He gets the call at seven in the morning. Burt had already fetched the paper from the front porch and had been filling a paper filter with coffee beans when the phone rang.
Burt's hands shake when he mumbles out a reply - okay, yes, I can come then - and places the phone back onto the dock. His brain is miles away from his living room, drenched in new sunlight from the window, and he can hear the coffee machine percolating loudly in the kitchen just ten paces behind him. The house is exactly the same as it had been 10 minutes ago, and yet everything feels different.
Julianne would never walk into the foyer with shopping bags in her arms and Kurt hanging off her leg, shouting out the jumbled second half of a conversation the two had been having before they entered the house, or stretch to dust the ceiling fan while humming a ballad under her breath. She wouldn't cook or dance or breathe or crawl into bed with Burt late at night when their son was asleep, kiss him on the cheek, and curl her head under his chin and drift off to sleep with his hands pressed against her back.
It was just him and his boy, now. He and Kurt would have to fill the house built for three the best they could.
The journey upstairs is a lonely one. Pictures of Julianne are hung along the wall next to the staircase. Photos of her smiling with Kurt, popsicles hanging out of both their mouths had been taken two summers ago, before she got sick; another of her sitting on the couch, a white fleece blanket covering her frail body. She had a smile on her face, despite the pain, and had hung it on the wall as a statement, or so she said. The illness wouldn't interfere with her life. Burt just wanted to forget how sunken her cheeks looked.
Burt pushes open the door to Kurt's room with the intention of waking the boy to inform him of his mother's passing. Kurt is curled around one of his pillows, undisturbed, small hands making fists in the yellow fabric and chestnut bangs falling in his face. The sight makes Burt's chest clench painfully, though he can't bring himself to smile. He's probably dreaming, Burt figures. The only time Burt sees him truly at ease nowadays is when Kurt is asleep and the burdens of the world melt off his face. He smiles when he thinks Burt was looking, but sometimes he would catch his son twisting his shirt in his little fingers with an unreadable expression on his face, obviously thinking hard. He keeps his tears to himself, and only lets them out late at night when he's supposed to be sleeping or doing homework, and tries to stay in good spirits for Burt's sake. Burt can hear him at night, sniffling softly or sometimes whispering something, but he doesn't know who he's talking to. Maybe himself, or maybe God, if he believed in him. Burt hadn't for quite some time now.
When Kurt went to bed last night, his mother was alive, and for all the sleeping Kurt knows, his mother is still alive, asleep in the bed at Lima General, possibly dreaming the same dream as him. She may not be well, but she is breathing and smiling and sneaking him weak kisses in between his long-winded anecdotes and songs, and Kurt will bound out of bed to badger Burt into telling him when they're going to visit her. Burt doesn't know how he'll handle that, but he's going to have to accustom himself to rolling with the punches now. And who knows, maybe in his dream Julianne is healthy and happy with him, and maybe Burt is there too, and Kurt's life is like it was before the cancer came.
Burt won't take that from his son.
So he shuts the door. Because for now, Kurt has a mother with skin like porcelain and a voice like a summer wind, and Kurt has been strong for the both of them long enough. Burt can bear the brunt of the grief for just a while longer.