When John Came Home

“John,” I called out when I heard the door rattle. I dropped his shirt and my needle onto the table in front of me and walked down the long hallway from the kitchen to the door. It was still closed. There was no rain on the floor or John in our home. I sighed and walked to the front window and pushed aside the curtains.

The rain was coming down in sheets, creating waves through the air as the wind took hold of it. To think that the air that would normally sit so quiet, be so at ease could knock a man down was a troubling though, making some mistrust everyone and every thing.

No one battled the wind and rain tonight. Everyone had found their own hole to crawl into. I love the rain the best, when it fell straight down regularly. All those evil persons who wished to harm a young lady of well-bred grace and of high standing were bright enough to stay indoors when it rains. I could complete my errands without fear when John is not at my side. Poor John, he had been working so hard these days, so hard that he stayed out late into the night. Each night I played the good wife and waited up for him, ready to make a late dinner or draw a hot bath if he wanted.

Lightning struck the ground a mile away, bringing me out of my memories. I tried to remember if John had taken the carriage this morning, or had simply left with his papers and umbrella. I drew the curtains back, walked back into the kitchen, and returned to the shirt I was mending.

Poor John, in a scuffle with a man on the street earlier this week had left his shirt without three of its buttons. John was never for giving money to the poor because he had been a self-made man. He often told me of working in the school kitchens in order to attend the school. He then went from job to job until my father gave him a good job in the company. John had deserved it. I still remembered the first time I saw him with his hands covered from grease working on a burnt out engine. I had startled him and he had nearly crashed into the turbine.

We still get a good laugh out of that. He no longer works on the turbines, mostly talking to other companies to invest in ours and other such things. He has such a way with people, a charm that was practically addictive. One needed to hear the breaths he took between talking and see the way his eyes nearly disappeared when he smiled and laughed.

I finished the second button and began humming as I began to work on the third and last one. I hummed the song they played at our wedding. I had loved the song since I was a child and was determined to learn Italian to understand the words. I started to softly sing, pulling the thread taunt before I aimed the needle to stab the fabric again.

I got through nearly all of the song when I heard a soft thud and a pain. The fabric fell through my fingers. I checked my fingertips for any sign of a puncture. Nothing. I felt an odd, almost tickle on my right temple. I reached up and felt stickiness. Sweat, I thought. When my fingers drew back, I saw watery blood running down my hand. I stood from the chair and backed away from it.

“John!” I shouted in alarm. My darling John was standing close to my chair, his face bright red and covered with sweat, or rain, or tears.

I took a step towards him then looked down at the chair where I had been sitting. A body was sitting on the seat, but the upper half of the woman (it was a woman for she was wearing a gown) had fallen forward so her head was between her knees. The back of her head was a mess, a gaping hole that showed her inner workings. Her hair was matted into her brain, glued in place by blood with the odd piece of bone here and there.

I shrieked and stumbled away from the scene. I looked at John for an explanation. Something shone in his hands: a revolver.

The realization flooded me and nearly knocked me over. “John, how could you?” I asked John as he stood trembling over my body.

In death, we learn all.

He hadn’t been working late as he had said. He had a mistress, one wealthier than my father would ever permit him to be. She already carried his child. If he had divorced me, he would lose his honor in the public. All the charisma in the world wouldn’t win that back.

I ran at him, throwing my fists against what would have been his chest and face…but I only walked through him. He merely shivered as if I was just a cold wind.

Stop, said a man. I turned and saw a person resembling my grandfather, though younger by many years when I saw him last.

“Are you Death?”

The man frowned, Have you forgotten me already? I held you on my knee for years, taught you to walk and talk and you forget me in only a few years time.

“Grandfather?”

He smiled. Come with me. Your grandmother isn’t a patient woman.

The anger from my death no longer gripped my heart. I reached out and felt his hand firmly around mine.

“Why are you so young?”

He laughed at that. What kind of person would want to last for the rest of time as a feeble, nearly deaf old man?

I smiled, but it quickly faded. “I loved him.”

My grandfather smiled and took my hand. Are your vows not ‘til death’? Let us go.

And I walked with him to the end.

The End