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The knock on your door comes a week or so after the burial.
None of it seems real, even though you saw it with your own two eyes, and cleaned and dressed the dead with your own two hands. None of it. Not the ruined buildings along Main Street, not the piles of dead infected juxtaposed with the familiar signs and structures of this community, certainly not the loss of so many of your fellow citizens. Guilt gnaws at you every time you think of them, sacrificing themselves while you sheltered.
The shroud, though, is what haunts you. A lifeless body, swaddled like a baby in bloodstained sheets for its final journey. For his final journey.
It is there every time you close your eyes, and with it the same pain you felt in your chest the first time you saw it. The first time you realised he was gone.
***
“I won’t stay long. I want to get back to her.”
Dina shakes the snow from her boots as she steps inside your front door, gloved hands holding a brown-paper package. She looks exhausted, dark circles visible under her pretty eyes, and her usually glossy locks stick out, dull and unkempt, from under her striped beanie hat.
“How - how is she?”
You both know there are no words that can adequately answer that question. Dina shrugs gently. “She’s…well, she is how she is.”
Before you can ask how she is, Dina hands over the package, clearly anxious to get back to Ellie.
“She thinks you should have it.”
***
It takes you a long time to open the package, though you knew what it contained as soon as you’d felt it.
Your fingertips trace over the garter stitches of the woollen scarf, moving from bands of charcoal grey to purplish wine yarn and back again. Even now, it feels warm and comforting under your touch.
***
A long time ago, and yet it feels like no time at all, you’d bonded with a wide-eyed, scrappy kid called Ellie over a shared love of space and stargazing. You’d watched her become quite the astronomical expert. More than that, you’d seen her find herself, shyly open up about first crushes, and wrestle with inner demons she never quite confessed to you.
And you had taught her how to knit: a pair of multicoloured woollen socks, the result of many hours of trial and error and more than a few choice curse words, made as a very special holiday gift for Joel. He made sure to thank you at the New Year’s Eve dance that year, quietly sidling over to you and lifting up the leg of his jeans just enough for you to see the mismatched stripes underneath.
“She did good, didn’t she?”
You nodded enthusiastically. “She did amazingly well for a first-timer. She tell you about her plans for a sweater?”
Joel chuckled and sipped his drink. “She did. Hope you’ve got a decent yarn stash for her, I don’t think she’s gonna stop at one.”
By spring, Ellie was modelling her first creation: a cosy, if somewhat lopsided green sweater made from yarn you’d salvaged from a worn-out men’s cardigan. As Joel predicted, the knitting addiction had taken hold.
“I wanna make him a sweater next. He’s gettin’ old, he needs to keep his fuckin’ body warm out on patrol and on the construction sites.”
It took a while to get enough yarn: a mismatch, as was usual, but the colours worked well together. Ellie held two rough balls alongside each other to assess the pairing: a charcoal grey and a purplish shade the colour of good wine.
“Think he’ll like it?”
You’d nodded. “Honestly, Ellie, it could be lime green and puce and if you made it, Joel would love it.”
***
You knew Ellie kept certain things to herself. You wondered, as you knitted together, if she realised that you had secrets, too.
It had happened very gradually: a smile here, a glance there, and the anticipation of conversation, of even seeing him, became a highlight of your days. You reasoned that any friendliness he showed you was because of Ellie - an acknowledgment of your kindness to her, rather than a reflection of his feelings about you as a person. He could still be gruff, standoffish; it was nothing personal. Just who he was, who he had been forced to become in the twenty-something years since the world ended.
Despite the darkness that still lingered, though, there was a light and a warmth that had endured. It was there in the way he helped build the community, helping others to learn the skills they needed to construct and maintain their homes and businesses. It shone brightest when he was with family.
One night at a community talent show he had watched proudly with his little nephew on his lap as Ellie conquered her nerves to sing and play guitar for the whole town. Leaping spontaneously from your seat in a one-woman standing ovation, you’d glanced over at Joel as you clapped and cheered. He met your gaze, a huge smile on his face, eyes shining with pride and emotion as his girl took her bow.
In the midst of the applause, one thought cut through the noise to register in your mind, plain as day: I think I might be in love with you, Joel Miller .
***
Your secret wasn’t shameful, not really. It had nothing to do with your past, nothing that you’d done to survive all this time. It was just the kind of secret that felt safer to keep to yourself, rather than saying out loud. Kept inside, it was an invisible shield against the risk of disappointment and loss.
There were times you thought you would confess it: you concocted imaginary scenarios where you admitted your feelings to him, he admitted he felt the same, and you lived happily ever after. Or at least, as happily as you could live in a post-apocalyptic world. On the occasional evenings when he came over with Ellie for her appointments with your telescope, it was a little too easy to look at his broad, strong figure sitting comfortably on your porch and to wonder what it would feel like to reach over and hold his hand.
It would ruin everything if he turned you down. When he turned you down. Keep it to yourself.
***
It took Ellie almost the rest of the year to finish Joel’s sweater. Solid and cosy, you praised the evenness of her stitches and the obvious development in her skills since the pair of socks she’d made the previous year. She brushed it off - typical Ellie - but she couldn’t hide the proud smile on her face as she bundled the sweater into some brown paper and attached a handmade label.
“I hope you don’t mind that I used up some of the leftover yarn.” You held up a simple scarf made in garter stitch, with bands of the charcoal grey and wine yarns that Ellie had used for the sweater. “Joel helped out a lot with the boards on my porch earlier in the fall; I wanted to say thank you.”
“You mean he’s gonna match ?!” Ellie roared with laughter, still hugging the large, lumpy package to her small frame. “Fuck yeah, that’s awesome. I’m gonna make sure he wears them together.”
He stopped you on Main Street a day or so after the holiday, the scarf wrapped warmly around his neck.
“I wanted to say thank you. You shouldn’t have.”
“It would have been a pity not to use that yarn,” you shrugged. “Besides, it suits you.”
Joel looked away, and for a moment you could swear he was blushing . You suppressed the urge to reach out and caress his handsome face, to feel the bristle of his greying beard under your fingertips.
“Haven’t had a scarf this cosy in I don’t know how long. Ellie calls it my patrol scarf, seein’ as it’s perfect for wearin’ outside in this winter weather.”
Before you went your separate ways, he reached into his pocket and produced a little wooden owl, evidently hand-carved and painted.
“I didn’t have any paper, hope you don’t mind.”
You shook your head, turning the little owl over in your hand as you took in the detail of its decoration. “Joel, this is…it’s wonderful.”
That bashful look again. “Meant to get it to you before the holiday,” he explained. “It’s you. It’s a night owl.”
***
Joel’s patrol scarf is well-worn now. It was there with him on his last day, recovered with his dark winter coat when a small crew had gone back to the lodge to search it.
Your finger traces the wave of the garter stitches again. Each stitch is a tiny act of love, an unspoken affirmation of affection for him. The scarf said what you never could.
You had watched as his body was carried through the devastated settlement that day - that terrible fucking day, when everything changed. You were there again, desperately trying to hide the extent of your grief, when the simple wooden coffin was laid to rest.
He must be cold , you thought, looking at the snow and the hard ground. Joel shouldn’t be cold. It was warm, where he was born. He was warm, too. In his own way.
The fabric of the scarf is immediately warm and comforting as you press it to your cheek and inhale its scent, imagining it a proxy for him and for the loving embrace you never dared to share.
This is still his warmth.
The tears begin to dampen the knitted fabric.
This is still him.