Chapter Eighty-Two
…the moments that Henry remembered.
Henry
11:41 AM
The drumming of the rain against the window panes filled the kitchen and the den; it stiffened the air and pressed in from all sides until it felt as though they were trapped in a tunnel of sound. No one spoke. Russell stood by the window at the far end of the kitchen table and stared out vacantly into the grey gloom beyond the net curtains, his hands on his hips pushing back the folds of his black overcoat. Beads of rain still clung to the wool. It felt like they were waiting for every last one of those pearls to evaporate before they would hear whether the FBI had caught Kostov.
Henry pushed up the sleeve of his shirt again and frowned down at his watch—again. The CIRG agents must have been there by now, surely, and the local PD officers too. You'd think one of them could have called. But they'd have more important things to do, of course, like securing a perimeter around the clinic, making sure Elizabeth and Will were safe, finding a way to stop Kostov without detonating the bomb—if he had a bomb. No news was good news.
Or so he kept telling himself.
He tugged the cuff of his sleeve down, and eased away from the edge of the shelving unit where he'd been perched. Stevie and Alison sat with their backs to him, their elbows propped to the kitchen table, their hands folded in front of them and hiding their mouths. He squeezed their shoulders, and as they twisted around to look up at him with eyes white with worry, he gave them both a taut smile. It was meant to reassure them—they had gotten through to the clinic, they had warned DS about Kostov, Mom would be fine.
But they didn't return the smile. And after a moment, they resumed staring distantly out across the kitchen, past Agent Hayes who leant against the stool at the end of the island, the photographs that sprawled across the tabletop in front of them—and that had brought them that moment of connection before—now forgotten.
There was nothing quite as lonely as being in a room full of people but being trapped in one's own fears and thoughts.
The trill of a cell phone cut through the thrum of the rain.
Russell pivoted to face Agent Hayes, his eyes wide and his eyebrows arched. The girls withdrew from the tabletop, and their shoulders tensed beneath Henry's touch. Jason straightened up from his hunch in the chair at the head of the table, and he wiped his palms down against his jeans. The thrum of the rain threaded through Henry's veins and dissolved all thought.
"Agent Hayes." Agent Hayes stepped away from the stool and turned his back on them as he clutched his cell phone to his ear. He wandered away along the channel between the island and the countertop. When he reached the far end, he came to a stop.
Seconds stretched into minutes; minutes spun into hours; silence hushed the rain.
Then— "Thank you for letting me know."
With his back still to them, Agent Hayes lowered his cell phone, and cradling it in his palm, he stared down at the screen, though the screen emitted no light of its own, just reflected ripples from the lamps overhead.
After a long moment, he slipped the phone into the pocket of his overcoat. His shoulders rose with a heavy breath, and the drops of rain that beaded the black wool glistened.
"So?" Russell demanded. "Did they get him? Did they catch Kostov?"
Agent Hayes pushed his shoulders back and straightened up. He turned to face the table. But rather than answering Russell, he stared straight past him and looked to Henry instead. It felt as though a wall had risen up around the agent, and his soul had retreated inside. "Dr McCord…"
A clammy roil of nausea rolled through Henry in an unrelenting tidal wave. A thick tang of saliva flooded his mouth. His jaw clenched. Elizabeth.
"No." He shook his head, his jaw so tight he had to force the word out.
"Dr McCord—"
"No." He shook his head again. His hands fell away from the girls' shoulders and hung empty at his sides. "We got through to them. We warned them."
"Dr McCord—"
"No! We warned them." His voice strained. "We warned them." He spun to Russell. "You promised me she'd be safe. You promised me he wouldn't go anywhere near her. You promised."
He waited for the retort, but Russell just bowed his head and avoided Henry's gaze.
The silence ached. Henry's voice surged to a shout. "Why didn't they stop him?"
"Dr McCord—" Agent Hayes had been creeping towards the near end of the kitchen island half-step by half-step, but at the shout he stopped. "—the agents on the gates only received word of Kostov's approach after he was on the track heading towards the clinic. They pursued, but Kostov accelerated, and when the agents fired shots, Kostov lost control of the vehicle. The vehicle crashed, causing the bomb to go off—"
Henry sank back against the shelves. One hand wrapped around the wood so tight that his nails chipped the white paint; his other hand clutched the bridge of his nose. "Is my wife alive?"
"With the amount of fuel in the car, the explosion was significant—"
"Is my wife alive?"
"Due to the fire and the risk of a secondary explosion, our agents are currently unable to reach the building—"
His eyes snapped open, and he glared at Agent Hayes. "Tell me: Is my wife alive?"
Agent Hayes's mouth opened, and then closed. His throat bobbed with his swallow. "They'll keep trying to make contact, but…there's no response from inside."
Silence engulfed the room. Even the thrashing of the rain succumbed to that endless sound.
No one moved.
Henry couldn't move if he wanted to. His whole body had turned to a solid block of numb.
The photographs sprawled across the table in front of him. Each one a millisecond of life.
o
Elizabeth cradled the glass of Merlot to her chest, the stem slipped between her third and fourth fingers, whilst the kids' wails reverberated through dining room and shook off the walls—now thick with mashed potato. Her gaze cut through Henry sharper than a vasectomy scalpel could. "The next time you so much as think about impregnating me, I want you to remember this scene." She raised her glass to him, and gave him a nod, just as a floret of broccoli whistled past his ear and landed with a wet splat on the floor. "Happy Thanksgiving, Henry."
o
Elizabeth's chin dipped, and the strands of hair that Henry had just tucked behind her ear swayed forward again to wisp around her face whilst her lips parted over unspoken words. When she met his eye, it was with a blue so pure that the world around them fell away and reminded him of the breathless thrill that comes when a plane soars up to the heavens. "I think it's sexy that you eat real food, not protein bars. I love it that you let our weird son force-feed you biscuits, and that you make fairy cakes with our girls. I think it's hot that you keep fit trying to keep our unruly brood in line rather than pumping iron at the gym. I like it that you ditch your Sunday morning run to cuddle with me in bed." She squeezed his hand where it rested atop her knee, and his heart melted. "That's what your body means to me."
o
The hush of snow twirled beyond the blackened window. Stevie lay with her cheek pressed to Elizabeth's chest, the marl blue t-shirt tucked around her, her fists opening and closing on either side of her head. She peered up at Henry with one half-open, all-blue eye. Henry brushed his fingertips over the strands of soft-soft hair, and then stilled as his thoughts turned to Elizabeth—haunted by the family she had lost, perhaps more so now that she was surrounded by the family that she had. His heart ached. "I hope you never truly understand."
o
"Wait for it." The gleam in Jason's eye took on a dangerous edge. "Dad…or Buttercup?"
"Oooooh." Stevie and Alison chorused. They leant into their arms folded atop the kitchen table, whilst their gazes swivelled to Elizabeth, mischief alight in their eyes.
o
Elizabeth stood in front of the dresser with her hands on her hips and her hair disheveled from its high ponytail, though not half as disheveled as the avalanche of clothes that heaped across their bed and spilled down towards the bag on the floor. "And is it okay if I take the second drawer for pyjamas and bras? Because you rarely wear the former and, I have to say, I'd be a little bit concerned if I found you wearing the latter."
o
Elizabeth sat across from Henry on the weather-worn bench, one leg folded in front of her to mirror his stance, their fingers tangled together atop the upper slat of wood. The golden glow from the Pavilions groped through the night and tinged the edges of the darkness that surrounded them, whilst the scent of barbecue coals still smouldered on in the air. Her smile widened. "So, basically, you're telling me that I have no choice?"
"Of course you have a choice, but I'm not going to stop until you make the right choice."
"I see… And the right choice would be dating you?"
o
Knelt on the burnt-orange bench at the end of their bed, Elizabeth looked down into Henry's eyes and toyed with the hair at his nape. "I'm okay." Then she tilted her head to one side and leant back until her hips arched into him. "Possibly working my way towards a stomach ulcer—" Her gaze returned to his and a smile lit her lips. "—but okay."
He massaged circles through the silk of her blouse as he clung to her waist. "You sure?"
"Really." She nodded. A pause as she searched his eyes. "Trust me?"
He gave her a soft smile. "Always."
o
Elizabeth stood with her back to the door—its once white paint now smeared with handprints and scribbles of blue Crayola. A tear trickled down her cheek, and she swiped it aside with the edge of her thumb. But then a second tear rolled down too fast for her to catch. It tumbled and splashed against the bathroom tiles. Her gaze trembled as she met his eye. "He loved me, Henry."
o
The blue-white glow from the television screen seeped through the darkness of the den and reflected in Elizabeth's eyes. Shadows danced across her face and left her expression all the more vacant, as though the spark in her soul had flickered out. The car crashed through the barrier at the edge of the track. It flipped and then rolled over, again and again and again. 'Game Over' lit the screen in red and Elizabeth's whole body tensed. Silence. Then— "I can't do this, Henry."
o
Henry lowered the house phone and clutched it at his side. Stevie had carried a lime green plastic stool down from her bedroom and propped it in front of the narrow ledge next to the front door, so that she could kneel there and rest her chin to her arms as she stared out of the darkened window into the amber pools of streetlights. At each roar of tyres across the tarmac, her head lifted and the sparks that had drained from her eyes momentarily relit.
He opened his mouth. He tasted the silence. What was he meant to say? "Stevie, honey, I just had a call… I'm sorry, but Mommy missed her flight."
o
In the shadows of his adolescence-stained bedroom, Henry cradled Elizabeth's head to his shoulder and stroked her silky soft hair whilst she fisted his tee as though afraid he might slip from her grasp. Scrunched up tissues littered the floor around the wicker chair in the corner and half-filled the mesh bin beneath his old desk. Elizabeth's chest shuddered against his with each breath, and her lips moved against the crook of his neck. "I don't want to ruin your weekend with your family. And I don't want to be the girl crying in your room."
o
A frown dawned across Henry's brow, and he swivelled to look at Elizabeth where she sat next to him at the desk beneath the arched window of the library. The sunlight unspooled through the glass and shimmered off her hair. "Babe…? Why do you have E equals M C squared written all over the inside cover of your notebook?" His frown deepened, and he leant in for a closer look. His nose wrinkled. "And are those…love hearts?"
Elizabeth turned to him, and her eyes widened as her gaze fell to the offending object. A flush of scarlet flooded her cheeks. "Oh my God…Will."
o
"You're home early." At the clunk of high heels being kicked against the wall in the hall and toppling onto the floorboards, Henry twisted to face the doorway to the kitchen. "Dinner'll be at least an hour." He returned to the stove, stirred the ragu, and then placed the lid on the saucepan and balanced the wooden spoon on top. He dialled down the gas to a blue simmer.
"Good. That gives us time to talk."
"Good talk or bad talk?" He flung the Snoopy and Charlie Brown tea towel over his shoulder and turned around. But then he frowned when he found Elizabeth stood in front of him, a nervous smile straining at the corners of her lips, whilst her fingers fumbled over the edges of the glossy orange cardboard box that she clutched in both hands. "What's with the ginger snaps?"
o
Jason groaned and wrapped his arms around the heap of cards that lay atop the kitchen table, and then dragged them towards himself. Meanwhile, Stevie cackled.
Henry clunked down the bowl of popcorn and slid it towards the middle of the table. "How many times do I have to tell you? Don't play Cheat with someone who can beat a polygraph."
o
The swirling confetti of cherry blossom tumbled down around Elizabeth where she sat on the chipped-white bench, one leg bent in front of her, her gestures animating her as she either ranted or rhapsodised at the man in a tweed suit perched at the opposite end. The subtle tug of the almondy scent reeled Henry in as he strode along the path towards them, his pace a touch quicker than before. The other man was so absorbed in Elizabeth that he didn't look up until Henry was no more than three strides away. Henry frowned at Elizabeth. "Babe…? Everything all right?"
o
Stevie's fingers plucked at the tumbler that she clutched in both hands, the inside of the glass still thick with the whitewash of milk. She stared across the kitchen table, with its scattering of biscuit crumbs, and towards her mother. "So why did you leave?"
Elizabeth traced her gaze up from where her fingers laced through Henry's, and she met his eye with a bittersweet smile. "Because, even if it hurts, and even if I'm missing them right now, and even if I sometimes say otherwise, I know that it was the right thing to do."
o
"Been for a run?" Henry wrapped his arms around Elizabeth, engulfing her where she stood in front of the vanity table, and he trailed kisses along the curve of her neck and down to her shoulder. Her skin was damp and warm. He slipped his hands beneath the hem of her tee, and at the hitch in her breath and as her eyes slipped shut in the reflection in the mirror, he grinned. "How about I help you warm down?"
o
The wall pressed cold against Henry's back as he hid in the shadows of the pantry, clothed in nothing more than his boxer shorts. His heart thudded so loud that he was sure it would betray his current location, that is if Jay would stop jabbering on and on and on about Sudan.
Jay fell silent. Then— "It's Valentine's Day, isn't it?"
"Kinda," Elizabeth said.
"…And that's not your shirt."
o
Sunlight unravelled though the arched window and spilled across the oak desk where Elizabeth was currently trailing her fingertips up and down the length of Henry's fingers. "So…" She stilled, and her gaze dipped as the hint of a blush warmed her cheeks. "Do you think if you were to look at my soul today, and tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, all the way up until I'm so old that whenever it's cold my hip aches, that you would see me—the essence of who I am—every day?"
o
Elizabeth gazed down at the baby boy cradled to her chest. He stared up at his parents with one suspicious dark blue eye, and his ears wiggled as he nursed. "Henry, he's beautiful."
Henry nestled closer against her side and pressed a kissed to her sweat-slicked temple, where the straggles of hair still clung. "Just like his mom."
o
The living room hung in semi-darkness. The only light came from the amber glare of the street lamps that cut through the slats of the blinds, and the diffusion of the off-white glow from the bulb at the bottom of the stairs. Henry stopped bouncing Jason against his knee and frowned up at Elizabeth as she raked her fingers through her roots. "Can I ask where?"
"You can. But you know I can't answer."
His jaw clenched. "It's Stevie's birthday next week."
"And I promise I'll be back."
o
Henry halted in the entrance to the living room. Two blonde heads peered at him over the back of the couch. Elizabeth's eyes were rimmed red and her gaze was glassy with what smelt like Scotch. His gaze flitted to Will, and then back to Elizabeth. "Can I…can I speak to you a moment?"
"That depends." Elizabeth slurred her words just enough to confirm that it was Scotch in the mug that she clutched to her chest. Her fingers flexed around the ceramic. "Are you here for your stuff?"
o
Henry scrambled off the end of the polished metal slide and knelt down next to Elizabeth where she lay flat out atop the balding turf. "Babe, you okay?"
Elizabeth eased herself up to sitting, and then grabbed the front of Henry's sweat-and-beer-stained shirt and pulled him in for a searing kiss. The fug of exhaust fumes and the promise of frost, the cloying scent of deep-fried doughnuts and cotton candy clouds, the lilt of calliope music and squeals of laughter faded into the background. At the chorus of wolf-whistles they broke apart, and Elizabeth grinned up at him with neon lights reflected in her eyes. "Let's do that again."
o
"So, why math?" Henry studied Elizabeth as she forked a tangle of sauce-drenched linguine into her mouth.
She pressed the back of her hand to her lips, and her eyes smiled at him whilst she hurried to chew and swallow her bite. Her mouth was still half-full when she said, "Because math is elegant."
He arched his eyebrows at her. "Elegant?"
She folded her arms atop the tablecloth and leant into them, and the silver chain with its turquoise pendant swayed away from the base of her throat. A faraway look clouded her eyes whilst she stared out through the candlelight-suffused glow of the restaurant. "Because math makes the complex simple, it identifies the pattern in the chaos. Because math is a form of discovery that points to a fundamental truth. Because math provides not only an answer, but beauty in understanding." Then her gaze returned to his, and she cracked a smile. "And it doesn't hurt that it comes with far fewer essays too."
"…there's no response from inside."
The photographs sprawled across the kitchen table. Each one a millisecond of life.
Those weren't the moments that Henry remembered now though, and they weren't the moments he would define Elizabeth by. She was the moments in between. She was the moments a camera couldn't capture. She was the moments he prayed would forever be preserved in his mind. Moments when they'd been so rapt in love and fear and joy and hate and togetherness and…
Life.
Nothing worth feeling was simple. Chaos was the reality that pattern attempted to hide. And the only fundamental truth was this: Everyone, without exception, will die.
And when they did?
Memories. That's what they left behind.
He would remember all the times she had been strong; he would remember all the times she had broken in his arms; he would remember how all those times were an echo of the unfathomable things she had overcome; so that when the ice cold waters of numb ebbed and the turbid depths of grief rushed in, he would remember to allow himself to fall apart—just for a little while—and then he would remember to pull himself together again, because that's what she would want. And each time that he looked to the sky, his heart would ache for the future that he had lost, before he found comfort in remembrance of the past that they had shared, and he would remind himself that her soul was still out there: waiting—for him.
But for now he would listen to the drumming of the rain as the heavens wept, and he would drink in the silent stillness of the room, and as the seconds gaped into minutes and the minutes gaped into a void into which all feeling went, he would try to make sense of what no formula could:
He had given her his glasses, yet: "…there's no response from inside."
At some point the rain had stopped, and the sound of silence thinned. Leant back in the chair at the head of the table, with one arm folded across his chest, his fingers bunched into a fumbling fist, Jason swiped a tear from his cheek using the heel of his thumb. The smear glistened across his skin.
Henry pushed himself away from the shelving unit he had been slumped against, and he shuffled towards his son.
But Jason shook his head and folded his other arm across his chest too. His scowl deepened as he stared silently at the sea of photographs, and silently his tears rolled down.
Henry paused for a moment, and then gripped Jason's shoulder anyway. The other arm he wrapped around Jason, and he pulled Jason's head to his stomach and cradled him there—He's beautiful, Henry…Our son.—and as he did, he both hid the photographs of Elizabeth from Jason and hid Jason's tears from the rest of the room.
The girls stared soullessly at the photographs too. Their eyes were red-rimmed. Their fists were tucked into the ends of their sweater sleeves, and their fingers worried the edge of the cotton. Black tracks stained Alison's cheeks, whilst beneath the glow of the lights, Stevie's tears shone white where they had coursed through her foundation. Neither sobbed, nor shook, nor brushed the tears aside, just let them spill down and splash onto the glossy sheets that sprawled before them.
The ghosts of their own carefree smiles beamed up at them.
Stood at the opposite end of the table, Russell cleared his throat. His voice scratched against the silence. "I should…I should brief POTUS."
But he didn't move. Instead he remained stood beyond the photographs, with his head bowed and his gaze lowered as though it were too much to look directly at either Henry or the kids. After all, grief could turn people to stone. It felt as though he were seeking their permission to leave, or perhaps seeking the right words to say, only to find again and again and again that there were none.
Henry didn't give him permission though, just cradled Jason against him and stroked Jason's hair whilst tears seeped through his shirt and dampened his skin. He might not be able to comfort his son, but the very least he could do was give him permission to let the tears flow.
After a moment or so longer, Russell drifted away into the kitchen, and with a jerk of his head towards the dining room, he motioned for Agent Hayes to leave too. Their footsteps led a solemn march that echoed through the house before they faded into nothingness.
That silent stillness returned. It ached even more than before, as though the death of each sound deepened it, and the deeper it grew, the more it hungered to swallow.
The pained pinch in Stevie's brow crumpled into a frown, and she reached out one hand towards the swell of photographs. Her fingers trembled. With her fingertips, she brushed away the overlying images, as gently as an archeologist would sweep away the top layer of sand, and then between forefinger and thumb, she gripped the corner of a photograph that had been half-concealed before. She tugged at it and eased it out until it slipped free from the pile.
It was a grayscale image, the edges curled and faded with time.
Stevie looked up at Henry. Alison peered at the photograph and then looked up at Henry too. Their eyes welled with tears, overflowing pools. Stevie's lips parted over an unspoken question.
Henry nodded in reply. His grip on Jason tightened. Whether it was for Jason's sake or for his own, he didn't know. He found out a moment later, though, when Stevie eased up from her chair.
The feet of the chair scuffed against the floorboards. The sound grated through the room, and fed the ensuing silence. With the photograph pinched between the forefinger and thumb of her left hand, she raised her right hand to one eye and then the other, and blotted away her tears with the cotton that stretched over the heel of her palm. She squeezed through the gap between her chair and Alison's, stared down at the photograph one last time, and then propped it against one of the never-lit candles on the shelf. It stood next to the frame that held Elizabeth and Will.
At the sight of the two photographs stood side by side—one taken by Elizabeth's father, a portrait of Elizabeth and Will that captured that last burst of innocence before the car crash that would follow; the other taken by Elizabeth herself, a candid shot of her parents sat side by side on the wooden porch swing of the house that would forever be her first home—Henry's heart broke. It rent open a hole in his chest into which all the silence in the world flowed.
Scalding tears spilled down his cheeks, and his breath hitched in his throat. Jason and Alison surged up from their chairs, and they flung themselves into his arms. He dragged Stevie into the embrace too, and he clung to the three of them, whilst silence turned to shaky breaths and hiccuped sobs. He wished that he had spoken to Elizabeth when he had driven to the clinic, rather than just watching her through the glass. He wished that he could see the smile he'd travel halfway across the world for, and that he could hear her laugh. He wished that he would open his eyes and find himself in their bed with her soft warmth snuggled in his arms. He could live without her—that realisation had hit him nearly thirty years ago—but each second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year that he'd shared with her since only strengthened his conviction: there was nothing at all in the world that would make him want to.
It wasn't meant to end like this.
He wasn't ready to let her go.
"Henry." Russell's shout echoed through the house. "Henry."
The kids stepped aside, and they all turned to face the kitchen as footsteps thundered through.
"Henry." Russell skidded to a stop in the doorway to the dining room. His chest heaved over his breath. "They've got her. DS have got her. They've got Bess."
Tears clung to Henry's words and thickened them so much that he choked. "She's alive?"
Russell nodded. "Cuts and bruises, but otherwise she's fine."
Henry's legs gave way beneath him, but the jostling of the kids held him up. They clutched one another and hugged one another as tears flowed freely again, though this time the tears gave life to watery smiles, gulping breaths and winded laughs. Henry's mind reeled, borne on the tides of a maelstrom. Once again he was lost for what to feel. But it was the opposite of numb. It was joy and love and relief and shock and hope and euphoria and confusion, it was another one of the nine lives lost, it was a step closer to death, it was a rebirth, it was a reaffirmation.
It was—
His mind stalled. His heart dropped. Silence filled his chest. "What about Will?"
Thank you for reading!