The Whole Family’s Regret After I Died Chapter 06
The first thing Elena did when she came around was call my name.
“Émma-”
Mom pressed down on her shoulders, pushing her back against the pillow. “Lie still. You hit your head when you fell-”
Elena shoved Mom’s hands off. “Where is Emma?”
Mom didn’t answer. Her eyes were so swollen they’d nearly closed, her whole face bloated like it had been soaked in water. Her mouth opened and closed twice. Nothing came out.
Elena understood everything.
She threw back the blanket and stepped out barefoot, pushing past Mom into the hall.
In the living room, Dad was sitting against the wall like a doll someone had dropped there and forgotten. He was holding me. Both arms around me, pulled in tight, fingers twisted into my clothes, knuckles white.
Elena stopped three steps away. She saw my face.
Ashen gray. Hair stuck to my forehead. Eyes closed. Curled in against Dad’s chest, small as a cat that never got the chance to grow.
“Dad.”
Elena’s voice was barely there.
Dad didn’t respond.
“Dad. Give Emma to me.”
He finally moved, turning his head slowly to look at her like she was someone he’d never seen before.
Then he smiled. The smile made Elena step back half a step.
“Shh, keep it down.” Dad raised one finger to his lips. “She’s exhausted, she just fell asleep. Look, she’s still a little sweaty. Her stomach was bothering her.”
He looked down at me and ran the back of his hand across my cheek,
“Once she wakes up, I’ll take her for mushroom cream noodles.”
Elena’s chin started to shake.
She crouched down until she was at eye level with him and laid one hand over his fist, the one clenched into my clothes.
“Dad. Feel her hand.” Elena’s voice was steady. She was crying, tears already running down her face, but she was holding the words together. “What’s the temperature?”
Dad didn’t feel my hand. “She’s just cold, we’ll cover her up,” he said pleasantly. “Your mother’s always on me for being careless. Ask her to come warm her up.”
“Dad!”
Elena grabbed his wrist and pressed his hand up beneath my nose, hard. “Feel it yourself. Is she breathing? Tell
me.”
Dad’s smile locked in place. His fingers stayed at my nose for five full seconds without moving.
Then he started to pull away. “That wasn’t right, I didn’t have it in the right spot-” He was already putting his hand back, two fingers this time, pressing harder. “Let me try again—”
“She’s gone, Dad.”
Elena’s hand around his wrist was trembling, her whole body shaking like a leaf, but she said each word all the way through. “Emma is dead.”
Dad pulled me in harder, like someone was trying to take me from him.
“Shut up!”
His voice cracked: “She’s just sleeping! Get out! Don’t wake her up!”
“Dad-”
“Out!”
His shout bounced around the living room and back again.
Elena was on her knees in front of him, hand still on his wrist, crying so hard she’d bent almost double, her forehead nearly touching the floor.
Footsteps came from the kitchen. Grandpa walked over to Dad and stood there, looking down at him for a moment, saying nothing.
“Let go.”
Dad wouldn’t.
Grandpa didn’t say it again. He reached down and pried Dad’s arms open, one finger at a time.
Dad started fighting him. “Don’t touch her, Emma just fell asleep, don’t-”
“She’s not sleeping.”
Grandpa’s voice wasn’t loud, but each word landed like something heavy. “Last night you put her in the cellar. She was in pain. You knew. Her mother knew.”
Dad stopped struggling.
“You thought she was being jealous.” Grandpa kept going, hands still working, one finger at a time.
Dad’s arms dropped. He folded back into the wall like his spine had been removed.
“I didn’t know it was that serious.” His voice crumbled. “She’s said her stomach hurt before, it was never like this… Everyone always said she was tough…”
Mom had followed at some point. She fell at Grandpa’s feet, kneeling on the floor.
“Dad, this is on us. We should never have locked her in. I just wanted Elena’s last day to be good, I didn’t think, I honestly didn’t think-”
Grandpa looked down at her for a long time.
“You wanted Elena to have a good last day.” He said it back to her, his voice so level it was frightening. “But that was your youngest daughter’s last day too. You just didn’t know it.”
Mom pressed herself to the floor, crying without sound, only her shoulders moving.
Grandpa stopped looking at her.
He bent down and gathered me up in his arms. He was old and didn’t have much strength left, and he stumbled a little as he stood, but he didn’t let anyone help.
He held me against him with one hand cradling the back of my head and my face tucked into the hollow of his shoulder, exactly the way he used to carry me home when I was very small.
He stood there for a long time, holding me, quiet.
Then his gaze shifted, just slightly, upward, toward the ceiling, toward where I was floating.
Just for a moment.
I felt it like a jolt.
But the look was gone almost before it was there, quick enough that it might never have happened.
Grandpa closed his eyes and his forehead came to rest against mine.
A single tear pressed through his closed lashes, traced the deep lines of his face, and fell into my hair.
He opened his mouth, voice low enough that only I could hear.
“Grandpa came too late.”
