of course we came, Mum. Where else would we be?”
Bang.
The sound of one of the cupboards shutting firmly, not slamming, still seemed exceptionally loud to Melanie. She couldn’t help flinching a little. Jon didn’t react. Neither did their dad. But their mum’s eyes suddenly widened, and a slight frown puckered her forehead. She turned her head towards the kitchen. Melanie swallowed twice and tried to be reassuring. “It’s okay, it’s just Maggie,” she tried. Their mum had to be worried about robbers, or who else would be in the house, since the whole family was in the living room, or maybe she was worried the cats had done something. But their mum rolled her head back to look at Melanie, and her eyes were wide and panicked. It took her a couple of tries to get words out.
“Don’t use the restaurant dishes.”
Melanie and Jon looked at one another. Maggie had told them that oftentimes, people who were…people who were like their mum was sometimes said things that weren’t exactly what they meant, but were standing in for what they meant. She’d given an example—a woman who’d been worried that she “hadn’t finished all the canning”, when what she was really upset about was that one of her daughters was estranged from the family, and she needed to not only see her, but see her welcomed back into the fold of the family. She needed to make sure her family was cared for and had enough to get them through. If their mum was worried about the dishes, it had to mean something other than the actual dishes.
“Promise me.”
It was on the tip of Melanie’s tongue to just promise, but she was afraid of promising something she couldn’t deliver on, and something told her her mum knew it. But what could she mean? At her side, Jon shifted restlessly, and their mum looked from one to the other, her fingers twitching against theirs. Melanie remembered another of Maggie’s stories, about a man who’d frantically told his wife the plane was gassed up and waiting for them and she’d told him to go on ahead and get things ready, but she couldn’t think of what it meant. She looked desperately at Jon and mouthed the word airplane, praying he would understand, and thank goodness, something in his eyes lit up and she knew he had. He turned back to their mum and said gently, “It’s okay, Mum. We promise. We’ll miss you, just like we miss Mama and Papa, but we won’t think about it all the time even if it hurts.”
“That’s my good boy.”
Their mum relaxed, and Melanie realized what she’d meant—and what Jon meant. She was worried they would wallow in their grief, that they would force themselves to think about her all the time or feel guilty if they didn’t, but she was right. Like the dishes, which might have been meant to be for a restaurant but were also bought with the intention of being easy to replace if they broke, they couldn’t keep the memories around all the time without breaking themselves. Glancing at their dad, Melanie realized something else. Ever since they had set up the hospital bed in the living room, their dad had slept right out here, curled up on the bed with her like he always had. For the first time in almost twenty years, he would be alone. She licked her lips and leaned down to reassure their mum. “We won’t get mad if Dad finds someone else, either. Promise. We want him to be okay too.”
“Thank you, baby.”
Their mum smiled at them warmly, then sighed deeply and settled back against the pillows, letting her eyes flutter closed as her hands slid back. Maggie came back into the room with four mugs of tea, not the restaurant mugs, she’d never touched that cabinet. Their mum had still been more or less herself when she’d started coming and had explained what they were for. She handed one to each of them and drew up a chair; their dad did the same, then nodded for Jon and Melanie to sit down as well. For several moments they sat in silence, sipping their tea and watching their mum. Then, all at once, their mum’s eyes opened. She began looking around the room, her eyes skimming over their dad, Jon and Melanie, even Maggie, before settling on an empty space. Her eyes lit up. Maggie leaned forward. “Gillian, honey? Is someone else in the room besides Antony, Jon, Melanie, and me?” She paused as a small smile crossed their mum’s lips, then added softly, “Gillian, are Paul and Susan here?”
Thunk.
Their dad’s mug slipped from his fingers and hit the carpet, spilling but not breaking. He ignored it and leaned forward intently, eyes wide, looking not at their mum but at the spot where she was looking. There was an almost palpable longing on his face, and Melanie held her breath. Their mum, however, nodded slowly, freeing one hand from the sheets and reaching out towards the space, a smile on her face, her palm turned upward. It trembled for a moment, then slowly lowered to the sheets.
Thunk.
Maggie set her own mug down on the table beside the bed and leaned back, clearly giving them space. Melanie, trembling, reached for Jon’s hand, but didn’t look at him. She was looking at their mum’s face, at the warm smile on it, the tears pricking her eyes, in the moments before they fluttered closed. Her chest rose slightly. Fell slightly. Rose. Fell. Rose. Fell. Melanie focused on the face so she wouldn’t get distracted by the chest.
Thunk.
Calm and casual as you please, Cosy slid off of their mum’s lap, slithered under the rail, and dropped to the floor with a soft but heavy sound. She shook her head briefly, then trotted over to the piano and leaped with a simple, easy grace onto its closed lid, then its back, where she began grooming Paddiwack. He began grooming her in return. Melanie felt a lump of fear and grief and, yes, anger, Maggie and Nurse Wilkinson had both said it was all right to be angry about this and she was, rising in her throat as she tried not to think about what it meant. Cosy hadn’t left their mum’s bed, except for a quick trip to snatch food or water or use the litter box, in almost a month. She’d stayed right there with her, calm and soft and warm and purring, even though she’d always been more Jon’s cat than anyone else’s. If she was leaving now…Melanie didn’t want to think about it. Jon’s hand tightened around hers, and she knew he was thinking it, too. He didn’t say anything, though, just leaned forward, took their mum’s hand again, not the one she was reaching out to their mama and their papa and probably Lucy as well because they wouldn’t have come without her, and squeezed it gently. Once. Twice. Three times.
Everything went silent and still.