The Aftermath
Three glasses in a week.
One on the floor, smashed to bits on the cracked grey tiles. Chunks of grout rolling like pebbles, lodging between her toes.
The second in the sink, a slip of her hand and down it goes, shards sinking in a sea of sudsy water.
The third glass, her favourite tumbler, the one with the faded Police Technology logo, all the way from from her alma mater three provinces over, 20 years ago.
Caught the edge of the counter and just like that...
It mysteriously appeared one day in the cupboard above the fridge, hidden behind a set of twelve black and pink flower china coffee mugs. Garish eighties decor unearthed.
A heavy beer stein, good for half a pint of cheap draft- Laurentide or Labbatt 50, maybe Maudite if they were feeling flush.
Probably picked up at a Goodwill or Value Village by one of the myriad exchange students who frequented the house before she set down roots 4 years ago.
Digging up bones.
She sits at the kitchen table, crumbs from this morning's toast sticking to her forearms.
So much to get through.
Reams of paper, bills, notes, and keepsakes she really has no business reading.
But if not her, then who.
All of this, left behind.
Eighty-one years of a life gathered up in two banker boxes overflowing with ancient telegrams, faded pictures, file folders of birth records, land deeds, insurance forms, grocery lists, half finished poems, a dog license.
The bundle of letters catches her off guard.
Bound together with sagging elastics hanging loose like tired limbs, exhausted after years of constant tension.
Pulled too tight they relent, helplessly.
Drained, spent. Done.
She can't bear it.
All week she's been coming apart at the seams. There is nothing left but the i's and t's.
Dot, cross, and so it goes.
He's in her head as she holds the letters in hand.
Above and beyond everything she's experienced in the last few months, this feels by far the biggest violation of all.
His body betraying him, his mind failing; the physical degradation she witnessed and served, none of it feels as personal, as intimate as what lays in front of her now.
The phone rings.
A shot across the bow.
Now.
Now.
One on the floor, smashed to bits on the cracked grey tiles. Chunks of grout rolling like pebbles, lodging between her toes.
The second in the sink, a slip of her hand and down it goes, shards sinking in a sea of sudsy water.
The third glass, her favourite tumbler, the one with the faded Police Technology logo, all the way from from her alma mater three provinces over, 20 years ago.
Caught the edge of the counter and just like that...
It mysteriously appeared one day in the cupboard above the fridge, hidden behind a set of twelve black and pink flower china coffee mugs. Garish eighties decor unearthed.
A heavy beer stein, good for half a pint of cheap draft- Laurentide or Labbatt 50, maybe Maudite if they were feeling flush.
Probably picked up at a Goodwill or Value Village by one of the myriad exchange students who frequented the house before she set down roots 4 years ago.
Digging up bones.
She sits at the kitchen table, crumbs from this morning's toast sticking to her forearms.
So much to get through.
Reams of paper, bills, notes, and keepsakes she really has no business reading.
But if not her, then who.
All of this, left behind.
Eighty-one years of a life gathered up in two banker boxes overflowing with ancient telegrams, faded pictures, file folders of birth records, land deeds, insurance forms, grocery lists, half finished poems, a dog license.
The bundle of letters catches her off guard.
Bound together with sagging elastics hanging loose like tired limbs, exhausted after years of constant tension.
Pulled too tight they relent, helplessly.
Drained, spent. Done.
She can't bear it.
All week she's been coming apart at the seams. There is nothing left but the i's and t's.
Dot, cross, and so it goes.
He's in her head as she holds the letters in hand.
Above and beyond everything she's experienced in the last few months, this feels by far the biggest violation of all.
His body betraying him, his mind failing; the physical degradation she witnessed and served, none of it feels as personal, as intimate as what lays in front of her now.
The phone rings.
A shot across the bow.
Now.
Now.
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