Rain hit against the window, gently but loud enough for Sulli to remember it was here when her sister wasn’t. Everything seemed persistent these days, eager to remind her of its existence, as if competing for space on the earth and bragging that it had succeeded. I am here, Beth is not. Traffic horns. The rattling of the subway. Thunderclaps. Dogs barking. Every day occurrences that were so deeply ingrained in society’s day-to-day living that everyone would notice if they disappeared. Eyebrows would be raised, investigations would be underway. The absence of weather, a silent dog, those things would be listed as an anomaly.
The death of Beth May had not been bookmarked by anyone but her family.
Sulli didn’t understand how the rest of the world could continue while hers had been so irreversibly changed, all for the worse. She was meant to be the youngest of four, not three. Was Ma still the mother of four? Did the powers that be mark you down with a discrepancy if you counted your dead child in the line-up of your offspring? The rules of grief were still incomprehensible to Sulli, nearly a year on. Maybe someone should write a guidebook (plenty of people had and she’d thumbed through a number of them during her bookstore visits with Hugo while he politely pretended not to look, but none of them had the answers she needed).
Sometimes, it felt like Beth’s existence had begun and ended with the May family. As if she had only been there for them to see. Sulli had never seen her sister with an abundance of friends, or a boy she might kiss one day. It was like Beth knew she wasn’t long for this world and was saving others the heartache of losing her. It had maybe been a selfless act on Beth’s part, forever the kindest and most generous of the May sisters, but Sulli wished her sister hadn’t contained herself so. More people should be grieving her.
Sometimes, she was reminded that mourning wasn’t as exclusive to her immediate family either. Alice sent her the occasional childhood photo. Everett was ignoring them completely, a solid piece of evidence that Beth’s death had affected him and his relationship with them in ways that currently seemed unfixable. Every so often, she wondered if Wally was hurting too, but he’d made it clear she wasn’t privy to that information anymore.
Shamefully, she hadn’t thought about Mr Walton.
He’d approached her in the stairwell while she’d been searching through her purse for her keys. Absently, she’d tried to make polite small talk with him, only lifting her head when he still lingered. Briefly, she wondered if she was about to be admonished for all the snide remarks she’d made about Wally lately, all of them born from hurt and humiliation. Instead, his wrinkles had deepened as he gave her a sad smile.
“I miss playing music with her.”
Tears sprang up in Sulli’s eyes. Her keys forgotten about, she’d reached forward and enveloped his hand in her own. All she could manage to give him was a wordless nod as she battled against the swell of emotion rising in her. She felt heartbreak for Mr Walton who had always been so inexplicably kind to her and her sisters, even when their fights probably kept him awake well into the night, and that was to say nothing of their tendency to drag his grandson into mischief.
But something loosened in her chest when she realised that someone else who hadn’t grown up in the tiny, cramped May apartment felt it. Losing Beth had changed Mr Walton too.
“Do you want to play some for me?” she asked gently.
Half an hour later saw her sitting side by side on Mr Walton’s piano bench, watching his aged fingers dance stiffly across the keys while the rain still pitter-pattered on the window outside. Arthritis meant he couldn’t play as fluidly as Beth - well, who could? - but even though there might have been a discordant note or two hit, Sulli was able to close her eyes and imagine for the duration of whatever melody played that her sister was the one making the piano sing.
He came to the end of ‘A River Flows In You’ and Sulli looked at him, misty-eyed.
“That was always one of my favourites,” she smiled, a lump catching in her throat when Mr Walton nodded.
“Mine too.”
With one hand, Sulli wiped gently at her eyes. With the other, she laid it over Mr Walton’s.
“I really, really miss her,” she whispered. It was the first time she’d put words to her own grief, finding it difficult to talk to Gigi and Frankie about it. She couldn’t burden her Ma and Pa with it either. Desperately, she had been looking for a way to talk to someone, anyone about Beth. No one had listened until now.
A creak of the floorboard behind them interrupted whatever it was Mr Walton had been about to say and Sulli whirled around. Her heart leapt into her throat, somehow stopping dead and galloping off at one hundred miles an hour, all at the same time, the minute she laid eyes on Wally.
In the blink of an eye, Sulli was on her feet, stricken. She tried to share a helpless look with Mr Walton, but he just smiled at his grandson.
“Sneaking up on us?” he asked, with a fond note in his voice.
All Sulli could do was stare. It had been weeks - no, months - since she saw Wally. It stood to reason that of course she would find him in his own damn apartment, but she hadn’t been thinking about that when MrWalton had invited her in. She’d just seen an old man who was in need of as much comfort as she was.