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The house was cold.
It was only August, but inside, sitting at the table, it felt like December. Like snow falling indoors, blanketing everything, covering them. Burying them.
She didn’t want to think about it.
“Daddy?”
Iris opened her father’s bedroom door just a crack, just to see inside. The windows were covered, the lights were off, and the alarm clock was not only unplugged but lying in a broken heap on his floor. Light tried to get in through the cracks in the blinds, but Joe’s head was buried underneath a pillow, and his body was covered by a heavy duvet.
No wonder it was so cold.
“Daddy?” she asked again, daring to step into the darkness. “Are you gonna get out of bed?”
His sigh was heavy and deep and Iris was afraid she’d be blown away, pushed back again. “Not today, baby.”
She knew when she wasn’t wanted.
He was out of bed, which was a good sign, and she heard him say on the phone earlier that he was going to go back to work tomorrow. She was glad; she was worried that when she started school the week after next, there was going to be no one to bring him up a sandwich for lunch. Or make sure that he was still alive. That he hadn’t suffocated under all that bedding.
“Hey daddy,” she said, plastering a smile on her face for effect.
He had only been cooped up in his room for the last three days, right after the funeral, but it felt like an eternity since she had seen him upright.
He barely looked at her.
She was itching to speak, to use her voice; she wanted to talk to him like she used to, like momma used to, but he barely said anything. To her, anyway.
“What are you doing today? Are you and I going to do something?”
He finally focused on her, and smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Your grandparents are coming today, Iris,” he told her, and the fake smile froze on her face. “You’re going to stay with them until school starts. I can’t have you being in the house alone.”
“What about when school starts?” she asked. “You’re going to be working, right? So what about after school?”
Her dad took a deep breath and turned away from her, scanning the world outside like he was hoping her grandma was waiting on them. “I signed you up for an after school program. I’m going to be working nights, so Grandma agreed to stay with us for a while.”
“You never worked nights before,” she said, dots of understanding popping in her head even though she didn’t want them there.
“I had to,” he said. He wouldn’t look her in the eye, though, and a bitter taste crept up her throat and settled into her mouth.
They settled into a routine, and Iris figured it was better than nothing. Her grandma picked her up after her program ended, and she helped with Iris’s homework, and cooked her dinner, and asked Iris about her day. How her classes were going, and who her friends were, and whether or not she missed her mom. Her grandma fixed her hair and tucked her into bed at night, made sure she was awake in the morning. One week days, Iris and her grandma and dad would eat breakfast together in the mornings, when her dad got off shift and she was getting ready for school.
The routine made it easier. Made everything easier. Joe talked, again, about things at work, about the things he saw and some of the criminals he caught. He talked about how he had his eye on a promotion to detective, how all he needed was a big case. Iris laughed more, and smiled more, and felt less like the adult in the house. The uncomfortable crawl under her skin, the snake of guilt and shame and sadness that wound itself around her insides and tightened every day after her mom died; it was going away. Slowly. She could barely even feel the raw emotion bubbling in her throat, just underneath the surface.
Her grandma filled part of the massive black hole in their lives, helped to stop it from consuming their entire family. And she and her dad were finally making it back to being a family.
“I can’t stay forever, Joseph.”
Iris shrank against the laundry room door.
“I need you to stay for just a little longer, ma,” her dad said.
Her grandmother sighed, and she could hear someone moving about in the kitchen. “No, you don’t. You can handle this, Joe. She’s your daughter, not an alien.”
“I can’t raise her alone!” His voice was sharp as a knife in her ear; she wanted to run, to go and hide in her room and pretend she hadn’t heard a thing. “What am I supposed to do with her on my own?”
“Act like her father! That’s what you do. Her mother is dead. She needs you, Joe. She needs her father. She needs you here, to love her and raise her and make sure she’s safe. Does she even know you love her anymore?”
“No, she needs you. She needs you to be here and take care of her. I can’t do it. Her mother is gone, and it’s my fault. I can’t have her here, alone, when I’m patrolling the streets at night. And I’m out there, every night, making sure that the city is safe enough for her to grow up here because I love her! She understands. She understands that keeping someone from being hurt, keeping them safe and happy, that’s loving them. She knows.”
Footsteps came closer, and Iris pushed herself under the big sink in the laundry room, pulling her knees tight to her chest. She tried not to breathe.
The door swing open, and her grandma walked in, her dad close behind. “I have my own life, son. I’ve been here for six months. I can’t stay here forever. I’ll stay for two more weeks, but then I’m going over to Keystone to see your brother before I go back home.”
“Do you think-”
“You better not be hoping that Rudolph and Mary are going to take her in. They have their hands full with Wally.”
Their voices faded away as they moved further away from the laundry room. Iris stayed under the sink, lips pressed tight together and arms circled around her legs.
Her grandma left two weeks later, with a promise to come and visit soon. Iris cried when her car pulled out of the driveway. She and Joe stood there for a few minutes, after the car fully disappeared from view, just watching. Secretly hoping that she would change her mind and come back.
Whatever broken family they’d made for themselves since her mom died fell away again once her grandma left.
The house descended into silence; terse and deep and stretching forever onward. There would be full days, usually on weekends, when Iris wouldn’t say a word to anyone, when her voice would disappear. She hated those days. She wanted to talk to someone (anyone), to tell them what was going on with her, and let her words fill the emptiness. She wanted to talk about her mom, and about how her dad seemed to avoid anything that had to do with Iris. She wanted to tell someone everything that happened. But she didn’t want to hurt her father, and she knew that telling him that he was ignoring her would hurt him.
She loved him. She didn’t want him to think he wasn’t a good daddy. She had to protect him, because she didn’t know if he could take another blow, even a small one like that. She kept silent, and they existed in an uneasy balance, teetering on the edge of that massive black hole.
But still, she dreaded spring break; she worried both about being in her father’s presence when he so clearly had no idea what to do with her, and also about spending nine days in absolute silence.
Even though her dad was transferred back to the day shift, he didn’t get off the clock until six, sometimes seven at night, and he didn’t want her walking to the house alone. Or sitting in the big, empty house all by herself.
So he made arrangements for her to ride home with Barry Allen, who actually wanted to take the after school science class that was offered three times a week. After their programs ended, Barry and Iris lined up in the pick up lane, and then piled into his mom’s sedan.
Iris liked Ms. Nora a lot, to be honest. She liked her smile, and how she always made snacks for Barry and her when they got to his house. She liked that Ms. Nora was kind, and that she knew a lot about the world, and that she always seemed to have an answer for all the weird science questions Barry came up with.
But she especially liked that Ms. Nora asked her questions, too; that she took an interest in what Iris was doing. She asked about the books Iris read, and the things she was learning in school; she asked if she had seen anything interesting, or wondered if Iris had any questions about something they’d done in school. When she first started riding home with the Allens, Iris didn’t give much beyond one word answers. But the longer that Ms. Nora was there, asking, the more Iris talked.
“So, Iris,” Nora said as they were getting out of the car, after Barry finally talked himself into a science frenzy and run inside to test out something, “how are you?”
“I’m fine,” she said quickly, her eyes darting to the ground.
Nora paused, and crouched down to be eye-level with Iris. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” Iris said, just as tears welled in her eyes and she shook her head no.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Iris nodded.
“Daddy?” she asked tentatively.
Joe paused in the doorway. “Hey, baby girl.”
“Daddy, can we talk?”
She felt awfully grown for a nine year old, calling her father into their living room and sitting with him on the couch. Joe watched her, impassive, as she settled back into the armrest and took a deep breath. “Ms. Nora… Barry’s mom. Well, she says that if you love someone, you should be honest with them. Even when it’s hard to be honest. And I think that’s right.”
Her dad’s eyebrows knit together but he said nothing in response.
Her heart thudded in her chest, and Iris could feel moisture on her palms, but she looked her dad in the eye anyway, just like Ms. Nora told her too, and said, “I miss momma. I miss her so much it hurts, like there’s a hole in my chest. One that never goes away. And… and since she died…” Her voice shook, and Iris didn’t know when it started but she was shaking, staring at him. Watching him watch her, still impassive.
“Go on,” her father said, not unkindly.
“Since she died it feels like you’ve been absent too, daddy. Like you don’t want to look at me anymore. Or talk to me. I miss you. I miss talking to you and laughing with you and going to the park, even though I told you last summer that going to the park was for little girls. I miss it all!”
She started crying, just a little, and her father reached over and pulled her into a hug. Shock flooded her system; he hadn’t hugged her like this since the funeral. Since she started crying and couldn’t stop. “I’m sorry, baby,” he told her. “It’s just hard. I miss you mom too, and I never thought I would have to raise you alone, Iris. I’m doing the best that I can, but you’re going to have to be strong, okay? I know that things… haven’t been the way they used to be lately, but we just both need time to grieve.”
They stayed like that for a little while, not saying a thing, until finally her dad took her up to bed.
The next morning, he didn’t speak to her. He woke her up in silence, put a bowl of cereal in front of her before disappearing while she ate, and barely kissed her head before walking out the door and leaving for work.
She didn’t know if she was being punished or if he was, but it still hurt.
At some point after Iris turned ten, she and her father reached equilibrium.
They spoke when necessary, about school and work and responsibility, but never about things that mattered. Talking about her mom’s death was too painful for her dad, and any time Iris tried to bring it up he froze, and their balance was thrown askew. So, almost a year after her mom died, she just stopped trying. Her dad showed he loved her in the only way he could, by protecting her. Protecting her from his pain, from the world around her. He would always be at the house to make sure she was safe at night, and any time he wasn’t there, after school or on the weekends, she was either at the Allen’s house or she checked in with him every hour.
And when he was at the house, well. They existed in the same space. For that, Iris supposed, she should be grateful.
By the time Barry got to them, she had nearly forgotten what it was like to feel like a family inside of her own home.