Page 37 of The Midnight Hour
Home sweet home indeed, and yet it’ssafe.
I sink onto the end of the double bed, gazing around in weary wonder. The entire house is carpeted in electric-bluematting, the kind you’d see in a school or a gym. It reminds me of being at one of those residential activity centers kids were required to go to in around eighth grade, for team-building exercises and organized fun. This whole experience is giving off something of the same vibe, but I tell myself that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We’re not looking for five-star accommodation, after all. We just want to be safe.
“You okay?” Daniel asks as he comes into the room.
“Yeah.” My voice is clogged, and I have to clear my throat.
Daniel frowns. “Alex…”
“It’s okay,” I say quickly. I don’t want to give in to emotion, togrief, because I’m fast realizing that’s what this is. I can see it coming for me, a towering tidal wave of sadness, ready to crash over me and then drag me under. I can’t let that happen, and yet I’m afraid I’m powerless to stop it.
It’s been only a week since the cottage burned down, since my mother, Kerry, and Justine all died, since we lost everything. A week where I’ve soldiered on, focusing on practicalities, but now I’m not sure I can do that anymore. Now, sitting in this bare, ugly little room, I miss the cottage, the life we’d built there, with an intensity that leaves me breathless, a sharp pain of yearning lodged underneath my ribs, so it hurts to breathe.
I think of the sunlight pouring in through the living room windows and gilding the lake in gold. I remember Ruby drawing new, baby-skinned potatoes from the earth, a look of pride and wonder on her face, and Mattie and Kyle fishing by the lake, two slender silhouettes against a twilit sky. I think of glorious sunsets and the sense of peace that seemed to hover over the whole place, of Kerry and me laughing so hard our stomachs hurt, of the comforting crackles of woodfires in the evening and snow heaped on the railing of the deck like mounded icing, the whole world cloaked in white, with the hushed stillness that only comes from three feet of snow over everything.
None of it was what I’d originally wanted, when we’d arrived there last November, but it became something good and true. Something I loved and was proud of because I’d both shared it and built it with my own hands.
And now it’s all gone, along with people I’ve loved, and the future is a depressing little room with a stained mattress and fake wood and a life of obeying the orders of a faceless group of middling bureaucrats.
Yet, I remind myself, we will be safe and fed. We will haveshowers.
I press the heels of my hands to my eyes, hard enough to hurt, so I see flashing lights beneath my scrunched-closed eyelids, but it’s not enough to keep the tears in. They seep out anyway, silently trickling down my cheeks. I feel the mattress dip beneath Daniel’s weight as he comes to sit next to me.
He puts his arm around me, draws me close, so my cheek is resting on his shoulder. Neither of us speaks; the tears are still coming, now dripping off my chin. I couldn’t stop them even if I tried, and I’m not trying anymore. There’s a release, in weeping, and one I haven’t indulged in for some time. I thought I needed to be strong for everyone, but I think of Mattie crying the other day by the stream, and I wonder if that’s what I’ve needed, too. The release, as well the acceptance of grief…even if it doesn’t actually change anything, which I already know it won’t.
“Do you think we made a mistake in staying?” Daniel asks after a few minutes have passed. I can hear Mattie and Ruby in the other bedroom, moving furniture around, already making this place a home.
“No.” My voice wavers and ends on a sigh. “I don’t. I just…wish things were different.” Which is so obvious it’s absurd, but I don’t know how else to articulate how I’m feeling. I misseverything—mornings drinking cleavers coffee with Kerry, the smell of the damp spring breeze when I stepped out onto the deck. My mother’s fond smile, her eyes dimmed bydementia. The way Ruby’s would light up when she found a plant she could do something with, even if the rest of us just saw a straggly-looking weed. Mattie’s fierceness in trying to tackleeverything, the way the cottage seemed to settle at night, the beams creaking comfortably as the fire crackled and blazed.
I want it all back so much, and yet I force myself to remember everything else about those brief months at the cottage—the ever-present fear of something going badly wrong, and the gut-churning anxiety when it did. The constant terror of being invaded, which we were. The yawning sense of uncertainty about everything—where we would find food, what would happen to the whole world.
Here we are safe. We’re provided for. I don’t need to be scared in the same way, even if the future remains uncertain and unknowable.
I force my head up from Daniel’s shoulder. “It’s just this carpet,” I tell him, as he raises his eyebrows in query. “It’s so ugly.”
He lets out a huff of laughter and then draws me close again, brushing a kiss against my forehead. I close my eyes, savoring the moment of togetherness, because they’ve been so few and far between.
“Okay, ew?”
We pull apart to see Mattie standing in the doorway, fists planted on her hips, a look of disgust on her face.
“Sorry,” Daniel murmurs. “How’s your room?”
“Like, minuscule,” Mattie huffs. “We’ve put the beds together so there’s room for Phoebe.”
“Let me see,” I say, dredging up a smile, and I follow her to the second bedroom, which is just as small as ours. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than we’ve had recently. I glance around for Phoebe and see she is sitting on the kitchen floor, pulling pots out of a cupboard, like any toddler might.
I walk into the kitchen and, simply because I can, turn onthe faucet. Water rushes from it and I run my fingers through it, amazed and gratified. Besides the shower today, I haven’t seen running water since November. It feels like a miracle.
I tell myself this really is going to be okay.
Mattie, at least, seems energized. She makes up the beds, and then announces that she, Ruby, and Phoebe are going to look around.
“Look around?” I repeat, already alarmed. “What do you mean?”
Mattie shrugs. “This is our home for, like, theforeseeable. I want to see what it’s like.”
I glance at Daniel. “I don’t know…”
