Work Text:
Mrs Diane Freeman’s world implodes sometime in the early morning of a grey March in a modest three-bedroom apartment at her front door.
I regret to inform you that your husband is MIA.
It's a pronouncement that brings her wildest nightmares to life.
The next several days are a whirlwind of paperwork and grief. There is the funeral to arrange (empty casket), insurance paper to file, and bank papers to submit. It would be almost impossible for a just widowed woman to do by herself except for all of the Freeman’s and the Johnson’s come to her aid.
However, the hardest part is Nile.
The news stumps her daughter almost mute and she spends her time quiet when her chatter used to fill up the room. After crying once upon first receiving the news she seemed to have made up her mind. With grim stoicism unusual for a ten-year-old child she starts helping her.
Eliot is far easier too young, at the age of three, to understand the implications of what is going on.
A few days after the funeral ends, on a bright Sunday morning, she manages to convince Nile that her homework can be done later and would she like to accompany her mother to the Art Institute of Chicago? She carries Eliot in one arm, his chubby cheek pressed against hers and Nile’s hand in the other.
They move through the museum one of the many visitors passing artwork after artwork.
She almost doesn’t notice when Nile suddenly stops.
“Nile? Honey?”
Silently her daughter stares at a painting filled with jovial men and women, dancing (waltz? tango? swing?) and drinking.
“Mom… these people look weird.”
“Hmm… I think it is stylised.”
“What is stylised?” Nile asks.
“It means it's drawn in a particular style instead of being realistic.” Mrs Freeman replies.
“So weird…” Nile comments, snickering.
Diane finds herself joining in until her daughter starts crying again.
She kneels down with Eliot in her arm (still sleeping) and wraps her other arm around her child.
“I wish dad were here…” Nile says, voice saturated with sorrow.
“Me too, honey… me too.” She replies as the dancing figures in the painting keep swaying to their intangible music.