Closure
AN: As usual, this piece falls under my 9/11 series. I recommend reading "First Time", "Something in the Blue", and "Painting the Sky." Also, for those of you who read "Painting the Sky", if you haven't already, I encourage you to look up pictures of the double rainbow in NYC because it was breathtaking.
Humming along to the song playing on the radio, he grabbed a spray bottle of cleaning product from under the sink and started wiping down the counters. Henry started by the coffee maker, so he could peek out the window at the kids. Before they started their bedtime routines, he'd sent them out to feed the horses leftover carrot sticks.
"I want to be with you everywhere," he sang along with Christine McVie.
With a playful roll of his eyes, Henry added another used spoon to the stack of dirty dishes in the sink. On Sunday nights, the kids pitched in with dinner. It always ended up being a mess— spilled spaghetti noodles, too many pots cluttering the stove, and red sauce dripping down the front of the bottom cabinets. His wife insisted that it was good for them.
Running a stained plate under the stream of hot water, he thanked God that they had two dishwashers in the prep kitchen.
After he'd worked his way through about half of the dishes in the stack, he looked up from the sink and glanced toward the other room. Henry's lips pulled down when he saw his wife hovering in the doorway. She looked like she'd seen a ghost.
Cutting the water, he asked, "What is it?"
"He's dead." She fiddled with her cell phone, passing it between her hands. "bin Laden," she added.
Grabbing the towel from the counter, he took in a breath. "Good," Henry said as he dried his hands. They'd been waiting to hear this news for the last ten years. "Is it being reported yet?"
Looking down at the floor, Elizabeth shook her head. "No, Isabelle just called me. She thought that I deserved to know before it hit the media," she explained.
Henry tried not to wonder how many laws Isabelle was breaking by spreading the word, but he was grateful that she'd considered his wife. Even after ten years, he knew that Elizabeth still tossed and turned in bed at night wondering where Osama bin Laden was hiding. Wondering when he would be found. He knew that she was itching to help. One afternoon in November, he'd watched her quickly click off a website. Leaning over her shoulder, he'd moved the mouse, going back to the web browser. Unsurprisingly, she'd been reading an article revisiting how bin Laden escaped in the caves of Tora Bora.
"Come here," he said.
Once she tossed her cell phone onto the countertop, she stepped into his arms. With his encouragement, Elizabeth tucked her face into his neck. When she started to cry, she pulled away and stared into his eyes.
"I thought I would feel happy, but…" Her lips twisted to one side. "I just feel sad again," she admitted before she wiped her eyes. "I'm glad he's dead, but I still feel so guilty."
Reaching out, Henry tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
"I'm here," he told her, not knowing what else to say.
After he placed a kiss on her forehead, he hugged her and whispered sweet nothings into her ear until the kids came in from the barn.
"Are there any more carrots?" Alison asked.
Recognizing the look in Elizabeth's eyes, he urged the children upstairs. Tonight, he would handle getting them off to bed, so she could stop and try to breathe. Henry helped the kids with their homework, checked the state of the laundry room to ensure that uniforms were washed and ready to wear, and supervised the shower schedule because lately, the girls had been fighting about who went first.
"Goodnight," he told Stevie.
Once Henry closed the door to her bedroom, he went to find his wife. With a bit of searching, he found her in the sunroom, phone to her ear. He let her be. She talked to Aaron Clark for over an hour.
"Sit with me," Elizabeth said, patting the middle cushion of the couch.
"Always."
Although they'd been waiting to hear the news of Osama bin Laden's death for the last ten years, it opened up old wounds. On Twitter, he saw videos of people gathering around the White House, holding up American flags, of groups flooding the streets in New York to celebrate, and of the USA chants in the baseball stadiums. Like the people online, he felt relief— this was the closure that the country needed. But he knew that the pain of 9/11 would feel fresh tonight, especially for his wife.
"Aaron put the girls on the phone," Elizabeth told him.
They both adored her.
Later that night, after watching the president's address to the nation together on the sofa, they moved into the kitchen. Sitting on top of the island, they ate ice cream straight from the carton. As they listened to the low hum of the radio, Henry poured them both two fingers worth of the good scotch.
"Dance with me?" He asked.
Taking his hand, Elizabeth said, "Only if you promise to take me upstairs and make love to me after."
He smiled.