Work Text:
Natalie Goodman was, as usual, having a terrible day.
It started with an outburst from her mother early in the morning as she got ready from school, then there was her father panicking over how late he was getting for work due to the aforementioned outburst.
And the worst of it all—there was Gabe.
She knew who Gabe was. She knew he was there, in their home, in their lives—an intruder none of them could ever truly get rid of. Natalie couldn’t see him, but she knew he was there. Maybe it was because she’d never known what he looked like, never even interacted with him when he was alive, but she could feel her late brother’s presence everywhere she went.
In her mother’s demeanor. When she’d sob and curl up into a ball beneath the kitchen counter, Natalie could hear a voice whispering reassuring words that she could never truly understand, to Diana.
In her father’s routine. When he’d try to ignore that their family was in the midst of falling apart, Natalie could see the outline of a figure standing in front of him, but Dan would walk around it and go on about his day with tense shoulders and a clenched jaw.
Gabe would linger throughout her day, an immovable force that would never abandon her family, because he would never truly be acknowledged. She’d often ask herself what her life would be like, if the family overcame their grief. Would he still remain? Would nothing change?
Like Natalie, her boyfriend couldn’t see him either. Whenever he’d visit, Henry would rarely even notice how strangely her parents would behave in the house, as if Gabe’s presence in the house was nonexistent. He didn’t see Diana hug and cradle nothingness while she disregarded her daughter. He didn’t see Dan pretending everything was going well, even as he stumbled through doorways to avoid the phantom who would surely be blocking his path.
When Natalie was truly alone, with her music and her mind, she’d forget Gabe was ever lurking in their home. It would just be her, and her thoughts, her books and keyboard. That would be, until she’d hear shouting from her parents’ rooms, or a sudden yelp. He’d return then, and he would plague the rest of the family once more.
She asked herself, sometimes, if Gabe ever momentarily disappeared from the psyche of her parents. Was he sitting next to them on the empty seat at her seventh grade orchestra recital? Did he sit in the backseat of their car when Dan drove her to school on days she was too tired to wake up on time for the bus? Was his voice ringing in Diana’s ears while she’d offer to play a piece for her mother?
She would settle for not knowing, because she couldn’t ask. She decided—Gabe was a flickering phantom in their house, in their minds. He took the form most difficult to ignore, most easy to be unsettled by.
He was fluid, uncontainable, ineradicable.