"I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil."
-J.R.R. Tolkien
"When are you going to open the lot again?"
Bud Gleeful sat up on the couch and shrugged. "I don't know. I was thinking in a few days, maybe."
"It's been almost a week already."
He merely shrugged again.
Louise shook her head as she continued to vacuum. "You can't shut yourself in from the world forever, Charles."
Look who's talking, he mused, though he said nothing.
His wife had been surprisingly unemotional lately, though he might as well have expected that—she hadn't been quite right for years, after all. But something had changed in the last day or two; she seemed irritable, impatient.
"Are you alright, dear?"
"Of course. Why wouldn't I be?"
"Well, you just seem a bit . . . off, or something, I don't know . . . "
"You wanna talk about off?" She stopped vacuuming. "For days now you haven't left the house—heck, you've barely left the couch! You've hardly said two words to me unless I asked you a question!"
Bud's eyes went wide. " . . . Isn't a man allowed to grieve in his own home?"
"It's been a week, Charles. You really should have gotten over it by now . . . "
"Gotten over it?!" He rose to his feet. "Gotten over it?! Louise . . . our son is dead!"
"I know that! And that's why I'm relieved, and so should-"
"Relieved? How could . . . for heaven's sake, Louise, Gideon was barely ten!"
"And for over nine of those years he was an absolute terror! I knew from the time he started walking that something was wrong with him!"
"There was nothing wrong with our son!"
"Don't deny it, Charles, you know better than anyone what he was really like!"
"He was an angel!"
"He was a demon!"
How could she say that about her own . . . Gideon would never . . . yes, there was that one time at the election, but other than that . . . and that time with the giant robot that landed him in prison . . . but still . . . !
"I could buy and sell you, old man!"
Bud's face fell. When had that happened? And why hadn't he remembered it before? . . . Well, no matter, regardless of everything else . . .
"But he was still our son! Not to mention that he was a hero! He was a hero, Louise! He helped save the universe!"
"And because of that I can forgive him!" She inhaled sharply. "Barely, but I can forgive him. But I can't forget what he did before, Charles. I can't forget everything he did to us—to you! And you shouldn't either." With that she turned away, slamming the kitchen door behind her.
Bud stood frozen in the living room for a moment, his fists and face still clenched. Within seconds, though, his body slackened, and he ran into the bedroom and at once collapsed onto the bed.
He felt too numb to cry, too tired. He lifted his head slightly.
There was a framed photograph on the nightstand. A picture of a married couple, young and happy. On the woman's lap sat their one-year-old son, dressed in a baby blue sailor suit that complemented his white pompadour and cherubic smile.
He rolled over, reached for the photo, and held it against his chest. His eyes shut, and slowly he drifted off to sleep, the muffled whirring of the vacuum still in the background.