FIVE
Good Friday
April 6, 2012
4:13 a.m.
Mathieu woke up disoriented, and then realized he’d fallen asleep on the recliner in the spare bedroom. He’d converted it to an office long ago, when he and Lori-Anne had come to terms with the fact that they wouldn’t have any more kids. Two miscarriages after Nadia and then nothing for several years had been disappointing. At least they’d been able to have Nadia.
Mathieu looked at his watch. Just after midnight. He got up and walked down the dark hallway, bypassing his bedroom and going into Nadia’s. Over the past week, every night, he got up two or three times and went to his daughter’s room, hoping that everything that had happened over the last couple of weeks was just a nightmare. It wasn’t. Nadia was really gone.
His heart sank a little deeper inside his chest. He dropped onto her bed and grabbed one of her toy animals, stuffies she’d called them since she was two. She had so many that they covered half the bed and even at fourteen, she wouldn’t get rid of them.
He stared at the frog in his hands. Where had it come from? He couldn’t remember. Some he’d bought. Others she’d gotten from family. And some were won at fairs they’d gone to over the years. It didn’t matter.
A sliver of light knifed through the small gap between the curtains. Mathieu walked over to the window and peeked out. The moon, almost full, hung low and bright in the sky. Nadia’s room looked out the front of the house, at the big red maple tree. The road was quiet, the neighbourhood tucked in for the night.
Mathieu didn’t think he’d be able to fall asleep for a while. He put the frog on the bed and walked out, making sure to close the door. Back in his office, he looked at pictures of Nadia’s childhood on his computer. He’d bought his first digital camera when she was four, and he’d taken thousands of photos over the past ten years. Photo albums of when she was a baby filled the bookcase beside his desk.
Click.
A picture of Nadia dressed as Hermione, when she was six. The movie Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban had been the craze that summer and she’d wanted that costume for Halloween.
A sickly feeling dropped like cold metal into the pit of his stomach.
Click.
Nadia and Caitlin playing outside on the swing set that same autumn. For the first time since the funeral, he wondered how Caitlin was doing. She hadn’t been around, and that felt strange. She’d always come home after school with Nadia, the two of them raiding the fridge before heading up to Nadia’s room.
Click.
Nadia making a snow angel in the first snow of winter. The metal in his gut seemed to grow heavier. But he couldn’t stop himself.
Click.
“What are you doing?”
He jumped. “I couldn’t sleep. Why are you up?”
“I woke up and you weren’t in bed, again,” Lori-Anne said. “Maybe you should take a Nytol before bed.”
“You know how I feel about pills.”
“But if you can’t sleep at night.”
He shook his head. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not,” she said. “I’d really like you to see a doctor.”
“I don’t need a doctor for a few sleepless nights,” he said.
“Maybe not,” she said, taking a step into his office. “But you might need help for your mood.”
“I’m. Fine.”
“Did you hear your tone right now?”
He said nothing.
“Matt, you’re getting moodier each day. All you do is sit in that chair and look at her pictures. I just don’t think that’s healthy.”
“Why do we take pictures if we’re never going to look at them?”
“We look at pictures for fun, to laugh and remember the good times. You should see your face when you’re looking at her pictures. You’re like transfixed . . . and pained.”
“I can’t let her go like you have.”
Lori-Anne stared down at him. “You think it’s that easy for me?”
“Didn’t stop you from going back to work. You’re right back on schedule, like nothing happened.”
“I have a job to do.”
“Our daughter died,” he said, slapping his hand on the desk. “We buried her last Thursday and Monday you were back at work. Doesn’t that seem wrong to you?”
Lori-Anne folded her arms across her chest. “I thought it would help if I kept busy. You’re not the only one hurting and there’s times when . . .”
They stared at each other.
“I think you should have stayed home,” he said.
“So we can do this all day long? Maybe I wanted to get away from our fighting.” Lori-Anne turned to leave.
“Most people wouldn’t go back to work so soon. I haven’t worked on any of my orders this week.”
She whipped around. “Maybe you should, it would occupy your mind.”
“The last thing I want to do is use power tools when I can’t concentrate. A bad combo.”
“I get that,” Lori-Anne said. “But you can’t lie in bed all day or look at pictures. Your clients will expect their orders.”
“I was able to reschedule them. A couple cancelled and I’ll refund their deposits.” He suddenly felt drained. “It’s killing me inside. All I ever wanted was a family, to have a few kids, and the only one we had is gone. I’m just so angry.”
“I am too . . .”
Mathieu pointed at his laptop. “Looking at her pictures gets me through the day. I keep hoping that tomorrow I’ll feel better, but I don’t. It’s like my insides are one big tangled mess of rage that I can’t get rid of. It suffocates me. I can’t think clearly. There’s times when I don’t think I can take another breath, the panic rolling over me like a tank. I’m afraid of forgetting her so I look at her pictures and I remember how happy we were, but that ache in me never goes away. It just never goes away.”
“Why don’t you see your doctor? Maybe you need something to help you for now, until you do feel better.”
“I can’t.”
“You’re so stubborn. You’d rather feel like that than get help?”
He shook his head. “It’s Good Friday. Offices are closed.”
“Then call Monday.”
“I’ll think about it,” he said.