Blue Dahlia

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.
    But your husband’s alive, you see, Stella thought. Your life isn’t over. Your world’s the same as it was five minutes ago. So you can’t know. You can’t.
    When she felt herself begin to shake, she pulled back. “Not now, please. I can’t now. I have to take the boys home.”
    “I can come with you.” There were tears on Diane’s cheeks as she reached out, touched Stella’s hair. “Would you like me to come, to stay with you?”
    “No. Not now. I need ... the boys.”
    “I’ll get them. Come inside, Stella.”
    But she only shook her head.
    “All right. They’re in the family room. I’ll bring them. Stella, if there’s anything, anything at all. You’ve only to call. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
    She stood in the dark, looking in at the light, and waited.
    She heard the protests, the complaints, then the scrambling of feet. And there were her boys—Gavin with his father’s sunny hair, Luke with his father’s mouth.
    “We don’t want to go yet,” Gavin told her. “We’re playing a game. Can’t we finish?”
    “Not now. We have to go home now.”
    “But I’m winning. It’s not fair, and—”
    “Gavin. We have to go.”
    “Is Daddy home?”
    She looked down at Luke, his happy, innocent face, and nearly broke. “No.” Reaching down, she picked him up, touched her lips to the mouth that was so like Kevin’s. “Let’s go home.”
    She took Gavin’s hand and began the walk back to her empty house.
    “If Daddy was home, he’d let me finish.” Cranky tears smeared Gavin’s voice. “I want Daddy.”
    “I know. I do too.”
    “Can we have a dog?” Luke wanted to know, and turned her face to his with his hands. “Can we ask Daddy? Can we have a dog like Jessie and Wyatt?”
    “We’ll talk about it later.”
    “I want Daddy,” Gavin said again, with a rising pitch in his voice.
    He knows, Stella thought. He knows something is wrong, something’s terribly wrong. I have to do this. I have to do it now.
    “We need to sit down.” Carefully, very carefully, she closed the door behind her, carried Luke to the couch. She sat with him in her lap and laid her arm over Gavin’s shoulder.
    “If I had a dog,” Luke told her soberly, “I’d take care of him. When’s Daddy coming?”
    “He can’t come.”
    “ ’Cause of the busy trip?”
    “He ...” Help me. God, help me do this. “There was an accident. Daddy was in an accident.”
    “Like when the cars smash?” Luke asked, and Gavin said nothing, nothing at all as his eyes burned into her face.
    “It was a very bad accident. Daddy had to go to heaven.”
    “But he has to come home after.”
    “He can’t. He can’t come home anymore. He has to stay in heaven now.”
    “I don’t want him there.” Gavin tried to wrench away, but she held him tightly. “I want him to come home now .”
    “I don’t want him there either, baby. But he can’t come back