Kevin. Kevin.
Her children screamed in delighted fear, and thunder rolled and burst overhead. In the kitchen, Stella slid to the floor as her world fractured.
* * *
They came to tell her Kevin was dead. Strangers at her door with solemn faces. She couldn't take it in, couldn't believe it. Though she'd known. She'd known the minute she heard the reporter's voice on her little kitchen television.
Kevin couldn't be dead. He was young and healthy. He was coming home, and they were having chicken Alfredo for dinner.
But she'd burned the sauce. The smoke had set off the alarms, and there was nothing but madness in her pretty house.
She had to send her children to her neighbor's so it could be explained to her.
But how could the impossible, the unthinkable ever be explained?
A mistake. The storm, a strike of lightning, and everything changed forever. One instant of time, and the man she loved, the father of her children, no longer lived.
Is there anyone you'd like to call?
Who would she call but Kevin? He was her family, her friend, her life.
They spoke of details that were like a buzz in her brain, of arrangements, of counseling. They were sorry for her loss.
They were gone, and she was alone in the house she and Kevin had bought when she'd been pregnant with Luke. The house they'd saved for, and painted, and decorated together. The house with the gardens she'd designed herself.
The storm was over, and it was quiet. Had it ever been so quiet? She could hear her own heartbeat, the hum of the heater as it kicked on, the drip of rain from the gutters.
Then she could hear her own keening as she collapsed on the floor by her front door. Lying on her side, she gathered herself into a ball in defense, in denial. There weren't tears, not yet. They were massed into some kind of hard, hot knot inside her. The grief was so deep, tears couldn't reach it. She could only lie curled up there, with those wounded-animal sounds pouring out of her throat.
It was dark when she pushed herself to her feet, swaying, light-headed and ill. Kevin. Somewhere in her brain his name still, over and over and over.
She had to get her children, she had to bring her children home. She had to tell her babies.
Oh, God. Oh, God, how could she tell them?
She groped for the door, stepped out into the chilly dark, her mind blessedly blank. She left the door open at her back, walked down between the heavy-headed mums and asters, past the glossy green leaves of the azaleas she and Kevin had planted one blue spring day.
She crossed the street like a blind woman, walking through puddles that soaked her shoes, over damp grass, toward her neighbor's porch light.
What was her neighbor's name? Funny, she'd known her for four years. They carpooled, and sometimes shopped together. But she couldn't quite remember. . . .
Oh, yes, of course. Diane. Diane and Adam Perkins, and their children, Jessie and Wyatt. Nice family, she thought dully. Nice, normal family. They'd had a barbecue together just a couple weeks ago. Kevin had grilled chicken.
He loved to grill. They'd had some good wine, some good laughs, and the kids had played. Wyatt had fallen and scraped his knee.
Of course she remembered.
But she stood in front of the door not quite sure what she was doing there.
Her children. Of course. She'd come for her children. She had to tell them___
Don't think. She held herself hard, rocked, held in. Don't think yet. If you think, you'll break apart. A million pieces you can never put together again.
Her babies needed her. Needed her now. Only had her now.
She bore down on that hot, hard knot and rang the bell.
She saw Diane as if she were looking at her through a thin sheen of water. Rippling, and not quite there. She heard her dimly. Felt the arms that came around her in support and sympathy.