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Renee made a habit of not looking at the shelf in the corner where the hourglass sat. It was her way of punishing him. She wouldn’t do it with words. She couldn’t do it with words. After six years she knew that. She wondered if she hadn’t known it the first time she had met John, seen the pride in Chas’ eyes when he’d called him his ‘mate’, and just known he was the man she’d lose her husband to.
Over and over again.
But little Geraldine. Sweet small thing, still thinks the world of her absent father. Renee wonders if Gerri knows the difference between her friends’ fathers and her own. Probably doesn’t – probably doesn’t need to. So she sits there and watches the sand fall. Knows the damn thing has something to do with him. Renee prays that’s another thing about her father she never learns. If anything Renee does can be called prayer.
She stares at the bottom of her daughter’s shoes, sticking off the ottoman Gerri dragged to the bookcase, and she sits on the couch across the room. There was a time she didn’t believe in magic. There was a time she didn’t believe in John Constantine. Not the one Chas talked about, half asleep, explaining the hell he’d lived in before The Warlock.
But John was real and he had never lied about the kind of life he lived in. Might’ve been easier on everyone if he did. Even before they had been married Chas had started disappearing at Constantine’s request. A ride here, a favor there. She knew it was trouble. Anyone would have.
John saw the fight boil up. Maybe then he thought Renee had some kind of power to convince Chas to turn off the taxi light, at least when it came to John Constantine. Renee was pretty certain no one could convince Chas of that. She thought that was why, two weeks after they came back from their honeymoon, John had shown up at the door with the wedding gift she hadn’t wanted.
“His life is yours. I mean it. S’ in your hands, bird,” he’d said and placed the damned thing in her hands. Told her what it was, too. She didn’t believe him. But she did think it was symbolic and earnest and that maybe John Constantine was getting the message that even if he needed Chas, that maybe Chas didn’t need him.
But then the call came. Morgue. Pregnant in a fucking morgue and she knew who was to blame. Christ, the state of him. The police man had thought she’d faint. Her ankles suggested she do just that, but she was going to kill that fucking fraud of a con man first. Gone up to his filthy apartment, nearly broke the door down, then just collapsed when he poked his beady eyes around the door. Sobbing, inconsolable. It took the man a few minutes to figure out what had happened.
Cursing. Cursing her. Cursing at her. Something about the police. Something about going home. Dragging her to a cab. “Sorting it out.”
Then she’s back at the house. Sitting on the steps outside wondering if she’s miscarried yet because wouldn’t that be her fucking luck?
That’s when John pulls up in a van, some scraggly ex-junkie of a driver pushing a pair of thick black glasses back onto his face every time he whines in John’s direction. He pulls a tarp out of the back, and she doesn’t think of what it is until it’s in her living room. Who it is.
Chas.
He’s stolen the body. He says he’s done something with the police and the morgue or the reports, but she’s staring at the husband-shaped corpse on her rug.
“Luv, I told you this. You got to turn it,” he says as he walks into the bedroom, searching for the cruel joke of a gift he left her with. It’s sitting on the dresser because she hasn’t thought of a better place since she set it down. Sometime around now she remembers she’s meant to kill him.
But there’s something assured in his air, a confidence she can’t find. One she’s never had. He walks into the living room again and holds out the hourglass. Makes eye contact and demonstratively turns it. Then he just puts the damn thing on the coffee table and walks out the fucking door like a goddamn stray cat.
She threw out the rug. Never bought a new one.
Somewhere far off she hears Geraldine gasp. As if on autopilot, she stands and strides to the bookcase. Gerri’s hands are almost to the hourglass but she’ll stop before she touches it. She knows better. Renee doesn’t know what happens if you turn it when it’s not stopped. Only what happens if you don’t turn it when it does.
And that the sand’s about a third of what it was when John gave it to her. It had been difficult to procure, he’d said. Only one. Sorry he’d missed his best mate’s wedding because of it.
Some days, she is too.