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It had been a week since Henry died.
Dave didn’t eat when he came home alone. Or the day after. Or the day after that.
Safe to say it had been a while. His heart wasn’t in it, he told himself. He would continuously open up the fridge—Henry’s fridge, he’d remind himself, and find nothing he had the will to actually consume.
He quickly found justifications. A personal favorite being ‘if I die of starvation, I can just come back no problem!’
It was a sustainable excuse. One that he could very well follow through on if he still refused to eat by the end of the month, the whole dying-and-repossessing-your-own-corpse business was no issue for Dave Miller!
Alongside the lack of eating anything the average person classifies as food, Dave was also sleeping very scarcely. A habit she’d had for years by that point, one that easily worsened with each new responsibility that had befallen him.
Henry took care of many things.
…Most notably, Henry took care of Dave. He took her in, clothed her, fed her, taught her everything she knew. Gave her knowledge she would have never had if it weren’t for Henry. Sure, sometimes love had its bad days, but with help, Dave had learned to endure the bad and take what good she could find!
Sometimes you have to compromise in order to love properly. Henry taught him that. And he couldn’t be more grateful.
Dave felt an uncomfortable stinging in her eyes. Her throat felt tight, like someone was squeezing her esophagus, like trying to wring out an orange. The house felt so quiet.
It was never particularly loud, Henry focused far better in complete silence, but at least she knew he was present somewhere, anywhere. Even when that fact was the thing keeping her wide awake at night, she found an odd sense of comfort in not being alone anymore.
He missed having that knowledge. He took it all for granted with each and every surge of anger he felt back then. Every night he sauntered back to his room with a new wound, kept awake and resenting their work, their dream, he was throwing it in Henry’s face and he didn’t even know what his daughter was thinking in the other room.
‘How could I have done that to the man who gave me everythin’?’ He’d think to himself, fingers idly drumming on the kitchen counter. Dave wasn’t even sure why he was there.
She supposed it felt like Henry, and that was now the closest thing she had. In his house, surrounded by things he bought and used, some form of him was still alive and the idea of it made her shudder.
He’d sure have things to say about her current behavior.
Sometimes she swore up and down that she could hear his voice in the back of her head, or see his shadow by the door.
Each and every time she’d hesitate, yet ultimately whisper “Henry…is that…is that you?” into the open air, and each and every time she would receive nothing in response.
Her movements had gotten clumsier, more sluggish. More than they had already been. Dave knew her coordination had been getting worse, but it was awful even by her standards. All she could do about it was put a hand to her temple in embarrassment and mutter something under her breath.
Naturally, he sent himself back to work five minutes later. Continued Henry’s work as he would have wanted. He didn’t exactly have an opinion on the matter anymore, it was more so something he did. And then, like clockwork, he would go back to that empty house sometime after 6:00 PM.
He always ended up back in the kitchen.
There wasn’t much to be said about it. It was a very bland looking kitchen, all things considered. No photos on the wall, no tacky ‘live laugh love’ signs the average suburban family seemed to own, only what needed to be there.
Henry is nothing if not practical, so it only makes sense for his kitchen to be the same way.
Dave’s favorite rooms to frequent after his passing were the kitchen and his study. He would rarely go inside, Henry would only allow him in when they needed to discuss something and it felt right to stay out of there with the circumstances laid before him, but it was nice to linger nearby.
As if a lightbulb was switched on in her head, she wandered to the door of Henry’s study like a dog waiting for its owner to return from work, and dropped all of her weight onto the floor directly by it. She propped herself up, now leaning against it.
“Henry, I, uh…” She trailed off, trying to find any words that wouldn’t instantly fail her. “I wish you were here. Really, really bad. I don’t know what to do without ‘ya! This is all…a lot.”
There it was, that stinging sensation again. His eyes welled up with tears he tried desperately to stop, to no avail.
Dave let out a laugh that sounded more like a strange hiccup. “You’d hate this…the way I’m bein’ over it…but, ah shit, you’ve gotta come back. Wasn’t that what this was all for, anyhow? Makin’ sure you’d never die? That no one would ever die again? I don’t…I don’t get it. I didn’t get it. I’m real sorry, Henry.”
He pressed his hands against his eyes. He couldn’t stand the tears rolling down his cheeks or the memories of Henry telling him to stop crying because it was interfering with a conversation that was necessary. It was all for a reason. A good reason.
The end justify the awful means. That’s just how it was. Dave had become smart enough to understand that at the very least, with Henry’s help. But what is a sheep without its shepherd?
Lost. Sitting against the shepherds door like he might one day open it again. She felt sick thinking about it.
“God, ‘m such a wreck…” Dave muttered to no one in particular.
After several agonizing minutes of sobbing into her hands, her breathing eventually slowed and her shoulders slumped in defeat. Her face felt uncomfortable, stained with tears, but she was in no mood to do anything about it.
So she remained in the same spot, eyes half lidded. The world felt quieter in that moment.
Henry wouldn’t be gone forever. Henry couldn’t be gone forever.
Thoughts of a similar caliber buzzed dully as Dave shifted to get comfortable in her spot, officially laying her head against the door and closing her eyes in search of respite.
She drifted off to sleep against that door.