Reunion

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She was waiting. She felt that awful anticipation; she didn't want to start something or do anything because he could be there any minute. It could be hours but it could be any minute. And she was restless and bored with it. That was her on this sunny afternoon. Just waiting. Still waiting.

The room was starkly harshly white, flooded with natural light. The walls were covered with her art, plainly framed black and white photographs of desolation, pain, and hope. For some reason, the ones she most wanted him to see, she took off the walls and put under the covers of the bed. The blank spaces on the walls where those frames had hung spoke of guilt, shame and regret.

She sat motionless in a straight backed chair. He came in, knelt in front of her, and buried his face in her lap. She never saw his face, didn't see how the years had changed him. His hands went around her hips, to the small of her back. She stroked his hair; it was now very silver and coarse.

They sat, just so, for a time. Maybe it was an hour, though it may have only been ten or fifteen minutes. Time had ceased to have meaning for them long ago. She knew he was sobbing, horrible wracking tearless sobs. His shoulders shook; she soothed them. This was many years late. His fingers dug into her back, painfully. Finally he raised his eyes, his dry red eyes, beseechingly to hers. Her patience cracked, her stoicism gone; he saw it. She slid bonelessly off the chair, landing gracelessly in a heap on the floor, on him. Tangled, twisted, and uncomfortable, she began laughing, a hoarse humorless laugh, more bitter than his pain.

Wrapping his arms around her, his big frame enveloped hers. He carried her to the bed and lay down on top of her, on top of the covers, on top of the pictures. They heard the glass crack beneath the combined weight of their bodies. They both shattered in that instant. He was home.