Chapter 44

 

Charles was blind.

Just as he’d reached the door, patting the air in front of him in an attempt to quiet Gary, the front porch had exploded.

Debris hit him like birdshot. Even as he pitched backward, he felt his eyes pulp. He hit the ground hard, everything dark, everything ringing. When he could breathe again, he drew his lungs full of hot, dusty air that made him cough and choke. Then he was crawling.

He didn’t care about the pain or his eyes or his ears. He only cared about Mary. He patted his surroundings, feeling his way toward her, guided through the ringing darkness by milestones of familiarity: walls, molding, table legs, and, finally, deep pile carpet.

The floor vibrated. People coming…

He hurried along the carpet, ran headfirst into what he soon recognized as the nightstand, and found Mary’s bed. He got into bed beside her and said a prayer of thanks when he realized that she was deep, deep asleep, so far down under the blanket of morphine that even the explosion had not awakened her. He snuggled against her. She was so small now, so very small. He kissed her stiff hair, and whispered his love for her, waiting for death.

They never came for him. Hours later, dizzy with pain and weak with relief—at one point, they had come close enough to topple the nightstand lamp onto the pillow beside his head—he drifted off to sleep. Much later, as token to the incalculable madness of the universe, Charles awoke in permanent darkness beside the still form of the woman who had been his wife.