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Madeline is there to see him go, holding his hand at his bedside. They braced for it to be soon, without knowing the world had chosen today was time. That afternoon he coughs blood onto the bedsheets, too weak to catch it in his hand, and slowly turns to look at her, gaze knowing. She knows, too.
When it happens again she has a towel in hand at the ready, catching it, then gently dabbing at his lips, even when he fondly reprimands her that it’d stain it. She joked something back. She remembers his words but not her own.
Marcille is out of the house and she finds she is glad for it. She thinks he is too, even when she sees the confliction in his eyes. Looking back, maybe it’d have been good to avoid giving her the impression that people would be gone from her life before she even knew it. Maybe Madeline hadn’t really known, after all. She is still glad he doesn’t ask her to fetch her, because she is paralyzed on her chair.
They speak, a little. She hushes him when he coughs, telling him to relax. She caresses his hair, rubs her thumb on top of his hand, tells him stories and anecdotes and sings him soft songs when she realizes the stretches of silence grow too long.
He was gone that afternoon, and Madeline dabbed, dabbed, dabbed, gently, gently at his lips, until they were more grey than red.
She took an hour before calling their daughter to come home. She took three hours before calling funerary services to come take his corpse.
She spent a better portion of the afternoon and evening hugging and comforting Marcille, until she’d exhausted herself to sleep with crying before even having eaten. Madeline still cooked dinner. Her arms felt weightless, enough that she wondered if she’d cut herself with the knife.
By the end, the only accident that happened was the recipe coming out barely recognizable. The cut up garlic and limp pasta drowning in sauce too sweetened and too salted stared at her, more pitying than pitiful.
She did the dishes, sweeped with the broom, dusted off the shelves, avoiding every memory in the knots and patterns of the wooden floor. She changed the bed, lingering on the scent of the bedsheets.
When she went to sleep, she noticed the smell of death was gone, but its presence still hung heavy in the air, as empty as the right half of the mattress.
The house was silent as the deads. Void of sobs. Void of coughs.
She felt sick to her stomach, but it was probably because it was late and she hadn’t eaten. Perhaps the weight in her lung helped her to sleep, after all.
She didn’t remember waking up, but when she got up the first thing she saw was the familiar chair on the other side of the bedroom, and the tray on the nightstand next to it. A platter holding medicine, a half-empty food bowl, water and towels. She hadn’t removed or touched it. It stared at her, and something in her twinged.
She came closer and saw a towel with red splattered on it, looking almost like a flower, almost like the one he’d given her the first time he tried courting her, too few years ago.
She should’ve used a handkerchief. She reached out to it, hand hanging in the air, hesitating until she touched it. Her fingers stroked up the fabric, until they clasped and clenched. Bunching it in both her hands, eyes glued on the red even when it blurried with tears, she hugged it to herself tightly.
It was hard to breathe. She didn’t know what was choking her, the pressure of her arms, her ribcage or the memories. The towel stayed dry, unlike the hem of her dress neckline and her lungs.
She heard footsteps in the house. She left the platter behind almost untouched to go prepare breakfast, which she joked to her daughter should be as big as lunch to make up for the meal they’d missed, not specifying when.
Marcille always insisted to have her father’s favorite until it had become her own as well. Madeline didn’t ask if that’s what she wanted to eat today. Her tongue tasted like lead, they ate in the silence of one less fork clinking against plate. Both their eyelids were red, red, red, and so was the pasta sauce that reminded them all a bit too much of what would never taste the same again.