Marshall Crowder glared at his closed bedroom door and tried to lose himself in its intricate, wood-grain whorls. On the other side, the wake limped toward its end. Friends and neighbors talked about anything, trying to fill the space of the person so conspicuously missing.
He knew he should be out in the living room. They only wanted to ease his pain, but he just couldn't take it any more. There was such a thing as too much help. Marshall's sister in law had even washed all the sheets in the house, taking away his last defense against these early empty days.
Sitting on the foot of their no his bed, Marshall ran fingers along his muted red tie. Anything to avoid looking down at the green Bell Button on the damned prototype phone held in his trembling left hand. He stood up, automatically smoothing wrinkles from the flower-patterned comforter as best as he could under its weight of heavy winter coats.
_We bought that just before I brought home the phones._
His mind shied away from that thought with a quickness that might have surprised anyone watching his lethargic movements. As he shambled around the bedroom, his feet never left the carpet, his knees barely bent.
By habit more than anything, he returned the phone to the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He found himself staring at the comforter and wrenched his gaze from the bed. It was no use. Everything in their bedroom reminded Marshall of her.
A picture taken during their thirtieth anniversary stood on the wooden dresser. Marshall barely recognized his own face. Here on the night of her wake, deep furrows etched their way into his cheeks, frown lines impossibly ancient in only a week. He wore the face of a man two decades older than his fifty-three years. Marshall turned the picture toward the wall.
He shuffled across the room as if the slightest bump would fracture his spun-crystal integrity. Stopping at the head of the bed, Marshall looked at the foam pillow he bought to ease her neck spasms. He snatched it up in both hands, bringing it to his face. Marshall sniffed deeply, and smelled only Tide detergent. The faint hint of cinnamon, the merest possibility of sandalwood, all absent. Her scent was gone. Jeannie was gone.
But maybe not gone for good. Marshall felt for the fragile fault lines in his mind, the lines he knew must be there for him to even think, to hope, that he was wrong. Even in his grief, Marshall knew it wasn't rational.
"I just... I'm not sure I could take it," he whispered as he slumped back onto the bed. Marshall rubbed at his dry eyes and stared into the distance. "You'd understand. Right?"
No reply. But, then, that wasn't the question he wanted answered.
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