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Hen has just put Harriet down, and the apartment is quiet.
They’re sitting in silence, he and Hen, across from one another and his kitchen table. It’s quiet.
It always feels quiet, though. Even when Harriet is screaming her lungs out over some mild inconvenience as babies do, it still feels quiet.
It’s always too quiet since Beth died.
He gets up to turn the coffee maker on, partially just to add a little more noise into the apartment even though he knows it won’t be enough to make it feel normal, and partially because he knows he’ll be up all night, anyway.
“Chim,” Hen finally speaks, voice full of disapproval, “it’s ten pm.”
“And you and I both know I’m not going to be getting any sleep tonight.”
“...Fine,” she sighs, closing her eyes for a few seconds before asking, “pour me a cup, too, will you? If you’re not sleeping, neither am I.”
He wants to tell her that she doesn’t have to, that she should go back home to sleep in the same bed as her very much alive wife instead of laying in his as they both stare up at the ceiling as they so often do, but he knows from her tone of voice that it’s not something worth fighting her on.
If he didn’t know how Hen took her coffee before, he’s certainly learned it over the past eleven months.
One sugar and just a tiny hint of milk that Chim thinks isn’t enough to even make a difference, but he knows not to fight her on that, either.
He sets the mug down in front of her before returning to his seat in front of her, his own mug warming his hands in a way that would feel comforting to someone who isn’t already feeling so completely numb.
“She’s going to be one tomorrow, Hen. She’s going to be one.”
“I know.”
“She’s going to be one tomorrow, and her mother isn’t going to be there. She’s not going to be at her daughter’s first birthday party because she died when Harriet was a month old.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
“I know.”
Hen hates it, she absolutely hates it when she doesn’t know what to say to him other than “I don’t know,’ whenever he vocalizes one of his never ending devastating realizations about his new normal. Chimney can see the tension in her face, the regret showing in her body in the form of locked muscles, but he appreciates it, really. Hen doesn’t try and look for some nonexistent silver lining, doesn’t offer him words that don’t mean or change anything.
She just agrees. It’s nice, in the darkest sort of way.
“You know, I was thinking about birthday presents when I was deciding what to get her this year,” he says, and the latter part stings as he re-remembers that it’s not just this year that Beth won’t be present for, “and I thought of something for when she’s older.”
“Oh?”
“Her mother’s ring. One year when she’s older-- maybe, like, thirteen, I could put the engagement ring on a necklace.”
“I think that’s a lovely idea, Chim. And it’s such a lovely ring.”
The lovely ring that still sits on top of the dresser in the bedroom, where Beth had left it last. He knows he should move it, should put it somewhere safer, but he can’t bring himself to touch it. It’s been eleven months and he still can’t bring himself to touch his most tangible memory of his fiancee, other than, of course, their daughter.
Beth always took her ring off when she gave Harriet baths, always (rather smartly, he thinks) afraid it would slip off in the sink and go down the drain.
Harriet’s hair smelled like shampoo when he found her, when he finally had the senses about him to go check the crib, where she was thankfully sleeping soundly, safe.
Unlike her mother, lying on the floor, not breathing.
It must have been quick, he thinks. She must have only just put Harriet down because she only made it halfway down the hallway. He wonders if she was going to go put her engagement ring back on.
She didn’t die wearing it. It shouldn’t matter to him, but it does.
It’s fucking stupid.
“How am I supposed to do this? How am I supposed to smile for pictures with my baby on her first birthday and pretend like it’s such a happy day when her mother isn’t there? When Beth had a fucking aneurysm only one month after our daughter was born?”
“I don’t know,” Hen whispers, tears in her eyes-- a rare occurrence before Beth died-- as she reaches out to grab his hand, “I don’t know, Chim. If you can’t, that’s okay. We can cancel--”
“We’re not cancelling Harriet’s birthday party.”
“She’s one, Chim. She won’t remember. She doesn’t really know what tomorrow even means.”
Just like she won’t remember her mother, and like she doesn’t really know what it means that it’s Hen and Karen being the ones to hold her when he isn’t, and not her mother.
“I need to have pictures,” he settles on, “I need to have pictures for her when she’s older. And I need… I need to get used to doing these things… doing these things without Beth there.”
“Okay,” Hen nods, “okay, well, I’ll be there. And if you cry, you cry. If you can’t smile for any pictures, then she’ll understand when she’s older.”
“I really hope so. Is this ever going to get better? Is it ever going to get easier to have birthdays, to have holidays without her there?”
Hen winces as she bites her lip, remembering just over a month ago when Chimney hadn’t been able to get out of bed on Mothers Day.
“I don’t know. I don’t have that answer for you, I’m sorry.”
“Everytime I think it can’t possibly get worse, it does.”
“I know.”
“You wanna know something stupid I worry about?”
“I doubt it’s stupid, but sure.”
“Beth was raised Catholic; we had Harriet baptized, so now my daughter is Catholic, and I don’t know shit about any of Catholicism,” he laughs darkly, almost desperately, “what am I supposed to do with that? Do I just let it slide and never take her to church or do I… we got her baptized for tradition more than anything, because Beth grew up that way.... She didn’t really believe in it much anymore.”
“I wish I could tell you what to do about that, but you know I can’t. It’s all up to you. I think Beth would understand either way.”
“Do you really think she would, or are you just saying that to make me feel better?”
“Have I ever lied to you at all during all of this before?”
Fair point. Hen has been beautifully, painfully, mercifully honest. Always, but especially since his baby’s mother had been struck down by a brain aneurysm. Random. Gone in seconds while he was out at the store.
On some logical level, he knows that even if he had been there when it happened, there’s nothing that he could have done. But he’s a paramedic, and he’ll carry the guilt over not being able to save his daughter’s mother for the rest of his life.
“Is it bad that I sometimes wonder why her and not me?”
“No.”
“She was so much more of a natural than I was at caring for a baby. Sometimes I really think Harriet would have been better off if I had died instead of Beth.”
“You’re a great father, Chim.”
“I sure hope so.”
“You are, Chim. I don’t lie to you, remember? And your daughter lost a parent. There’s no good side, there’s no it would be slightly better if… it wouldn’t be better on her if it was you. Either way it’s just… tragic. And you’re the one that’s still there. All you can do is be the best father to Harriet that you can be, and believe me when I tell you that you’re doing an excellent job.”
“She looks just like her,” he whispers after a long moment, looking up at Hen pleadingly as if there’s some magic words she could say to him that would make it all better, though he of course knows that there isn’t.
“I know. She looks like you, too. She looks like both of you.”
“Those pictures from the baptism… I should probably get those framed, right?”
“Yeah, probably. I can take care of that for you, if you want.”
“You’re priceless, Hen. I don’t know what I would do without you.”
“You’ll never have to find out,” she assures him, and he fights the urge to shake his head.
Beth had one time told him the very same thing.