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Death was a handsome devil.
Sansa didn’t bother to ask him if he’d stolen a body or if that was, in fact, his own. She didn’t want to know.
All she cared about was the fact that while her Daddy lay in white sheets stained with sick, Death had come to her door.
She’d always pictured Death to look like the images of Hades in the books she’d consumed about Greek mythology. She hadn’t expected him to be blond and green-eyed. She did expect his jawline to cut glass, because Hades’ jaw sure did.
He was also built like a Greek God in a form fitting black suit so perhaps he was Hades. Maybe he just had to look a little different because if folks saw him coming, they’d know that loss was on the way.
No one wanted to let Death in, but Sansa did because she figured she could talk to him about it. Sit down and offer him some sweet tea to sweeten him up. If she sat and spoke with him all nice and gentle, maybe he’d move on. She never let him get very far when he did come. Certainly nowhere near her Daddy.
Death smiled warmly at her and let her go on and on about her Daddy and how she was the best man she ever knew, that she had no boyfriend comin’ round because no one matched up to him. He taught her to read, ride a bike, even how to change a flat.
“You’ve told me all the good about your Daddy, Sansa,” Death drawled, “Is there anything bad?”
“He’s stubborn as a mule,” Sansa replied.
Death laughed. “Most of you humans are. Something can be sitting right in front of you and you refuse to see it for what it is.”
That was the first day.
The next day he wanted his tea hot and unsweetened and for a week straight that’s how it went. Sansa and Death sitting together in the parlor, sipping tea and talking. Sipping tea and talking. Sipping tea and talking.
She wanted to know the age of the oldest person he’d taken.
“Do you want to know the youngest?” he asked softly.
“No, thank you,” she said primly and he smiled a bit sadly. Even Death could feel things, and that gave her some comfort.
She asked him what it was like where he came from.
“It’s anything you want it to be. If you want a castle, you get a castle. If you want a field of flowers, you get a field of flowers.”
“Just like my backyard!” she laughed.
“Just like your backyard,” he said with a nod.
Of course he would know what her backyard looked like. It wasn’t quite a field of flowers, but as close as she could get to one. She still made time to tend to her garden in the morning before coming to help her Mama and family out with Daddy. Sansa liked to have beauty all around her; it made her feel at peace. She needed that peace now more than ever.
When Death came to visit her, no one bothered them. She heard her four other siblings traipsing through the house, heard her mother talking to the servants, but no one, not a one, intruded upon her visit with Death.
He came at the same time every day and she learned he preferred the glazed cinnamon scones Nan made, so she made sure to have that every day for him.
Sometimes, it felt more like she was entertaining a suitor than Death himself. He could flirt better than the town tomcat. And the way he grinned at her! If he wasn’t Death, she might admit it made her heart race just a little.
He was not what she’d expected at all. She had a feeling he could sell popsicles in a snowstorm.
And every time their time together came to an end she would walk him to the door. He’d bend over hand, kiss it, thank her for her hospitality and then look at her with heat in his eyes.
There was bound to be a glitch at some point, however, and that day came when her mother asked her to go to the grocery store for ginger ale for her Daddy. No one else was around to do it, and it had to be done for it soothed her Daddy’s nauseousness.
“Mama, look at me,” Sansa said frantically before she left. She gripped her mother’s hands, and the other woman looked at her in surprise. “If someone comes to the door, don’t let them in. Don’t let anyone in.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake, Sansa--”
“Mama! Promise me.”
Her mother rolled her eyes but promised.
Sansa rushed out, getting into her blue Chevy, and headed to the local market for the ginger ale. Of course because she was in a rush there was a line to the cash register. She all but threw her money at the clerk and did not wait around for change.
She hurriedly got back into her car after dropping the brown paper bag on the front seat, and set off. She was mere minutes from home when she heard the shrill shriek of a child and glanced to her right to see where it’d come from.
Then she heard the loud blare of a horn.
********
Sansa stood on the sidewalk with her arms by her side watching her body being covered by a sheet and then wheeled onto the back of the vehicle. The truck driver was sobbing. People were on their lawns watching in horror.
Sansa turned away from the scene and gazed down the sidewalk to see Death coming towards her.
“Was it always me you were coming for?” she asked him when he was close enough.
“Yes. I’m sorry, Sansa.” He sounded genuinely sorry, too.
“My Daddy?” she asked.
“He’s stubborn, remember? It’s not his time just yet.”
“Will you talk to him the way you did me when it is time?”
He smiled gently. “I will.”
Her eyes welled up in tears and she roughly wiped them away. “I wasn’t ready,” she said. “I didn’t get to say goodbye.”
“Not many people get that chance. But once the Fates snip your thread, that’s it. It’s your time to go.”
She heaved a sigh. “Now what?”
“Now I take you to that field of flowers,” he murmured and wrapped her up in arms.
His embrace was so soothing and comforting, so warm and gentle that all Sansa felt was complete and utter peace as he whisked her away.