My throat closed up so I could barely breathe. I nodded, quickly swiping away tears. I needed to stay strong for her.
I glanced over at Alex. He looked completely lost. Gone was the cocky demeanour and the general sulkiness. He looked miserable, but it was a different kind of misery. He looked back at me hopefully, like he expected me to say something that would fix this. If only I could.
I reached over to place my hand on top of Bridget’s. I could feel her trembling. She stopped stroking Henry’s hand and looked at me, but I wished she hadn’t.
Her expression was hollow, as if she was just an empty vessel. The light in her eyes was gone. She looked just like she had after Em disappeared, and the comparison made my insides shrivel up. Her eyes were dry, as if shedding tears was a pointless exercise. As if the grief was a part of her now, and she didn’t want to let go of it. That scared me. Like me, Bridget was the logical one of the family, the one endowed with the sensible gene. She was also the old soul who had it all figured out, the one who could find comfort where there was none.
But not now, not today. Today, she was broken. Today, she was suffering. And there was nothing anyone could do about it.
Memories came flooding back to me, lodging themselves in my heart like tiny splinters.
I missed my Dad every day, even now, all these years later. I was just a kid when he died, I didn’t even know him, not properly, not like a grown man came to know and appreciate the person inhabiting his father’s body.
Was it worse for Bridget, losing her Dad at her stage in life? Was it more painful, coming to know and appreciate her father for the man he was, before losing him? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know. I knew enough to know it must be tearing her apart inside, just as it had torn me apart. Maybe grief was just grief. No ‘better’ or ‘worse.’
“He’s gone,” she whispered, nodding, as though she knew it, but she couldn’t quite make herself believe it.
I took her in my arms and rocked her slowly from side to side, and she let me. She held onto me as if I was saving her, but I felt grossly inadequate. I wasn’t saving her. I couldn’t. She would have to feel this, just like we did, and she would have to find a way through it.
All I could do was hold her.
HENRY’S KITCHEN WAS like one of those rooms you see in museums. Unchanged since the 1950s, with no modern conveniences such as microwaves and coffee machines. Slightly dark, with café nets hanging in the windows, an old lemon yellow Formica table with chrome legs and matching chairs taking centre stage. Even though it was sizable, it was cosy in the winter, and cool in the summer. It was the heart of the home.
Yet sitting there after the doctor had left, waiting for the funeral director to come, it felt cold and empty.
Henry’s teapot, the old, dinged, aluminium one he favoured, sat on the bench. Maia had offered to make everyone tea and coffee, but there was no coffee in the house, and no one really wanted to drink tea out of his teapot without him here. It felt wrong. Not that we said that out loud. It was a chorus of ‘no thanks, I’m fine.’ Which, of course, was bullshit. We were anything but fine.
I had lost enough people in my life to know that this was the worst time. The waiting. The in-between hours. A death had occurred, but the arrangements had yet to be made. In the meantime, we were in limbo.
I remembered Vinnie and I venturing out from under the bed after Dad died, sitting outside on the back porch. We were at a loose end. Mum was inconsolable and everyone seemed to have their hands full with her. We were just kids. We didn’t know what to do with our grief, or where to put ourselves.
I felt the same way now.
Bridget was in a world of her own, and it was Alex and I that had dealt with the doctor and called the funeral director. For once, Bridget seemed incapable of anything. Maia tried to talk to her, to offer some support, but Bridget wasn’t ready for that yet. She was still processing. I could tell, I recognised the signs. It wasn’t like when Em disappeared. Things don’t happen the same way when dealing with a missing person. There are interviews, details that need to be obtained, an endless flood of questions. It all seems to happen slowly, methodically.
This felt more sudden, like a shove. A punch. A knife to the heart.
I went over and over every single thing that happened when we were here yesterday. Jesus. Yesterday seemed like a lifetime ago. He was chatty, I remember that. I wonder if he knew, somehow? Was he scared? Was it peaceful? Was it sudden?
I leant forward, grief grabbing me from behind and forcing the air out of my lungs.
I didn’t even hear Maia come into the room. She knelt down beside me and worked her way into my arms, holding me just when I thought I was going to snap from the weight of grief. She rubbed my back gently, and I closed my eyes.
At the heart of the matter, I just couldn’t imagine a world without Henry in it.