Chapter 2 Her Absence

I went home that night to the echo of her absence.

Every wall seemed to remember her better than I did. Her coffee mug on the counter, her shoes by the door, her scarf dangling from the back of a chair, her scent all over the room.

I stood just inside the doorway, unsure whether I should move forward or retreat.

The world outside had demanded so much of me all day, pulling me through motions I barely understood - nodding, signing papers, saying things like,

"I'm fine," and "thank you for coming."

But here, in the hollow of our home, there was no one to lie to.

Here, every object she left behind whispered the truth: she was gone, and I was alone.

I sank onto the couch, the same couch where we had spent lazy Sunday mornings, her legs tangled with mine, coffee cups balanced precariously on the armrest.

I could almost hear her laugh, light and sudden, the way it used to fill the spaces between my words. The silence now was so thick it pressed against my chest, making it hard to breathe.

The remote lay abandoned on the coffee table. I picked it up, my hand trembling slightly, and turned on the TV - noise, any noise, was better than this heavy, grieving quiet.

A sitcom flickered onto the screen, its canned laughter absurd against the backdrop of my grief. I muted it quickly but left the picture on.

A flickering light.

A pretense of life.

I wandered through the house, each room a museum exhibit curated in her absence. In the bedroom, her sweater was still draped across the bedpost.

A book lay open on the nightstand, spine up, as if she had just gotten up to fetch a glass of water and would be back any minute to read a few more pages before sleep took her.

The words blurred in front of my eyes. I closed the book carefully, almost reverently, and placed it back where it belonged, unwilling to disturb the delicate illusion that she might return.

In the kitchen, her grocery list was still magnetized to the fridge. "Milk, eggs, coffee, strawberries." I traced her handwriting with my fingertip, memorizing the loops and curves. She always wrote in little hearts instead of dots over her i's. It used to annoy me - seemed childish somehow - but now, it was a sacred relic, something I would guard fiercely against the erosion of time.

I ended up back in the living room,

cradling her scarf in my hands.

It still smelled like her - that particular mix of vanilla and fresh linen. I pressed it to my face, willing it to bring her back. I thought if I just concentrated hard enough, I could summon her, as if love were a force strong enough to undo the laws of the universe.

A knock sounded at the door, sharp and sudden. I froze, the scarf clutched to my chest. For a moment, hope flared - a wild, irrational hope - but it guttered just as quickly. Still, I moved to the door, pulling it open like someone moving underwater.

It was Steve, standing there awkwardly, holding a six-pack of beer and a pizza box. His eyes, red-rimmed and tired, met mine with a kind of quiet desperation. He didn't say anything, just lifted the offerings in his hands like a peace treaty, or maybe a life raft.

"I thought you might... you know," he said, voice rough. "Need some company."

I stepped aside wordlessly, letting him in. The door clicked shut behind him, and for the first time all night, the house didn't seem quite so cavernous. He placed the pizza and beer on the coffee table and sat heavily on the couch, glancing at the muted TV, then at me.

We ate in silence, the kind of silence that's heavy but not unbearable. He didn't ask me how I was. He didn't offer condolences or empty words. He just sat there, anchoring me to the present moment when all I wanted to do was drift backward into memory.

After a while, he picked up the remote and un-muted the TV. Some absurd reality show was on now, a parade of strangers doing ridiculous things for attention. I let out a small, unexpected laugh - a sound so foreign it startled me.

Steve smiled without looking at me, just a small, sad twitch at the corner of his mouth.

We watched for a while longer, until the pizza grew cold and the beer cans accumulated on the table. Eventually, he dozed off, his head tipped back against the couch. I stayed awake, staring at the TV, the scarf still in my lap.

And for the first time since she left, I realized something: grief wasn't a wall to be scaled or a wound to be closed. It was a room I would live in now, and sometimes - if I was lucky - someone would knock on the door and sit with me for a while.

I pulled a blanket over Steve and leaned back against the couch, my eyes heavy. Around me, the echoes of her absence softened, no longer jagged, but worn smooth by memory and time.