“Tired,” Wyatt finished.
I swallowed. “Yeah.”
He drove slowly up the lane. The house loomed closer. The white paint had gone chalky and thin, streaked with grey. The front steps were the same cracked concrete Ray always cursed but never fixed. One of the eavestroughs hung crooked near the corner, dripping rust stains down the siding.
Wyatt parked beside the house and shut off the engine.The sudden quiet roared in my ears. No traffic. No neighbours yelling. Just the far-off sound of wind running through dry grass and a magpie arguing with itself on the fence.
I opened the door before I could think too long. My feet crunched on the gravel. The yard looked smaller than I remembered. The garden, overgrown with weeds, had once been my happy place. I didn’t let myself look too close, one thing at a time.
Wyatt came around the truck. “You want to go in first?” he asked.
I stared at the front door. The screen still had the same tear in the corner, mended with duct tape. The welcome mat was the one I’d bought Ray as a joke that said Wipe Your Damn Feet. It had faded to a soft, stubborn ghost of letters.
“Yes,” I said.
I pushed the door open like I’d done every day for most of my life. The house breathed out at us. Old air. Stale coffee. Dust. The faintest trace of him under it all, wrapped around the walls and floors and furniture in a way that made my vision blur.
I stepped over the threshold, and the grief hit hard and fast because there wasn’t anyone yelling out asking who it was.
This was where he’d cooked me breakfasts and lectured me and tucked me in after movies. Where I’d slammed doors when I was sixteen, convinced he didn’t understand anything. Where I’d made the decision to leave for school at eighteen and not come back, and he’d hugged me so hard my ribs ached even though his face stayed mostly dry.
I swallowed hard and forced my feet to move. The living room opened up to the right. Same worn couch with the ugly plaid blanket draped over the back. Same scuffed coffee table. Same sagging bookshelf stacked with Western paperbacks and old manuals.
And there, in the centre of it all, facing the television that probably never left the news channel, sat Ray’s recliner.
Empty.
The air went out of my lungs.
I stepped closer. The dent in the cushion was deep, more so than when I’d left years ago. The blanket over the back of it had slid sideways. On the end table beside it, his coffee mug sat half full, ring of dried brown along the inside.
I grabbed the back of the chair. My knees finally gave out.
I didn’t sob. It wasn’t dramatic. It was worse. Silent, shaking breaths that tore through my chest while my fingers dug into the worn upholstery.
“He’s gone,” I whispered. “He’s really gone.”
Behind me, the floorboard creaked. Wyatt stayed inside the doorway. He didn’t move toward me. He didn’t look away.
“He loved that chair more than any person,” I said, the words tumbling out because if I didn’t talk, I’d scream. “He used to say if the world ended, he’d ride it out right there, beer in one hand, remote in the other.”
“Sounds like him,” Wyatt said.
I wiped my face with shaking hands and turned away from the chair before I tried to climb into it and never move again. The kitchen door stood open, the worn linoleum catching the light.
“I can make coffee,” I said, because the alternative was curling into a ball. “He’d want that. Coffee first, I’ll cry more later.”
“You don’t need to make me coffee,” Wyatt said.
“It’s not for you, it’s for him.”
He dipped his head, conceding the point. “Then I’ll drink it,” he said. “On his behalf.”
Something about that steadied me. I walked into the kitchen on autopilot. The counters were cluttered, but in a way I understood. A plate left drying. A jar of instantcoffee. The sugar canister I’d painted as a kid, still chipped along the rim.
My hands found what they needed without me having to think. Filters. Mismatched mugs. The sound of water running into the carafe filled the silence.
Behind me, Wyatt moved through the house. His footfalls were slow and respectful. Not snooping. Just taking stock. He paused near the back door, probably looking out over the yard.
