The kitchen felt smaller after the call. Mother leaned against the counter, the phone still clutched in her hand, her knuckles white around the receiver long after the voice on the other end had gone quiet. Her chest heaved, sharp and uneven, dragging air into her lungs like it hurt to breathe. The sound of her crying filled every corner of the room, bouncing off the walls until it became something bigger than her—something the whole house seemed to carry. I sat at the table, unmoving, listening. The cries weren't steady. They broke and collapsed into silence, then swelled again, jagged and loud. Each time the quiet returned, I thought it might stay. But it didn't. The silence was only another shape of grief, waiting for its turn to echo.
Her face crumpled in a way I couldn't name. Tears smeared her cheeks, her mouth twisted open as though the pain could only escape as sound. Her body bent forward, folding in on itself, until she sank to her knees on the kitchen floor. The phone cord stretched tight, tangling around her arm as she clutched the receiver to her chest like it was something living. I watched her shake. I watched her grip the linoleum, fingers splayed, nails scratching lightly against the floor. She pressed her forehead to the cold tile, sobbing so hard her whole body trembled. The clock ticked on, indifferent. I heard the sound more clearly than I heard her. I thought about how the cries filled the room, then died away, then returned, repeating over and over like an echo in a canyon. The walls caught her grief and threw it back at her. It circled. It multiplied. But none of it reached me.
Her body rocked where she knelt on the floor, a broken rhythm that seemed to have no beginning and no end. She gasped for air, the sound scraping her throat raw, then collapsed into sobs so violent they rattled out of her chest. She pressed the heel of her hand against her mouth, as if she could shove the cries back inside, but they broke through anyway—louder, harsher, tearing out of her like something was being ripped away from her body.
Her hair fell forward in tangled strands, clinging to wet cheeks. Her eyes squeezed shut, her face red and swollen, the skin glistening under the yellow kitchen light. She looked smaller somehow, folded on herself like she had been reduced to nothing but sound and trembling. The phone receiver slid from her hand at last, swinging against the cord until it dangled near the floor. A faint buzz hummed from it, a disconnected tone that went on and on. It mixed with the sound of her cries, a strange duet of machine and human, both endless, both refusing to stop. She curled onto her side on the tile, clutching her stomach as though the grief lived there, sharp and twisting. Her knees drew to her chest. Her fists balled in the fabric of her blouse, pulling it tight across her ribs. I watched her shoulders heave, the sobs convulsing through her body like waves crashing and breaking. The house didn't move with her. The walls were still. The ceiling light flickered once, then steadied. The clock kept ticking. I noticed the way her voice changed as it cracked, high then low, like it had no control over which way it wanted to break. I noticed the wet smears on the tile where her tears pooled, spreading slowly, darkening the pale floor. I noticed how the hem of her skirt twisted under her legs, bunched in a way that must have been uncomfortable. But I didn't feel what she felt. It was only sound. Only motion. Only shapes. The kind of thing that fades if you close your eyes.
The kitchen door burst open. "Elara—oh my God, Elara!" An aunt's voice cracked as she stumbled inside, her arms already outstretched. She dropped to the floor beside Mother, gathering her up, rocking her as though she were a child instead of a grown woman breaking apart. "We're here, you're not alone, do you hear me? You're not alone." Another voice layered over hers, firmer, deeper—an uncle. "It's alright, we'll take care of you. We'll handle everything. Just breathe, just breathe." Their words fell fast, urgent, tumbling over one another in an endless stream. Promises. Reassurances. Pleas. I heard them all, the sounds swelling together until they blurred. To me, they didn't seem different from the way the wind sometimes pressed against the windows—loud, pressing, constant. Elara clung to her sister's blouse, twisting the fabric tight in her hands. Her sobs tore out again, muffled against the aunt's shoulder. The uncle's hand rubbed her back in circles, steady, soothing.
"She's strong," another voice said behind them—someone older, maybe Grandmother. "She'll get through this. Elara, darling, you're strong." Strong. Not alone. Taken care of. The words floated through the air, heavy with meaning for them, but to me they fell flat, nothing but syllables colliding in the room. I tried to follow the way their mouths moved when they spoke, to see if that might give shape to the noise. But it didn't. Their lips trembled, their faces crumpled, their voices swelled and broke, yet the weight behind it all slipped past me. I understood what they wanted her to feel. I simply couldn't feel it.
Instead, I noticed the way a box of tissues was ripped open too quickly, spilling half its contents onto the counter. I noticed the faint smell of perfume as the aunt held Elara close, something floral that cut strangely against the raw salt of her tears. I noticed how the uncle's shoe squeaked each time he shifted on the linoleum. Their grief lived in words. Mine lived in details.
"Elara," the aunt whispered, stroking her hair. "You need to stay strong for him." Her chin lifted slightly, her wet eyes dragging toward me at the table. The movement was slow, heavy, as though even looking at me cost her strength she didn't have to spare. Gael. Her gaze tried to hold me, to root itself in me, searching for something—comfort, reflection, a shared weight of grief. I sat there, hands folded neatly in my lap, my face steady. She broke all over again. "Oh, sweetheart," she sobbed, pulling free from her sister's arms and stumbling toward me. Her knees hit the floor beside my chair, and suddenly I was wrapped in her trembling embrace. Her body shook against mine, her tears soaking through the shoulder of my shirt. Her arms tightened, desperate, pulling me closer, closer. "Gael, my baby," she whispered through broken breaths. "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. We'll be okay. We'll find a way, I promise."
The warmth of her body pressed hard against me. The wetness of her tears seeped into the fabric. I noticed the uneven rhythm of her breathing, how it stuttered in my ear. I didn't know what to do with it. Behind us, the relatives watched in silence, their own faces soft with pity, expectation. I could feel the weight of their stares like a hand on my back. They wanted something from me. Words. Tears. Some proof that the news had torn me open the same way it had shattered her. But inside, there was only the same stillness I always carried. I lifted my arms, not out of instinct but because it seemed the correct thing to do. I placed them awkwardly around her shoulders, the way I had seen others do in moments like this. She clung harder, sobbing louder as though my empty gesture was full of the meaning I lacked. "Poor child," the aunt murmured behind her hand. "He doesn't even know how to cry." The words stuck in the air, thick and sharp, but I let them pass over me like the hum of the refrigerator in the corner. I couldn't argue with them. I simply sat still while Elara drowned against me.
Elara's grip only tightened, her nails digging lightly into my back as though letting go might mean losing everything else too. Her face pressed harder into my shoulder, and I felt the damp fabric growing cold against my skin. Her sobs had no rhythm, each one tearing out of her like glass caught in her throat. I stayed still. Breathing evenly. My heart did not race. My chest did not ache. I counted her sobs instead, the way one might count passing cars from a window. Six. Seven. Eight. A pause, then nine, muffled against my shirt. She whispered my name again, barely audible. "Gael… Gael, please…" Please what? I didn't know. Please feel? Please cry? Please share the weight crushing her? I understood the shape of the word, the way her voice broke over it, but not the request hidden inside it.
The silence in the room deepened around us, broken only by her trembling breaths. The others didn't intervene. They stood in the doorway and watched, as if this moment between mother and son was sacred, untouchable. As if grief, in its purest form, was unfolding before them. But what they saw wasn't what I carried. I felt her heartbeat hammering against me, frantic, desperate to prove life was still there, that something hadn't been completely ripped away. My own heartbeat, steady and slow, did not answer hers. The mismatch made her clutch harder, like she was trying to force something out of me that wasn't there. I wondered if she could tell. I wondered if, in holding me this close, she could feel how empty I was inside. Her tears soaked deeper into my shirt until the skin beneath chilled. Her sobs grew hoarse, collapsing into a broken whimper. Yet she didn't let go. She pressed me tighter, her words dissolving into incoherence—fragments of Dorian's name, fragments of apologies, fragments of prayers that never finished. I stayed. I let her drown in me. Because that was all I could do.
The church smelled faintly of lilies and wax. The scent pressed against the back of my throat, heavy and sweet, mingling with the low murmur of voices, the rustle of black fabric, the sharp, occasional crack of someone breaking into sobs. Rows of people filled the pews, their faces streaked, their eyes red. Aunts, uncles, neighbors, people I recognized from passing glances in town. They gathered in clusters, whispering words I couldn't hear but could imagine—condolences, memories, attempts to wrap Elara's grief in the safety of their own. Elara sat at the front, dressed in black that seemed too heavy for her narrow frame. Her hands twisted the hem of a handkerchief over and over, the fabric soaked through. Every so often, a sound would escape her—a sob too sharp to be swallowed, a gasp that cracked through the silence of the service. I sat beside her, feet dangling just above the floor. My eyes traced the tall stained-glass windows, the way the light shifted through them, fractured into broken colors across the polished wood. I studied the slow burn of candles lined along the altar, how the wax had curled into hardened rivers dripping down the sides.
Then the room stilled. A murmur passed through the crowd as the pallbearers moved, guiding the dark wooden coffin forward. The sound of it sliding onto its stand was a dull, final thud that seemed to shake through the pews. Heads bowed. Someone's breath hitched too loud. Elara trembled beside me, her hand clutching mine so tightly the bones in my fingers pressed together. She leaned down, her voice cracked and fragile in my ear. "Gael… come with me. We'll see him together." Her hand pulled me up, her other arm circling my back as though I might fall without her. The hem of her dress brushed against my leg as she guided me forward, step by step down the aisle. The eyes of the room followed. I felt them pressing into me, watching, waiting—expecting to see a child broken, a mirror of his mother's anguish. We reached the coffin. Elara's breath shattered, and with a trembling hand, she lifted me, pulling me close against her chest. Her arms were unsteady, shaking with the weight of me and the weight of everything else she carried. She tilted me forward so I could see. Inside, Dorian lay still.His face was pale, powdered, too quiet. His hands folded neatly against his chest, a rosary threaded through his fingers. The suit he wore looked stiff, foreign, as though he had been dressed in someone else's clothes. His lips curved faintly, but not like a smile—more like a shadow of what one used to be. The people behind us cried softly. Elara's chest heaved beneath me, her tears sliding hot against the crown of my head as she whispered his name over and over. I stared. My small fingers gripped the edge of the coffin, brushing the cool, polished wood.
"Mommy…" I said, the word slow, unfamiliar on my tongue. Her sob cracked louder, her body convulsing as she pressed her cheek against mine. I didn't look at her. My eyes stayed on him. On the stillness of his chest. On the way his eyes would not open. "Mommy," I whispered again, "is Daddy asleep?" The sound of the question hung heavy in the church, louder than any cry. Elara broke. The room seemed to fold in on itself, sobs swelling, voices quaking, but I simply stared, waiting for an answer she could not give.