Noah came to harm because of Abdi.
The house is cold and she’s burrowed almost entirely under her bed linen. Her hair is greasy. She can’t be bothered to shower. She feels as empty as a husk.
Through the window, she can see clouds hanging motionless, in layers of pale yellow and gray blue. One band glows paler than the rest, so bright it makes her blink. They’re spring clouds. It feels impossible to Fiona that it can remain a season of growth and new life outside, when her whole world has petrified.
On her bedside table, the landline starts to ring.
She stares at it, wondering that she never noticed before how piercing the sound it makes is. Then she reaches for it.
The call screening shows an unknown number.
Fiona answers because she wants the chance to make somebody else’s life hell, to hurt a stranger because she herself is hurting. “How dare you cold-call me when my son died yesterday?” she imagines herself saying. “How could you?” It will be a small and random hurt she inflicts, but it will make her feel better.
“Yes.” Fiona’s voice croaks when she speaks, surprising her. It’s not the strident, self-righteous tone she was imagining herself using.
“Mrs. Sadler? This is Emma Zhang. I’m a journalist for the Bristol Echo. I spoke to your husband the other day at the hospital, and I wrote a short article about the case. I was wondering if you would care to talk to me a little more about what’s happened to your son, Noah? I believe he may have been the victim of a crime and I’m keen to help you get the justice he deserves. How is he doing?”
Oh! Fiona thinks. She doesn’t know he died.
Downstairs Ed Sadler is roused from a heavy, nightmare-ridden sleep by the ringing of the landline. He’s stretched out on the sofa in his study, stiff and uncomfortable. Cold. He’s still wearing yesterday’s clothes.
It was hard to be near Fiona last night. He’s always suspected that it would be like this when Noah finally died, that they would deal with it separately, just as they’ve dealt with the illness itself. He feels scraped out, nauseated, and disoriented, as if time isn’t behaving normally, but warping around him, emphasizing the fact that where he once had a son, there’s now a void.
Another part of him feels relief, though he’d never admit that to anybody.
He found it unbearably difficult to watch his son go through treatment. He feared more than anything else that the cancer would drag Noah to his death slowly and painfully. He knew he couldn’t stand to watch the tubes being removed from his son’s body when the time came to let him go; he couldn’t count the breaths that would be so painful for Noah to take in his last days and hours. He couldn’t swab his parched lips.
Ed lost his mother to cancer, so he knows how it goes at the end. They have at least been spared that. He knows he can’t say this to Fiona, though.
She’s always been touchy with him when they discuss Noah, and quick to accuse him of not suffering as much as she has as the illness progressed. It’s not true, it’s just that Ed internalizes his pain rather than displays it. It means it sometimes emerges in flashes of anger or reckless behavior, often on location. But he knows that Fiona wanted to see him hurt more right in front of her eyes, so she could be sure that the depth of his response matched her own, and that she wasn’t suffering alone.
He never could do it, though. It felt more important to be strong in front of Noah, to bring some lightness to the boy’s life, until the next time Ed packed his bag and set off for the airport.
He groans softly as he maneuvers himself into a sitting position.
The bureaucracy of death looms. There will be things they have to do, a funeral to arrange. He stands, opens the shutters, and squints into the wash of tepid morning light, and he, too, notices the stripes the clouds have made in the sky.
When he turns away from the window, he sees the papers on his office table that relate to Hartisheik refugee camp.
Once again, his mind fights its way back through the past few days, until he reaches the evening of his private viewing and the conversation he had with Abdi late that night.
He was home, he was drunk, and he was sitting in his office at the end of the most bittersweet night of his life. Abdi knocked on the door.
“Mr. Sadler?”
“Come on in!” Ed had been glad to see somebody. He wasn’t quite ready to let go of the night yet. He’d been disappointed to find all the lights out in the house when he got home, even though it wasn’t very late.
He poured himself a nightcap.
“Do you want one?” he asked Abdi.
“No, thank you.” The boy was embarrassed. Always such a modest, polite boy.
“Sorry! I forgot. You’re Muslim.”
“I’m too young, Mr. Sadler.”
“Too young. Of course. Though at your age I’d already drunk my fair share of beers.”
Ed winces at the memory of his insensitivity. Did he really say that? He has a very bad habit of losing polite filters when he’s had a beer or two. He’s got into more than one or two fights at hotel bars around the world as a result. But he’s also managed to bed one or two women he wouldn’t have dared to proposition otherwise.
He shakes his head. That’s a terrible thought to have on this day of all days. What’s wrong with him?
Ed remembers that Abdi sat down beside him and asked him about Hartisheik camp and what it was like there. He remembers that he showed Abdi all the paperwork and the map he had in his files.
So it wasn’t much, then, the conversation, Ed thinks. Just a chat, stimulated by what Abdi had seen in the exhibition. Of course the boy was bound to be interested. It was his heritage, after all.
Nothing else about the conversation comes back to Ed, although he has a niggling feeling there’s something he’s not remembering. He shrugs it off quickly, though. The past few days have been mind-blowingly difficult, he tells himself. It’s nothing.
Ed just hopes he didn’t tell the boy how shit-scared he felt most of the time he was there. How he dreaded the thought of being kidnapped. Couldn’t wait to get back to Addis Ababa.
From upstairs, he can hear her voice. She must have answered that phone call.
He’s about to go to her when he finds he can’t face it. He sinks back down onto the sofa.
“Noah!” he says, and his voice cracks.
It’s a long time before he’s able to stop sobbing. The feeling of missing his child is like hearing a shrill, high note on a violin that’s never going to stop.
News first thing in the morning is that Noah Sadler’s computer has thrown up some interesting Internet search history results from late on Monday night, during the hours we believe that he and Abdi were at home after the exhibition opening and before they left the house.