Death In The Family

Chapter 16

Anders should have texted Simone's phone to test it before he left for work, but he didn't think to do that until hours after she hadn't replied. If he'd known that she wasn't receiving his texts, he could have brought the faulty phone back to the mall with him and saved himself the trip later. But, as usual, he didn't think things through and that was how he ended up at the clothing boutique with three different sizes of each outfit the clerk had to select for him based on the embarrassingly approximate height and weight he could guess of his Simone. Words like "tiny" and "like that but smaller" only made the clerk look at him with pity. Of course, that also may have been because the entire staff seemed to recognize him from the news. At least they were subtle enough to keep their recognition of him down to just staring and whispering among themselves.

He had been not so subtly pulled into his supervisor's office and asked to leave just a few hours into working because his appearance was such a distraction. Actually, the term his boss had used was "distressing". His bruises were distressing his coworkers because they knew where he had gotten them. He had pressed Anders to take the time off, to go spend the grieving time legally allowed to him, but Anders had managed to argue him down to working short shifts should he feel able - so long as he kept to his office. Couldn't have his famous bruises disrupting the project any more than it had. Anders had walked out of the office angry. Now he walked out of the clothing boutique bewildered and frustrated. This was just not his day.

"Anders?"

He froze mid-step, pivoting on his good leg before he could think better of it, and confirmed it was who he had been afraid it was. "Elin! What a coincidence! How are you?"

He glanced down at her belly after looking at her face. He couldn't help it. It was an automatic action, one that she evidently saw in the stiffening of her already nervous smile. It seemed neither of them were prepared for this, which was at least somewhat reassuring, if a little bitter.

"I'm good. We're good," she answered, sliding her hand over her rounded belly.

His eyes followed the shape it traced, that bitter feeling expanding. "How's your husband?"

"Louis is part of that 'we'," she answered, not facetiously, her silver tongue merely always ahead of the conversation. He glanced away, ashamed at his behavior, at all of it. "I'd ask how you are, but..."

"I'm fine," he said, then tapped his cane on the asphalt of the parking lot. "Well, I'm approaching fine."

She smiled politely. An awkward silence carried on the breeze between them until she broke it with an equally awkward, "Do you want to go grab a coffee, since we're both here?"

A few weeks ago, he would have been daydreaming about this scenario, praying for any opportunity to convince her to let him back into her life. It was startling how quickly things could completely change. He'd never given any real consideration to becoming a father, having taken it for granted that he'd settle down with some decent girl once he got comfortably in his thirties and it would just sort of happen. Then Elin got pregnant, but she did not want to be that girl for him. She was already that girl for her husband. She'd made it clear there was no room for Anders in her neat little life and that had devastated him in a way he hadn't expected. Now faced with this invitation that was more than just coffee, he realized that there was no longer any room for Elin in his messy little life.

"I have to get back to my... to Simone, my, um..." he trailed off.

"Your niece," she finished for him, then looked away, her features pinched in regret. "It's hard to avoid reading about it."