Page 108 of Cruel King
Turning to look at her, Ava lets out a sigh. “Maybe a piece of bread?”
She looks down at the table and quietly says, “I thought I should get up. I might take a shower.”
“That’s good. Are you feeling any better?” I ask, letting my hand holding my fork hover over the plate, almost as if I’m afraid to move in fear it might upset her.
When she lifts her head to look at me, I get my answer even before she says a word. No, she’s the same as she’s been for three weeks since that terrible day we got the news.
“Not really. I don’t know. Being hungry might be a good sign, right?” she asks, and all I can think is she’s broken.
Not just sad. Broken.
“Mick has a lot of the fall flowers out. Have you seen any?” I ask as I resume eating.
Eleanor brings over a plate with bread and butter and sets it in front of Ava. “There you go, honey. I’m so happy to see you up and around again.”
Ava doesn’t answer her but takes a bite of bread without putting any butter on it. After she finishes it, she looks across the table at me. “I haven’t seen them, but thank you for having him cut the yellow roses for me and putting them next to the bed, Matthias.”
I force a smile even as I know those roses I place in Theo’s room every morning aren’t from the rose bush the groundskeeper transplanted next to the house a few weeks ago but from the florist in town. Since that day, it’s struggled to do anything, and he told me yesterday he’s worried it’s not going to make it.
Another death. I don’t think I can deal with any more. I know Ava can’t.
“They’re your favorite, so I make sure you see them every day.”
She picks at her piece of bread, eating tiny bites before finally setting the crust of that first piece down on the plate a few minutes later. I want her to stay up today. It would be a huge step toward her getting back to normal, but when she stands up to leave a few seconds later, it’s all I can do to pretend I’m fine with her going back to his room.
“I think I’m getting tired again,” she mumbles as she walks out of the kitchen.
Disappointed, I return to my roast beef dinner and hope maybe tomorrow will be the day she feels well enough to stay out of bed. Eleanor walks over to the table to take Ava’s half-eaten plate of bread and gives me a smile.
“That was improvement, right?”
She sounds so hopeful. I wish I felt the same.
With a shrug, I sigh. “Yeah, I guess.”
Eleanor pats me on the shoulder. “Maybe if you sat with her since she’s up. I think it could do her a world of good.”
“It couldn’t hurt.”
Even as I say that, I don’t know if that’s the case. The doctor says Ava is suffering from depression on top of grieving. He claims she’s gone through the other steps, but he’s worried because she appears to be stuck in this one. Every single thing he’s said I should do has failed miserably, so I doubt simply sitting with her is going to do much.
By the time I finish my dinner, I’m convinced sitting with Ava won’t help, but I’m going to try something new tonight. I walk up to my room and look through the shelf in my closet for my old sketchbooks. The one I want is from when I was only fourteen or fifteen. I find it on the bottom of the pile and take it down to look at. As I flip through the pages, I cringe at a few of my drawings from back then, but it isn’t pictures of trees I want to show Ava.
Hopeful for the first time in weeks, I walk down the hall to my brother’s room and softly knock on the door before pushing it open. Ava sits cross-legged on the bed and turns to look at me with an expression that says she’s surprised to see me.
“I thought maybe you’d like some company?” I say as I close the door behind me.
Her gaze moves to the book under my arm. Pointing at it, she says, “You aren’t thinking of drawing me, are you?”
With a smile, I shake my head as I sit down next to her. “No. I just wanted to show you a drawing of mine from a long time ago. I’m thinking I was fifteen, maybe, so keep that in mind.”
For the first time in weeks, she gives me a tiny smile when she says, “You’re always so humble about your sketches, Matthias. They’re good. You should think that way about them too.”
I turn the pages until I get to the one I drew of Theo in the pool one hot July day when he was thirteen or fourteen. I don’t remember anything about that day, but the picture shows him smiling and laughing while he was playing with a huge beach ball with Marius.
Without a word, I set the sketchbook down in her lap and point at Theo. “I always had a hard time getting his smile just right. He was joking around with Marius and Kellen, and right before I started drawing, he bounced the beach ball off the top of Kellen’s head. He got angry and jumped out of the pool, but Marius stayed in with Theo and the two of them were tossing the ball back and forth while I was sketching this.”
Ava touches the paper before running her fingertips over my brother’s smile. “He was always so happy. It didn’t matter how bad a day you were having. If Theo was around, it got better.”