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The pen scratches across the page, a thick card bound into a book with leather cord. Aside from the gentle popping of burning logs in the fireplace near him, it’s the only sound in the otherwise quiet and still night. When they’d first moved into their home in the Geldin District, Kaz had been sure he’d never acclimate to the lack of noise at all hours. Inej had simply smiled, and so had he, and he’d forgotten his worries. Now, he enjoys the silence, when he’s able to have it. Inej had been right. As she always was.
He drops his pen back into the holder when he finishes and absently blows on the ink to make it dry faster. His eyes stray to the now empty basket at the corner of his desk that had once held a neat pile of dried flowers, the last of which he’d sown to card earlier, and suddenly he’s aware of just how quiet it is. Too quiet. Where there should be the small snick of a page being turned every so often, or a comment from behind him meant to draw him into conversation, there is nothing.
Abruptly, the sitting room feels far too vast. Kaz stands at a speed with which his knee disagrees. He scowls, grabs his cane, and shuts the book with more force than necessary just to hear something. The floorboards upstairs creak. He freezes with a small pang of future regret, but fortunately, it comes to nothing and the house settles into the welcome and unwelcome silence.
After sitting so long, his knee aches. A bright flair of pain travels up his thigh and into his spine as he crouches to bank the fire. It yanks him from his thoughts long enough for him to function, and he doesn’t find himself thinking of Inej again until he’s upstairs and changed for bed and laying under the pile of blankets, turned on his side towards his son and, past him, to the empty space where she should be.
He’d changed the bed, after. The old one was too big without her, and it was Saleem who couldn’t bear to sleep in the bed his mother would no longer occupy, or so he told himself. The empty space in this one is less obvious, but Kaz can see it just as clearly as he could before. He looks away, to his sleeping son who somehow never wakes when he joins him. If he closes his eyes, he could pretend that it is the way it was before, the two of them on the edges of the bed, protecting their son between them. But he knows it not, and he can’t. He can’t pretend. He never could. His eyes close anyway.
***
The morning is dim, the sky gray, and the city is blanketed in a fog so thick that walking through it feels like it’s raining. As he descends the steps leading from their home to the street, his gloved hand holding Saleem’s, he feels as if his body now inhabits the inside of his soul. Though not unusual weather for Ketterdam, it’s unspeakably fitting for such a day. One year, exactly, since he lost her. If all the days were like this, it would be a mercy. The color in Kaz’s world had left with Inej, and the sun, when it appears, mocks him. The dark and the fog are a comfort. They grieve with him.
No mourners, he thinks. No funerals. But there had been a funeral, and there is a mourner. He glances down when Saleem begins to skip, tugging on his hand in his urge to go faster. Two mourners.
Saleem pulls away to run and jump into a puddle. Kaz’s heart twinges in his chest reminding him he is somehow still alive. The boy looks up at him with the biggest grin Kaz has ever seen on a face that looks so like Inej’s. For a split second, the monster inside of him rages in desire to lash out, to kill the happiness that the child finds so easily and Kaz is so sure is lost to him forever. But it would kill his smile. It would kill her smile. His heart aches for want of it, and he can’t bear to lose another piece of her. He can’t bear to be the source of his own child’s misery.
So, he swallows it down like shards of glass and smiles back. Tight-lipped as it is, it doesn’t seem to bother Saleem who smiles wider and giggles and shouts his new name, the one Kaz still marvels to hear. “Papa! Look!”
Kaz nods sharply. “Yes, I see. Perhaps jump with a little less force. Unless you’d like to do spend your evening scrubbing stains out of your clothes?” One eyebrow lifts as he stares down his nose, and, despite himself, his lips twitch when Saleem giggles and takes his hand again.
“Do I have to do it all evening?” he asks.
Kaz’s head tilts. Scheming face, he thinks they would call it. “Perhaps. It depends how dirty they get. It could be all night, if you jump in every puddle as hard as you can.”
Saleem laughs and jumps up and down on his toes in the puddle, splashing Kaz’s immaculate polished black leather shoes with muddy water. But the boy’s face shines so brightly Kaz doesn’t find even a little annoyance inside him. With a smirk, he exaggeratedly rolls his eyes and gently moves them on down the road. Saleem follows easily, resuming his half-walking, half-skipping at Kaz’s side.
“Where are we going, Papa?”
Kaz shakes his head. How something so small trusts him so much, to follow him without thinking to question him first, is still beyond him. “For breakfast,” he says. “Then we’ll visit Jesper and Wylan. You’ll stay with them for the day while I see to business.”
“Can I get an appelflap?”
Kaz nods, and Saleem cheers and dances in a circle. A passerby frowns, so Kaz locks eyes with them so fiercely they flinch back and hurry off to mind their own business. Kaz grins in all sharp angles as Saleem obliviously carries on.
The cafe is on the edge of the Financial District, not far from their home. Saleem slows as they cross a bridge over a canal. He follows the boy’s gaze to a flower box hung over the side. The flowers are a sharp contrast to the gray city. As his eyes fall back to the top of his son’s head, they are the one spot of color in it, like Saleem is in his life. It hasn’t all left, even when the fog strangling him makes it hard to see, and, in him, a piece of Inej remains. He squeezes Saleem’s hand, and it breaks the boy from his reverie.
“Papa?” He looks up. “Mama liked flowers, didn’t she?”
Kaz nods and swallows down a lump in his throat. That he would be the source of information on a lost mother, like Jordie had been for him, feels like drowning.
Saleem reaches for them, his fingers brushing the petals. “Can we take one? For your book.”
Kaz nods again, not trusting himself to speak. He steps forward and picks Saleem up. At seven, the boy is much heavier than he used to be, and Kaz’s knee twinges at the weight. He ignores it. Saleem carefully picks a flower, then hands it to him as if it’s the most precious thing in the world. Kaz accepts it and takes the same care tucking it in beside his pocket square. A bone-deep ache emerges from the darkness inside of him and wraps around his lungs, throbbing in time with each breath. His son shouldn’t have the sad eyes he had. He moves on, a hand stuck out behind him in Saleem’s direction. “Come.”
The cafe is only a short walk from there. Saleem relishes his pastry as they continue on to Wylan and Jesper’s office. Saleem seems to feel none of the reluctance Kaz feels every time they separate. He waves goodbye enthusiastically, which Kaz returns with a restrained lift of his hand. He can feel Jesper’s fond exasperation as he turns and walks away, and his friends draw his child’s attention to whatever they will do to occupy their time. This won’t be the last time, he tells himself firmly. It could be, he knows, but it won’t be. Once, he’d been committed to telling no lies, no matter how comforting. But now, he needs the possibility of hope, even if it becomes a lie.
***
When his business is concluded at the end of the day, Kaz collects his son from Jesper and Wylan, and they return home. After dinner, they retire to the sitting room, the fire crackling again. Kaz helps him prepare the flower for drying. When it’s ready, they’ll sew it into his book. The book of flowers, a flower for every day since Inej left. There is no revenge to be had this time. There is no one he can blame for taking her away from him. God, perhaps, if such a thing exists. But how can one fight god? All that’s left is to remember.
“Papa, what’s wrong?”
The boy’s voice is so small, it startles Kaz. Inej’s smile is no longer on Saleem’s lips. His hand tightens further on the crow head of his cane, and he turns away to stalk to the sofa, his eyes burning while his face is averted. He sinks into the cushions and takes a deep breath. “I miss your mother.”
Saleem nods so seriously - if Kaz had ever doubted Saleem was his, the expression on his face now would have removed those doubts. He comes and crawls into his lap and sinks against him as if he is capable of offering the kind of a comfort a child needs.
“I miss her, too,” he says almost too quiet for Kaz to hear.
They sit in the near silence. Kaz rests a hand on Saleem’s back and one over the pulse at his wrist. Feeling his heart beating and the rise and fall of his chest keeps the bodies on the barge where they belong.
“Tell me about her, Papa? How’d you meet?”
Kaz’s breath catches, but then he slowly releases it. No mourners, no funerals, they used to say. But if anyone deserves to be remembered, it’s her. So, he nods and, after another pause, he begins to speak. A funeral and two mourners, and the woman they both loved, living on in their memories. For her, this he could do.