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She’s in the kitchen, pots strewn about the stove, aromas wafting through the air.
She picks up one pan with a fabric potholder— a Christmas gift she’d gotten from grief counseling— and hums while she stirs another. She always felt lighter when she was cooking; it felt good to keep her hands occupied.
After the accident, she felt precariously close to losing herself entirely.
Now, after so much time, bleak evenings, nights without her husband, she finally feels just okay. But even that is enough to make her feel the very edges of something else, something new— hope. Hope that there was more to live for, and she felt confident that she was slowly finding it.
The shrill sound of a doorbell cuts through the bubbling and clatter of cooking pans. She pauses, scrambles to set down the current utensil in hand.
After smoothing out her cooking apron and patting down some of the frizz from her bun, she crossed to the front door and pulled it open.
She is greeted with the sight of two police officers. Her smile falters.
One of them takes off his hat. “Good evening, madam.”
“Hello,” she greets numbly, and it’s the last comprehensible thing she says to them.
“We have some bad news for you regarding your son.”
The words that follow are reasonable, sensible, clipped and recited to her plainly. Still, they make no sense.
Over the sound of the bubbling in the kitchen, over the sound of her blood roaring in her head, over the sound of her own swallowing, she can distantly hear the officers explaining it to her. She doesn’t hear or feel anything.
She’s numbly aware of a shift in her life that she knows she will never, ever shake. Time itself is reframed. Slowly stepping back into the house, she glances at the clock above the oven, above the food she will never finish cooking.
It’s been fifty-two minutes since her son died.
—-
Five hours after her son dies, she’s sitting in the police station, hands fidgeting in her lap.
It is the same feeling every time, grief, but the details and niches are different. She never thought she’d have to feel it so horrifically again.
Really, as she sits in the uncomfortable chair, she has doubts that she will ever be herself again. Her family always brought out the most authentic version of herself— they may as well have been buried with her when they died. Who was she without them?
The police station is all bright lights and desks with paper. The place is abuzz with people, talking and crossing over to each other’s desks. Neatly ironed uniforms and the smell of bitter coffee fills her senses.
Words of sympathy leave the mouths of uniformed men and women as they pass her by, little comforting touches on her shoulder that don’t reach her at all.
Some are still tossing glances to the TV screens, news channels showing scenes of firetrucks sputtering water on the last flames of a charred apartment building.
Someone is speaking to her.
“We have questions for you about your son’s history. We understand this can be difficult. You can stop at any time. Just let us know.”
She doesn’t like how this part is new to her— the questions, the investigation. She wants to go home. She doesn’t really remember being driven here in the police cruiser, then again, she can’t remember much. The officers had to turn off the stove for her before she left with them.
“Ma’am? Do you understand what we’re asking of you?”
She gives a nod.
“Remember, this is routine for a criminal investigation. We’re not asking anything more than we usually would. Let’s get started.”
As the questions begin, she tries to pretend they’re talking about someone else, tries to pretend that this is just her play-acting for someone else’s disastrous life.
The questions are so very foreign. She has to ask for them to be repeated more than once.
They invade and ask about every aspect of his life. Tendencies and habits she would have never thought about in regard to her son; then questions about his friends, about his job, his roommate, about his routines.
She balks when they ask about any history of arson. She has to ask for a break when they bring up his father.
After stumbling through all the answers she can, she’s thanked and is promptly driven back home. And she wonders dully if it’s even okay to grieve someone she clearly never really knew all that much.
—-
Three days after her son dies, she’s planning his funeral.
A tinny, customer-service voice is coming from her phone speaker, asking about what types of flowers and wood stains and lot numbers and it will be a closed casket, of course, and the mortician’s wax does tend to warp in warm interiors, there will be some bouquets outside and also inside the church so you’ll have to pick two from the list, and ma’am are you paying attention because time is really of the essence, and—
She remembers fixing Ivan’s tie. It was a few minutes before they walked into the church.
He had been complaining about being late, despite her gentle assurance that the funeral service was starting right on time.
She had smoothed down his navy tie with her palm, fussing over it as mothers love to do. And she remembers her eyes getting that stinging feeling when she looked over her son. She had told him that he looked just like his father.
Following those words, his face had made an odd twist into an unplaceable expression. She remembers saying sorry, remembers cupping a hand to her son’s cheek. He did not lean into the touch.
“Hello?” the other line asks her, jolting her back to attention. “Are you still there?”
She tightens her grip on the receiver and brings it closer up to her ear. “Sorry. Yes. Lilacs will be okay.”
——
Five days after her son dies, she picks up the copy of the death certificate from the coroner’s office.
The receptionist has to assure her that it’s the correct one twice before she can muster up the strength to leave.
——
A week after her son dies, she is at his funeral.
For all the planning she did, it’s ironic that most details of the service itself escaped her. She knows nothing will stay in her memory of today.
Time seems to slow and squeeze infinitesimally small into one, single pinprick of time— the moment she first saw the casket. Her son is in there, her only son.
There is a grief so strong that it forgoes tears. She feels like a little girl; she wants her mother. And then it’s over, and she’s out in the parking lot. The service has taken most of the morning; it was barely noon. She has a whole day ahead of her with no idea what to do.
Over to her car she walks, blinking, thinking about everything and nothing, when she sees one other man standing in the lot. The morning light is beating down against his suit, tangling itself in his hair.
She meets his eyes, vaguely remembering writing his name on an invitation. He’s holding a small bouquet in his hands, and once she steps close enough, he greets her with as much warmth as one could while standing in a funeral parlor’s parking lot.
“Hello, ma’am.”
She remembers her manners and nods stiffly in greeting, then looks down at the bouquet. “The service is over,” she tells him, not unkindly. “But you can leave it inside.”
He holds them up to her. “No. It’s just for you.”
Her eyes tilt from the flowers, up to the man. She says nothing, and doesn’t move to take them.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
She had heard that so much these days. It sounds very genuine in his voice.
“Thank you,” she says quietly. “I didn’t see you inside. Were you late?”
“No.”
He doesn’t elaborate. Honestly, she feels so far disconnected from typical human things that she can’t tell if this conversation is normal or not.
“I think,” she starts to say, and has to steady her voice before continuing, “I think I remember. You were friends with Ivan, right?”
His face stayed still. “I came over for dinner, once. I met you and your husband, and you had made roast beef. I remember it.”
“Oh. Oh, yes. I’m sorry, my memory has not been the most...” She waves off her sentence. “Um, was it Anthony…?”
“Andrew,” he offers gently.
“Yes. Now I remember. Andrew. With the video games. He used to talk about you.” She swallowed before asking, “You knew him well, then?”
“I lived with him.”
She lets out a tiny exhale. “Oh, is that why you’re here, then? If— if you want any of your belongings from the apartment, the police station should be the place for that.”
“Oh, no, ma’am. I moved out before it all.”
She frowned slightly. She hadn’t known that.
“But that’s not why I came.”
She waits for him to go on.
“I wanted to tell you about your son. There are some things that you… really need to know about him.”
She looked up at him expectantly, letting him speak.
Then Andrew takes in a deep breath. It seems like he’s about to start talking any moment, but then with one shake of the head, he shuts his mouth. His eyes rip away from hers.
“I, um,” he says, voice shattering at the end. “It… I’m sorry. I can’t. And I’m sorry for coming.”
He hands her the bouquet— more directly but not roughly— before bidding her a mumbled goodbye and turning to go.
She can’t tell what just happened.
——
Two months after her son dies, she finds the final police report dropped in her mailbox.
Suicide by first-degree aggravated arson.
The words are too harsh for her to connect to the memory of her son. There is nobody to arrest. She doesn’t know what to do with the paper.
——
Three months after her son dies, she finally throws away the last of the wilted condolence flowers.
She doesn’t speak for weeks at a time, and sometimes has to mumble out a word to prove to herself that she hadn’t lost her voice entirely. She can’t tell if it’s admirable independence or just loneliness.
A new emotion springs up— it tears deeper than all the nuances of grief.
It’s almost cathartic, how easy it is to trace all the tragedy back to herself. She cannot bear to think of her son as a criminal, but if he was, it was her fault.
Who else to blame but the most direct link? The woman who raised him, fed him, knew him, the woman who guided his first steps, the woman to whom he said his first words.
The same woman he did not trust to understand his final moments.
——
Five months after her son dies, she finds herself swarmed in paperwork.
The bureaucracies offer little sympathy, and their impatient emails and letters seem to have no end. Insurance policies, credit card cancellations, social security, apartment companies— it’s what her sluggish mind is forced to focus on.
It’s good, sometimes, to have something mindless to do, because it keeps her mind occupied.
But maybe that’s the problem. It’s one particular letter that prompts many hours at the dining table, staring, thinking, forgetting herself. A request for the list of belongings lost in the fire, for insurance valuation.
She can’t name a single thing that was in that apartment.
——
Eight months after her son dies, there is a knock at her door. She pushes herself from her thoughts and her armchair and goes to open it.
The sight of Andrew momentarily brings her back to the funeral. His suit has been replaced with a hoodie and jeans, and he’s holding a potted plant in his hands.
“Andrew,” she greets, and it feels odd to try and pretend to be a normal person. “Hello.”
“Hello, ma’am.” He nods to the side of the doorframe and notes, “You, um, don’t have a doorbell.”
She blinks at the gaping hole that’s beside the front door— the hollow opening that used to house that wretched thing.
“No,” she says quietly, and recenters her focus. “Can I help you?”
“I wanted to visit. And this is for you.”
He lifts up the plant a little. The small leaves, barely having bloomed out of the dirt, are green and healthy.
She stares at it, then back up at Andrew, and then lets him in.
As he stepped inside, Andrew had quietly glanced around the interior, eyes catching on the framed portraits but not saying a word about the people in them.
“You keep a very nice home, ma’am,” he says instead.
She smiles a little; it feels weird on her mouth. “You’re very polite— I do remember that. No wonder I let you hang around my Ivan so much.”
He nods mutely and sets the plant down on the kitchen counter.
She sighs and takes a leaf between her thumb and forefinger. “And here I thought I’d gotten the last of the flowers.”
“Try to think of it as just a gift.”
“In any case, thank you.”
They sink into silence. It’s her first visitor in ages, and she doesn’t know what to do. She has no food to offer, nothing pleasant on her mind to talk about.
“Would you like to see his room?” she asks eventually, because she assumes he must be here to talk about her son. There comes a puzzled at the look on Andrew’s face at the offer. “I haven’t touched it.”
His answer is curt. “No.”
A hard swallow, and she nods, turning back to face the plant.
“I’m sorry,” he quickly corrects, “I don’t mean to be rude, I just really can’t.”
“No, no, that’s okay. Heaven knows I can hardly even look at the bedroom door most days.”
His mouth crumpled into a slight frown, and she gets the vague sense that she’s been misunderstood. She doesn’t comment on it.
“How have you been holding up?” he asks, though there was really no good answer for that.
“Best as I can, really.” Then she remembers her manners. “And what about you?”
Andrew bristles at the question, presses his mouth into a line.
“Hard to articulate,” she says in his silence. “Yes, I know the feeling.”
His expression remains very still.
Despite the tension, it’s nice to talk to another human person, to have someone acknowledge her son outside of police paperwork.
The suddenly her vision is blurring, her hands trembling, until she sees her own tears dotting the leaves of the plant. Before she can think twice, words and falling from her mouth, all cramped from months in her mind.
“Sorry. Oh, goodness, I’m sorry. I just… I really do miss him. So badly,” she mumbles out, sounding all watery. “We were never close, not so much, but I’d give anything, everything to see him one last time. Oh, I know he had his traits, but I still loved him. Missed birthdays, late to… events. I knew. I didn’t mind. I never did.”
Andrew says nothing.
“Sometimes I convince myself that it was an accident, like with—“ She stops. “They try and tell me to accept it, that there’s no way of getting answers, but it’s so… empty. I know nothing.”
She wants Andrew to say the same, she wants him to nod and agree say he missed him just as much. It never came.
Andrew’s words were eerily even. “I think I have to go.”
She hurriedly turns to face him, standing up straighter.
“Oh. I’m sorry,” she says quickly, feeling embarrassed at her slip. “I’m very sorry. I haven’t had visitors in… I should have offered you something to drink, right? Are you hungry?”
“No, thank you. Ma’am, I’m sorry, but I really should be going.”
“Yes, right,” she mumbles sheepishly, and leads him to the door.
It’s after some more scatterings of apologies that she offers to him, “Maybe next time, you can come for dinner? Oh, though, on second thought, I haven’t been cooking much…”
Her words are a mess and she knows it. Andrew’s expression, nonetheless, is patient.
“Take care of the plant,” is all he says, voice gentle, and with that he’s out the door.
——
Nine months after her son dies, the evidence is released from police custody and sent to her.
Clothes are almost entirely burnt, with only tinges of dyed fabric peeking through the black chars. Video game cartridges are all melted plastic, along with the alarm clock. Anything else is mangled beyond recognition. The rest could not have been salvaged.
She can’t help but wonder how the firemen can be absolutely sure that these are his things, and not from the apartment over or below. This could be a stranger’s. This could have been someone else’s belongings entirely.
She leaves the police-sealed bag in his old room, atop his bed covers, and keeps her head ducked on the way out lest she glanced at anything more than she wanted to.
Back in the living room, she sees the plant, still on the kitchen counter, static in its pot. The leaves have begun to yellow at the edges, and the stems are drooping.
Feeling some sort of pity, she picks it up and positions it on the window ledge, angling it to face the sunlight most directly.
——
Ten months after her son dies, she has finally scraped together the courage to visit the grave.
There is a bigger one, in the city, but she thinks numbly that they are called memorials at that point.
The outside air is cool and the sky is tauntingly clear. Graves dot the field, crossed and marble blocks and flowers. The newest tombstone markers stare up at her. Her mind is quiet. She can’t think of the right questions or prayers.
——
Ten months after her son dies, she begins to cook again.
Gifts of food had long stopped coming from neighbors, and her recent meals had been skimpy and the result of the only grocery trips she scraped the energy together for.
Her stove had remained untouched for the longest time. It feels odd to use it again, but she falls back into the habit easily.
Andrew, whom she never expected to see again, took her up on the offer of dinner. It becomes a routine. Every once in a while, whether by invitation or of his own choice, he would come and stay for a meal. They would talk about the weather, about Andrew’s game, about cooking, each other. Rarely about Ivan.
She realizes it’s getting easier to speak out loud again.
He asks about the plant, and doesn’t seem hurt when she admits she forgets to water it on occasion. Similarly, when Andrew declines her offer for them to visit the cemetery, she doesn’t take offense.
The leaves of the plant have brightened somewhat.
——
One year after her son dies, her progress crumbles.
There was a program on the television, about fires and men and windowless apartments, all hobbled into a tasteless documentary. She shuts off the TV far too late, her curiosity having gotten the best of her.
For a week, until the press dies down and she can draw open the curtains again, the plant gets no sun.
——
Fourteen months after her son dies, she is sitting at her dining table with Andrew again.
“How is the plant?” he asks between bites of dinner.
She sighs, picks at her plate with the fork.
“It’s wilting again. And it’s my fault, I know it, though I don’t understand why— it’s back out in the sun and all.”
They both look over to the window in the kitchen, to the ledge that houses the potted plant. The tips of its leaves have, indeed, turned an odd shade.
Andrew speaks up first. “Plants are finicky things. I’m sure it’ll rough it out.”
“I don’t know, I can’t help but feel bad. It was your gift, after all.”
Andrew shakes his head skeptically. “Really, I think you’re doing a good job with it.”
Her unsure look is answer enough.
“It’s alive,” he says to her. “And you clearly worry about it. I think that’s enough.”
“I should be doing more.”
“You’ll drive yourself crazy. Just do what you can, and it’s enough.”
She hums thoughtfully, reminding herself to slot that away to think about later.
Tearing her gaze from the plant, she switches topics and asks Andrew, “How’s the game coming along?”
“Oh. Good. It was a little weird getting back into it after so long, but only at first. I couldn’t remember what half my old code did, to be honest.”
“I can only imagine.”
“You know, with the fundraiser doing well, I… I think I might actually be able to move out of my parent’s house again.”
She sets down her fork, smiling wide. “Really? Andrew, that’s wonderful.”
He’s also smiling, now, picking at his plate a bit sheepishly.
“Really, that’s great news. I’m so glad,” she goes on. “And, you know what? I think he would be so proud of you.”
Something in Andrew’s expression cracked.
Just as quickly, he recovers and smiles up at her. It doesn’t seem to fit his face, but she doesn’t blame him. Talking about friends is never easy.
——
Two years after her son dies, she is visiting his grave again.
The dirt in front of the stone has long since been taken over with grass, and the stone itself had grown a bit weathered with time.
It doesn’t bother her. Really, it served as a good reminder that she had persisted all this time.
These days, when she visits the cemetery, she finds it easier to sit and breathe and forgive herself.
There was not a person alive who knew the answers, and she had accepted that.
There was nothing anyone could have done to prevent this, and she knew that.
Some time after her son dies, she begins to live again.