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Aaron Burr should have known better. Making your home in a person never ends well. Still, he built his home in Dosia, his Dosia, a cracked foundation from the start, crown molding to hide how ramshackle the walls were.
He poured everything into his home. His dreams balanced on the mantle next to their wedding photos, and he hung up his inhibitions and carefully guarded expressions next to their raincoats in the closet. They cultivated his daring in the herb garden out back, a little sprout that produced a new leaf with every encouraging smile, shot up a foot with each rib-crushing hug. The glass in the window broke, cracks fissuring out like a spiderweb, only to spell out ‘family’. A baby’s cries joined the clamor of their life, drowning out the voices that whispered ‘wait’ and ‘don’t let them know’ in his head. Any failure was matched with a new finger-painting tacked to the fridge. His briefcase was cluttered with case files and laughter. He came home late from work because he got to tuck his daughter into bed. And Dosia’s arms were always around him, meaning safehomelovesafehomelove.
Her love was so strong he didn’t notice her arms getting weaker, until he was the one holding her and her love burnt his skin. The tears slipping down her cheeks cooled the heat, but Aaron couldn’t feel the pain yet anyway. All he felt was the shaking of the house, each of her coughs an earthquake.
Until there was no more shaking.
No more house.
No more home.
Just the burns on his arms that would leave ugly scars, the opposite of everything she ever was.
(This time Theo’s crying couldn’t drown out the chorus of ‘talk less, smile more’ in his brain.)
Either everything is packed away or it remains untouched.
He doesn’t go in the backyard; their garden wilts. He strips the sheets off the bed and burns them. The flowery comforter she picked out gets stuffed in a box—the first of a thousand boxes.
He doesn’t step foot in her attic, but when he passes the door there’s no dust built up. It makes his heart ache each time he sees it, calling out for its other half in a split second of false hope. One day the fingerprints on the knob are wet. He keeps walking to his bedroom. “Let no one see you cry” is his refrain, and it’s the first gift he gives to Theo since Dosia’s death.
The last time he was in his home office, Dosia had sauntered in with two glasses of wine to tempt him away from work. Theo had been at a sleepover at the Hamiltons’. Aaron had shoved everything off his desk when he laid Dosia down on it. There are still pens scattered across the floor.
He doesn’t work from home anymore.
When she got sick, he stayed with her all day. He became ambidextrous so he could write with the hand that wasn’t holding hers. He filled out paperwork in waiting rooms; the bags under his eyes rivaled hers. People would ask which one of them was the patient.
Even when she was dying, she glowed.
He knew the contents of her medical papers better than his case files—to this day he can still decipher the hospital jargon easier than Alexander’s handwriting.
She used to joke that she lived off IVs and he lived off coffee—the first time he drank a cup after she died, he vomited. He doesn’t drink coffee anymore.
He drops the case he was working on the day she died. He thinks Hamilton picks it up, but he doesn’t really care. He dives into a new one she would have found boring and tedious, buries himself in his work until his back is so hunched he can’t straighten it. He goes home, hoping she’s still awake to give him a back rub, and makes it to the stairs before he realizes there are no more back rubs.
He hunches over the stairs, biting his fist to muffle his sobs. Eventually he crawls into bed. In the morning he rolls over, arm searching. Aaron wonders distantly how he ever managed to sleep alone before he knew her.
He gets a futon in his office.
He stops coming home.
Aaron takes Theo out for Italian for her birthday. She picks at her plate. He watches her from across the table, trying to find why she looks so different. He stabs a forkful of salad and notices the untouched pile of croutons amassed on the edge of the bowl.
He closes his eyes. Dosia and Theo always ate his croutons. Theo used to claim that whenever they went his salad came with more than hers.
Their food arrives. Theo hacks the lasagna to pieces then pushes the pasta around the dish. He counts how many bites she takes. Four.
“Theo?”
She looks up.
“Are you feeling alright?”
She nods.
He gestures to her mangled lasagna. “I thought you liked Italian.”
She drops her eyes, mumbles something.
“What?”
“It doesn’t taste the same without Mom.”
Neither of them say anything else the rest of the night. He drops her off at the Hamiltons’, where Philip immediately swallows her in a bear hug and Eliza teases her about keeping them waiting to eat birthday cake. Alexander lingers at the door.
“Aaron…you can have some cake too,” he offers.
Aaron remembers a wedding over ten years ago, a scrawny Alexander with his hair in perpetual disarray urging him to pursue Dosia. He remembers countless nights with Dosia’s smile, her firm hands guiding him away from his desk with “Even Alexander Hamilton rests”.
“No,” Aaron says, “I have to get back to work.”
His secretary pops her head in. “You have a call from Eliza Hamilton on line one.”
Eliza? Why Eliza? By the time he’s gotten over the shock, his secretary’s gone, so he picks up the phone, trepidation in his stomach. “Burr here.”
“Aaron,” Eliza’s relief is palpable over the line, “the school called me. Theo’s sick. She’s at our house now. I’m afraid she got the bug from Angie, she was sick last week. Do you want me to run her over to the clinic or—?”
He was still stuck on her first sentence. The school called me. The school hadn’t called him.
“Aaron?”
He stands up. “I’ll meet you at the clinic. Thanks, Eliza.”
He’s washing her bedsheets from when she was sick when he realizes he hasn’t had to do her laundry in months. He checks her room, her bathroom, the closet. He checks the pantry and fridge. Most of her clothes are gone or folded into one of his duffle bags, and there’s little to no food in the house, just a stale loaf of bread and a box of Eggo waffles.
He calls the Hamiltons’ house. Aaron doesn’t recognize Philip’s voice when the boy answers coolly, “Mr. Burr.”
“Philip?”
“Did you need to speak to Theo?”
Aaron struggles to recover. “No, I can talk to you. Has she been staying over at your house?”
“What, did you expect her to stay at your house alone?” For an eleven year old, Philip is scathing. No, not just for an eleven year old.
Guilt gnaws at him, starting at the scar tissue on his wrists. “That’s all I needed to know. Thank you, Philip.”
“What exactly are you thanking me for? Being there for her when you weren’t? Because you don’t have to thank me for that.”
Aaron almost laughs—or sobs. Philip is Alexander and Eliza’s son.
Theo is Dosia’s daughter—of this, he is sure. He looks up from the phone, at his reflection in the mirror. He doesn’t recognize the face looking back at him. He doesn’t know himself, and he doesn’t know his daughter.
“Philip, is she happy?”
Philip’s voice is tired, unbearably sad. “Why don’t you ask her?”
Making your home in a person never ends well.
Making your home with a person ends better.
There’s no rebuilding their old house, so Aaron and Theo build a new home.