WHO: Euphemia Hayes and Harrison Exley WHEN: Harrison is about 7, 9, and 11. Euphemia is about 18, 19, and 22 (the same age Harrison is now). WHERE: The Flores’ home. SUMMARY: Bedtime stories. WARNINGS: Talk of parental loss. Patty shouldn’t read this in the morning, probably.
“No.”
It was a small flat sound that emanated from the tiny ball of hair seated atop the bed on the other side of the room. Euphemia glanced over her shoulder curiously before pushing Goodnight Moon back into its place on the bookshelf.
Thank goodness. She hated that book.
The same hand started floating over various spines, keeping an eye on the child for any further noises of approval or disapproval.
He watched with an almost unnerving stillness until her index finger hovered in front of a large volume. “I like that one.”
She turned her head back around. Hamlet. Was he sure?
“Hamlet? Are you sure?”
“I like it.” The child repeated. “He’s insane.” A vocabulary word too large for his age range, and yet he peered at her as if he was uncertain if she knew what it meant.
A moment passed as she stared at him in a way that a soul might peer at one of the Great Works, and she, too, saw a sad reflection of a life that felt familiar. Being smart and being young was a very hard thing to be.
“You’re not wrong. This is a good choice.”
And so she plucked Hamlet from the shelf before making her way over to his bedside. “May I sit here?”
He nodded silently before scooting over to get a better look at the pages.
“Act I, Scene I…”
“...This above all,—to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
As Polonius finished his seemingly never ending list of cliched fatherly advice the boy on the bed stirred.
“Are your parents dead?”
Euphemia didn’t pause. She didn’t even seem alarmed.
“My father is dead, yes.”
“Do you miss him?”
“Yes, sometimes.”
A longer pause, though it was impossible to guess at what the child was pondering.
“Did you cry?”
The polite answer would have been to tell him yes, but that would have been a lie. Euphemia valued honesty.
“No.”
This at least seemed to get an emotion out of him. Something … hopeful?
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I was sad, but…”
He waited, half expecting that but to lead to something. But it didn’t. And that was it, in a way, the sad feeling going on and on like it was leading somewhere, like something more would come.
But it didn’t.
“Can you?”
“Everyone can.”
The small figure sat quiet, still, second after second ticked by but he didn’t say anything. So she repeated herself, “Everyone can.”
When he finally spoke it was in a whisper. “Do I have to?”
Her exterior cracked, brows knitting together as she tried to puzzle this conversation together ahead of time.
“Why?”
“Sometimes I’m sad but I don’t.” The unspoken worry being, that other people did.
Euphemia was quiet for a moment as she considered what to say, and even when she spoke it was slow and decisive.
“All eyes can cry, but it is okay if yours don’t. It is okay to cry, but you don’t have to. There are other ways to show your feelings.” A quick beat. “Would you like me to take you to the optometrist so that a professional can tell you that your eyes are fine?”
He appeared to consider. A long and thoughtful pause before. “No. That’s okay.”
“Okay. If you change your mind, let me know. I will take you if I am in town. If I am not, you can have someone else take you and you can call me after.”
The boy only nodded.
Knuckles rapped on the boy’s door.
He knew better than to say what, people didn’t like it when he did that. It was easier to imitate his older brother, to try and sound cooler.
“It’s open.”
And so it did, easily and without reservation. Euphemia walked in, Hamlet tucked under her left arm.
“It’s been a while.”
It had been a while. They’d broken up, Hugo and Effie. And now, well, he still didn’t understand it.
“Yeah.”
“I was wondering if perhaps you needed a bedtime story.” She flashed the title at him.
His eyes caught the lettering, read the title, he could remember her reading it in the past. Before whatever had happened with Hugo.
“No, that’s okay,” he nodded towards his nightstand where a stack of abused looking paperbacks sat. “I can read my own.”
She let her eyes drift to the stack of books for no other reason than it was easier to look at presently. She wondered how many times she had hurt someone’s feelings with casual indifference. She wondered if she had been oblivious to it.
“Very well.” A stiff pause as she turned, calling behind her, “I’ll leave you to it.”