Andrew Whitaker had lived forty years inside a house that refused to stop waiting.
That was how it felt to him.
The front hallway still caught the afternoon sun the same way it had on the day Clara left with the children.
The kitchen window still rattled when wind came from the west.
May be an image of child and smiling
The stairs still creaked at the fourth step.
The house aged, but it did not move on.
Neither did Andrew.
People thought grief was loud at first, then quiet later.
They were wrong.
Grief was loud in the first weeks, yes.
Police radios.
Phone calls.
Neighbors knocking.
Reporters asking whether the family had seemed happy.
Divers entering the river with grim faces.
But later, grief did not become quiet.
It became furniture.
It sat in every room.
It waited at the dinner table.
It slept in the children’s beds.
