Empty Nest

Her husband and son had been gone for three months and a week when Ava Holt sat on her couch, watching a mystery program until a news segment interrupted, promising breaking news. The mild irritation at the interruption vanished as soon as the newscaster, not the local woman but a national broadcaster, spoke. The lap blanket slid from her knees, and her mug, the tea still warm, shattered on the floor. She made no move to retrieve either, horror-filled.

"—and all crew members are believed to be dead." The woman spoke as images filled the screen. Ava's heart gave a stutter as she recognized them, the same photos that were placed with pride on the mantle place. Samuel. Matthew. Please, no. no, it can't—they'd have notified—they wouldn't—Garrison would have told—her thoughts cut out as the newscaster continued, as if speaking about a particularly bad weather system or falling stock in a company, not the death of three people, not the loss of Ava's family.
"The Galaxy Garrison has said the crash was presumably caused by pilot error." She pressed her hand almost unconsciously to her breast, as if she could make her heart calm and that alone could stop the words from being true. Behind her, she head a step creek, the second one from the bottom always did, Samuel had said he'd fix that, after. Ava tried to turn her head, knowing that Katie had to be there, but could not draw her eyes, welling with tears, away from the screen.

"—a sad day for all humanity," the voice said as the broadcast finished. Ava could not breathe, could not think, as the murder mystery, all poor lighting and convoluted clues began again. A sad day for all humanity? Was that meant to mean anything at all? Humanity hadn't known Samuel, or Matt, or Shiro, not as family. What did the whole of humanity know about her Sam's jokes, or the way Matt could sing, or the way that he let Katie borrow his glasses, or how he never made his bed, or—No, no, no, it can't—it can't be happening, this wasn't supposed to happen. God, what was that saying, about how things like this only ever happen to other people, except that everyone is "someone else" to a stranger—but her family. How could they both—three, counting Shiro, and she would—be gone? Just like that? Pilot Error? That was it? Never mind that Shiro was one of the best, that they'd all trained for—it had to have been years, hadn't it? But even the best could make an error, one mistake to take way her husband and son. The tears spilled over. She knew—she should go to Katie. She needed to hold her daughter, reassure them both that they still had each other. Yet she could not move, frozen, as if moving might make this all real. If she stayed still, it might only be a dream.

The phone rang, shattering the muffled spell around her, the voices of the arguing detectives on the screens suddenly audible. She slammed the off button with more force than she intended, grabbing the phone. It would be Garrison, it would be them telling her that the report was mistaken, wrong that everything was fine.

"Mrs. Holt? This is Commander Iverson, of Galaxy Garrison." The gruff voice was familiar. He'd come to a dinner party, once, Ava remembered dimly. She nodded, then realized he couldn't see her.

"Yes?" her voice trembled, her breathing shaky.

"I had hoped to catch you before the broadcast aired—some dimwit spoke to the press without clearing it with me first." He paused, and the hesitation gave her hope.

"It was—Commander, it was mistaken, then? The report?" Her heart hammered, pulsing in her throat. His silence was all the answer she needed, though, and this time not for hope.

"I'm so sorry for your loss, Mrs. Holt. If there is anything we at Garrison can do, let us know. This is a tragedy no one could have anticipated." He started to say more, but Ava hung up without listening, her stomach heaving. The floor seemed to sway under her feet as she stood, trampling the tea-sodden blanket, and she stumbled to the kitchen before throwing up, bile stinging her throat.

"Mom?" Katie asked from the doorway, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Not her own bedspread, Ava noticed with recognition that seemed far off. Matt's. "Mom, it's not—it's not true, it can't—"

"Katie-Kate." Ava drew a dishtowel over her mouth, letting it fall to the counter and opening her arms for her daughter's frantic embrace. "Oh, Katie." She could feel Katie trembling against her, suppressed sobs wracking them both. "Garrison called—Commander Iver-something. Son. They're—they're gone." It seemed like betrayal to say those words, like lead on her tongue, but they came anyway, and sobs bubbled after them. They stood like that until their knees gave out, and then they sat on summer-warmed linoleum, clinging to each other, as if the other was all that remained in the universe.

It may as well have been true.

Katie left two and a half months after that. She'd had a year left in the local high school, graduating even faster than Matt had, but put the papers down on the kitchen table, after another night of dreams that were more pleasant than waking. She had shoved aside the picked at plate of eggs, pointing at the acceptance, a school on the East Coast, more than a thousand miles away.

"I applied for a scholarship. I can't—everything here, reminds me of—of Dad. Matt. And school, everyone will know, and I don't want to be here. I can't. They'll all pity me, and I won't be me, I'll be the girl whose dad and brother d-died, and I just need this, mom. Please say you understand."

Ava did. It would be selfish, to keep Katie here if she needed to heal, in a new place, just for her own sake. That didn't mean it didn't hurt, but Katie promised to call often, packing her bags as much from Matt's drawers—still full, like Sam's were—as her own. But the calls were hardly enough, and the house felt so empty, more like a tomb than anything. Ava took to eating her meals in the sitting room, unable to look at the vacant chairs around her grandmother's handed-down dining room table, where Matt and Katie had done homework, where Sam had carved a long mark across the top in a cutthroat game of Spoons one winter night, years ago. She'd long since moved the photos from the mantle, where it hurt to look at them. Her Sam was gone. Her husband was dead, and her son—and Shiro, too, so often a dinner guest he might as well have been family. Sam had always said that, Crew was family. Their family of five had dropped to two in the space it took for a ship to crash, and now it almost seemed it had dropped to one, with Katie gone, and so distant. But that was silly, Ava reminded herself as she tried to stay busy with work, editing articles for science publications. Katie would return, she'd be graduated within the year, and they still had each other. There was nothing else for it, but to keep living. She had to stay strong, not just for Katie's sake but her own.

One night, Katie called, the first in a week. They had sat in silence, comfortable with static, just in the knowing that the other was there. But Katie was distracted, and Ava was sure that the research paper her daughter mentioned, about illuminated manuscripts in Irish history, had been about women's labor unions when she'd mentioned it the week before. It wasn't the first time Katie's essays or projects had not matched up. Ava chalked it up to stress. "Should I come visit?" she asked. "I don't have any deadlines or meetings, and it's not so far, if I take a plane." Katie's breathing went fast.

"No, mom, I—no. really. You don't have to. I—oh," she stopped. "I gotta go. I'll call tomorrow, I promise. I love you."

"I love you too," Ava said, something like a mother's intuition knotting in her gut. Tomorrow, when Katie called, she'd demand an explanation. It had been months, caught up in her own grief, but that was no excuse. She'd ask for an explanation, if Katie needed to come home, if there was anything at all she could do.

Except that the next day, Katie didn't call, and Ava waited by the phone until her eyelids drooped shut. The next morning, with still nothing and the knot in her stomach growing like a serpent, Ava called the number of the school—Katie hadn't answered her cell.

"Hello, Glenwood Bayview Prep, this is Deb, how may I direct your call?" a woman chirped.

"Uh, Deb, this is Ava Holt, Katherine Holt's mother? I couldn't get in touch with her, and I was—"

"Holt? One moment please." Hold music filled Ava's ear, then cut off with a click. "There's no Katherine Holt enrolled here. Do you have the right number? Sometimes, the Greenwood prep moms call over, and it's a mess. Two digits off, too, we're 1188 and they're 1177. It happens." Deb hung up.

Ava tried the other school, but got the same response. No Katherine Holt. She called each back, tried a dozen different spellings, demanded to know if the files were in order. The end result was the same. Katie had never enrolled in a Glen or Green anything, and still wouldn't answer her cell or emails. She tried to tell herself that it was only fear, because the anniversary was coming up, that she was over reacting, that it was nothing, but she knew that it was something, and something bad. I should have demanded she stay. I shouldn't have let her go. What if she's in trouble, what if she's in danger?

Ava hardly touched her meal that night, clicking on the television only to fill the house with sound as she folded laundry. She held a pale pink blouse, folding it carelessly. It was an interview, but she only half listened. The wider world hardly seemed to matter, and as callous as it was, she couldn't bring herself to think or feel about some disaster on the other side of the country, not tonight.

Except that she knew the voice, and her eyes flickered up to the screen Commander Iverson of Galaxy Garrison, looking worse for wear, was speaking about "—an attack of some kind, though the crisis is averted. There is no immediate threat, we assure you, and all precautions are being taken to ensure the safety of this planet. There is nothing to fear." The clip cut out, and another man spoke, over a picture of the cadet training school.

"Again, our hearts go out to the families of the three missing cadets. They remain unaccounted for, presumed lost in the desert, or killed in the confusion. Lance-" A picture of a young man flickered in her vision, then another as two names where read—she wanted to shut off the television, God, what a private thing, grief was, to be spread about like dinner table gossip. "—and Pidge Gunderson," the voice-over concluded, as a third picture came into clarity. "If anyone has information as to the whereabouts of these individuals, we urge—"

Ava shook her head. Gunderson was her maiden name. The third boy, with raggedly cut auburn hair, the glasses—that was Matt, only it wasn't. It wasn't. Realization hit Ava Holt like a truck, knocking the air from her lungs as she creased and uncreased the blouse, her fingers numb and her hearing faded. Nothing else in the world mattered, not this time, not anymore. I can't lose her, too. Not Katie. Please, not my Katie-Kate, too. Oh, please, no. Not all of them. I can't have lost them all.

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