Eclipsed Hearts

Chapter 2: The weight of everything

Outside, through the waiting room's single window, New York City went on the way it always did without pause, without apology, without the slightest acknowledgment that the world had just split in two.

It felt so surreal, she was heart broken, how dare everyone move on so fast but then it strucked her, the world really don't care that much.

The clock on the wall read 6:31 p.m.

ninety one minutes past closing time.

Nobody at Harmon & Associates had noticed she was gone, was she that invincible? Not even a call or a text from a colleague.

The Reed family home smelled like reheated food and quiet devastation.

Neighbors had already started dropping things off, the way they always do when someone dies, as though casseroles and foil-wrapped pound cakes are the universal language of grief. The kitchen counter was lined with containers by the time Elena, her mother, Aunt Patricia, Marcus and Chloe had all filed through the front door, still wearing their coats, still carrying the hospital on their skin.

Nobody ate, her father would've sat at the dinning before everyone else, but he was no where to be seen, everywhere seems cold.

They sat around the dining table the same table where Elena had done homework for twelve years, where her father had carved Thanksgiving turkeys with theatrical ceremony, where her parents had argued about bills in hushed voices they thought nobody could hear and they talked about burying him.

It was the most surreal hour of Elena's life.

The funeral home, the plot, the program, the flowers. Did he want flowers? He never said. Would there be a repast? Of course there would there was always a repast. Who was going to call his brother in Atlanta? How do we announce to him about his brother's death? Who was going to handle the death certificate?

Every question landed on the table and every eye, sooner or later drifted toward Elena.

She was twenty-six years old and she was the breadwinner. Had been, quietly, for the last two years ever since her father's back gave out and her mother's part-time hours got cut. Nobody had formally announced it. It had simply become true, the way most heavy things do, gradually and then all at once. Elena paid the utilities. Elena covered the grocery shortfalls. Elena was the one who answered when the phone rang and the voice on the other end was asking about something past due.

And now there was a funeral to pay for, how would she be able to do it all, She thought.

She pulled out her phone under the table and opened her banking app. Checked the number she already knew. Closed the app.

I'll handle it, she said.

Her mother looked up. Elena!

I said I'll handle it, Mom. She kept her voice even. Let's figure out what we need and I'll make it work.

She did not sleep that night.

Friday arrived gray and indifferent, the sky the color of old dishwater. Elena was up before anyone else, dressed in yesterday's clothes, sitting at the kitchen table with a cold cup of coffee and a legal pad full of numbers that didn't add up no matter how many times she rearranged them.

She wasn't supposed to go into work. She knew that. But then her phone buzzed at 7:43 a.m, an email from Mr. Dalton.

"It has been brought to my attention that you vacated the premises yesterday at approximately 4:50 p.m., ten minutes before the end of your contracted hours, without notifying your supervisor. Please report to my office first thing this morning"

She stared at it for a long time, she wasn't expecting an email.

"It has been brought to my attention"

She knew exactly whose attention it had come from. Vivian Clarke, two desks to Elena's left, with her precisely highlighted hair and her habit of watching Elena's screen from the corner of her eye. Vivian, who had applied for the same junior analyst position Elena had gotten eighteen months ago and had never quite forgiven the outcome. Vivian, who smiled at Elena in the hallway with warmth so performed it practically came with a curtain call.

Elena had been grieving in a hospital waiting room while Vivian had been composing an email.

She should have stayed home. But something stubborn in her the part that had been holding everything together for two years needed to stand in that office and say 'my father died' and watch a human being respond with something resembling humanity.

She left a note for her mother and took the subway.

The office felt wrong in the way all familiar places feel wrong after your life has fundamentally changed. Elena walked past the rows of desks, past Vivian Clarke who looked up briefly then back at her screen with the careful neutrality of someone pretending they hadn't done exactly what they had done.

Mr. Dalton's door was open, he looked up when she appeared, his expression already closed and decided

finished with a conversation that hadn't yet begun.

"Close the door" he said.

She sat down and said it plainly, without dressing it up, "My father passed away yesterday evening. I left early because my aunt called me from the hospital. I'm here to ask for bereavement leave and explain in person."

Mr. Dalton consulted his internal policy manual rather than his conscience.

I understand that's difficult, he said. However, this isn't the first time there have been concerns about your reliability, three late arrivals in two months, and now this. He folded his hands. Effective today, we're letting you go. HR will send through the paperwork.

Elena sat with it for exactly four seconds.

Then she stood, picked up her bag, and looked at him with a clarity that felt almost peaceful the calm of someone who has just made a decision they will never have to revisit.

Keep the paperwork, she said quietly and I hope you never find out what it feels like to be sitting where I'm sitting right now.

She walked out without looking at Vivian Clarke.

Never again, she thought as the elevator doors closed. I will never work for anyone like that again.

She left to the park, it was cold and mostly empty, the trees stripped bare, the benches damp. Elena sat with her coat pulled tight, hands wrapped around a coffee she'd bought from a cart near the entrance, and let herself feel all of it the grief, the fury, the fear without trying to organize any of it into something manageable.

No job, quietly funeral to fund, a mother who couldn't stop crying. A legal pad full of numbers that didn't work.

She watched pigeons, watched a father push a stroller and looked away from that quickly. Stayed until the afternoon light thinned and the cold bit harder and she had no more reasons to delay going back.

When she finally stood, she felt hollowed out in a way that was almost restful like a room after everything has been moved out, before anything new arrives.

She didn't know yet that the new thing was already waiting.

The park had felt like rock bottom. She had been wronged