Love in a photograph

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The new year rolls in like a dark cloud, and with every day Pa withers away a little more. The first month of the year is the darkest the Styles family has ever endured, but somehow Pa keeps it together until Harry's birthday.

They have supper all together in Pa's room, since there's no way he's going to be able to get out of bed any time soon. Harry is beginning to lose hope that he's ever going to recover, and Gemma's already lost all of her hope, but Ma still smiles and laughs like nothing is wrong, like they're having a quirky supper on the bedroom floor instead of desperately trying to hold the frayed pieces of their lives together.

"Supper was delicious, Anne," Pa croaks. Gemma takes his still mostly full plate for him when he tries to push it away and nearly sends it tumbling to the floor. "I'm beat. Does anyone mind if I have a nap?" he asks, his voice so tired and strained it sounds about as painful for him to use it as it is for anyone else to hear it.

"Of course not," Gemma says, gathering all of the plates and standing up quickly. "Ma, do you want to help with the dishes?"

"Oh, always," Ma grins, allowing Harry to help her up off the floor before she goes scurrying off to the kitchen after Gemma.

"Happy birthday, Harry," Pa says, beckoning Harry close with one shaking hand. "Do you know how proud I am of you?"

"Yes, Pa," Harry breathes, too afraid to speak lest his voice fail him. "Thank you."

"I love you, Harry, you and Gemma and you're Ma, all of you. Always remember that," he wheezes, keeping his eyes locked with Harry's even as he begins to drift off to sleep.

"Always, Pa," Harry says, voice shaking too much. Pa gives him a gentle smile and then closes his eyes, and Harry creeps out of the room with tears already dripping down his face.

Gemma leaves Ma at the sink to do the dishes in favour of bringing Harry to the other room, letting him cry into her shoulder for a long few minutes.

"He's not going to get better, Gem," he sobs quietly, looking up at her. "Is he?"

"We need to start being practical," Gemma says, but there are tears in her eyes, too, and finally, Harry thinks she's right.

Pa passes away a week later. Gemma walks to his room with a plate of breakfast and comes back still holding it, her face wrenched in anguish, tray shaking in her hands. Harry takes it from her and sets it down on the table and then holds her, hugs her close to his chest and cries into her hair while she cries into his chest. Ma catches on, of course she does, but she wears a brave face for the rest of the day and doesn't say a word about it, even when Harry and Gemma sit her down to discuss what to do now.

It feels horrible to say, but Harry's almost relieved that it's finally over. It was horrible, watching Pa go through all of that pain, to get weaker and weaker every day and no one even knew why. He's in a better place now, Harry hopes, a place where nothing can hurt him, where nothing can touch him ever again.

The ground is frozen solid and buried under at least eight feet of snow, so they'll have to wait until the spring before they can bury him where he always wanted to be buried.

"When I go," he used to say, sometimes over supper, sometimes early in the morning when Harry was working with him in the field, sometimes offhandedly and in passing, "I want to be buried under the apple tree in the field, the one I planted first, with your Ma. I love that goddamn apple tree. I want to be buried there."

It always seemed so far away, something that would never actually happen, but now here they are, huddled behind the kitchen window, looking at the snow buried nearly halfway up its trunk in the snow.