Chapter 3
1412 Words
Chapter 3
“I’m sorry,” Jack said as he grabbed another tissue. That was the last one. The box was empty. And that sent Jack crying even harder. “I used them all up!” he blubbered. “I’m so sorry!”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” the funeral lady replied. She grabbed a full box of tissues from a side table and swapped them out. “If there’s one thing we always have in stock, it’s tissues.”
Ren calmly rubbed Jack’s back as he hiccupped weird sobs.
“We’re almost done here,” the funeral lady assured them.
It was nearly time to pick up Charlotte from school. Simon could stay a little later at daycare, but Ren didn’t want Charlotte standing in the schoolyard wondering where her fathers were.
Her grandmother’s death had caused poor Charlotte a significant amount of anxiety. She was afraid all the people she loved would disappear forever. That meant she wanted to be around her dads all the time. It annoyed Ren at first—a bed cramped by Charlotte, and soon by her brother, who didn’t seem to understand death, but who still wasn’t ready to sleep alone—and yet it didn’t take long for Ren’s heart to melt for the fearful little girl.
When he woke up in the middle of the night to find Charlotte’s pudgy little arms wrapped around him, that was the moment she moved from being a child in his care to his daughter, plain and simple.
Same went for Simon. Ren gazed at the boy in the darkness of night, and suddenly it all made sense. This was his family. He never imagined it for himself, but here it was. His grieving husband. His frightened children. His family.
“These sudden deaths are some of the hardest to decipher,” the funeral lady said as Jack’s coughing sobs began to dissipate. “It’s hard to imagine how someone could be so alive and so healthy and vibrant one second, and then the next they’re just...”
“Gone,” Ren replied.
Jack started up again. Not sobbing this time. Strange silent open-mouthed whimpers.
“It was a shock,” Ren told the woman. “Coming home to a wide-open door. Finding Katherine on the floor like that. At first, we thought it was a home invasion or a burglary gone bad. Jack ran upstairs to check on the kids, but they were asleep in bed. Nothing in the house had been taken or touched. No signs of foul play. The police figured she must have thought she’d seen our car pull up, or something to that effect, then gone to the door, opened it, and...”
Jack released a violent sob, swinging his head close to Ren’s chest. At this point, Ren’s shirt and jacket were already soaked with tears and smeared with snot. A little more couldn’t hurt.
“Sometimes people just die,” the funeral lady went on. “Just like that. No explanation. And that’s hard for us, because we always want answers. Sometimes there aren’t any.”
That explanation didn’t hold for Jack, but he didn’t express his thoughts until after dinner, after the kids had gone to bed.
When they’d picked up Charlotte from school and Simon from daycare, Jack had clearly tried his best to be the dad they both needed and expected him to be. But once they were down for the night, once Ren took out his laptop and set it up on the white marble kitchen island, once he went into planning mode, thinking up what he wanted to say at the funeral, Jack naturally returned to the topic.
“There has to be a reason. My mother didn’t have any heart problems, nothing like that. She wouldn’t have just died without cause. Something caused her death, Ren. Something caused it. People don’t just keel over and die.”
Ren wasn’t sure how to respond. He didn’t want to be one of those “well, actually” husbands. It was better to listen and support.
He reached for Jack’s hand, but Jack didn’t seem to notice they were touching.
“Where did you put the kids down?” Ren asked, to get Jack to focus on something other than death.
“In our bed. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Our bed is fine. No problem.”
Jack seemed to wake up in that moment. He looked at Ren as if to say, “Who are you and what have you done with my husband?” Ren was trying to be a better version of himself, and this clearly surprised Jack. Surprised, and pleased him.
After giving his hand a squeeze, Jack said, “I’ll put the kettle on.”
Ren returned the squeeze. “Sounds good.”
Jack filled the kettle, and then opened the cupboard. “I could make a pot of that caramel cocoa nib tea.”
“Have we still got some? I thought we drank it all.”
“No, we’ve got a whole—”
Knock, knock, knock.
Ren froze in place while Jack looked to the door, on high alert.
They shouldn’t be so afraid of a knock at the door, but something deep in Ren’s gut told him they had every reason to fear what was on the other side.
Jack made a move toward the front hall, but Ren reached out to hold him back. Jack didn’t resist. He stood beside Ren, staring at the door.
There were panes of frosted glass on either side of the entrance, but Jack said, “I don’t see anything. Not a person, not even a shadow. I don’t see anything at all.”
The invisible hand knocked again, causing Jack to jump and Ren to hold on tighter to his husband’s wrist.
Jack forced a laugh and said, “Why are we so scared? We shouldn’t be. It’s just a knock at the door. Could be anyone.”
“You said yourself nobody’s there,” Ren whispered.
“But I’m looking through frosted glass.”
Jack made a move to approach the door, but Ren held his wrist even tighter. “Don’t do it.”
“I’m not doing anything,” Jack whispered—they were whispering now, as if they could keep their voices and thoughts and fears from whatever lurked on the other side of that door. “I’m just going over to the front window. There’s a better view of the landing.”
“I’m coming with you,” Ren replied. There was no way he’d let go of Jack’s wrist. No way on earth.
As the kettle came to a boil and clicked off on its own, Ren and Jack stepped gingerly across the kitchen. They gave the front hall a wide berth and snuck toward the area to its right, which housed a pair of chairs they never sat in and a lamp they never turned on and a low table they never used.
When they snuck between those two chairs, they could see only their reflections in the front window. At night, it became a black mirror. The only way they’d be able to see beyond the glass would be to press their faces directly against it.
The knock came again, and they both jumped.
They didn’t laugh at themselves this time.
Not a pinch of a smile crossed their lips.
“What if it’s the police?” Jack asked in a whisper. “Back to do some follow-up? Or maybe they have new information.”
“They’d announce themselves,” Ren replied. Then, in a resonant tone of voice, he asked, “Who’s at the door? We won’t answer if you don’t say.”
Ren’s ears buzzed as they listened hard through the silence.
There was no response. Ren’s hearing was so sharp in that moment. If anyone had said a word, he’d have heard it.
When he pressed his face to the window, Jack hissed, “What are you doing?”
“Seeing,” Ren replied, cupping his hands around his face to block out any trace of light from indoors.
Jack did the same beside him.
They looked to the front stoop. Ren didn’t know about Jack, but he could see clearly through the glass.
He could clearly see nothing.
Nothing at all.
Not even a wayward tree branch brushing against the door.
Nothing.
No one.
“Go ahead,” Ren challenged it, somewhat under his breath, but certainly loud enough for Jack to hear. “Knock again. I dare you.”
“Don’t...” Jack whispered. But he didn’t say anything more.
They both listened intently, until the silence of the house turned into a low hum. Every silence was full of tone, if you listened closely enough.
But that’s all they heard, for a long while of waiting. Ten minutes. Fifteen. They waited through room tone, through heater hissing, through fridge humming. They waited for another knock, but it never came.
They backed away from the window. They put the kettle on once again. And they drank their tea while planning Katherine’s funeral.
All the while, Ren kept expecting to hear it again. The knock. He was on edge. So on edge. And he could see by the look on his husband’s face that Jack was, too.
- Writer
