The Last Handful of Clover - Book 1: The Hereafter

1.54 KUTV News

June 7, 7:30 am

In the morning, it was almost possible for Richard to pretend that he wasn't dead.

For a time, he wandered around the house after Keith, trying to do exactly that. He tried calling out things to Keith like he might normally shout out in the morning. They were strange things; pretty much whatever popped into his head in the moment.

"How did you sleep, sweet cub?"

"Hon, have you seen my orange tie?"

"What's the weather supposed to be like today?"

"Hey, Baby Bear, let's get dinner on campus tonight before coming home."

But he quickly grew tired of his one-sided banter, and even to his ears he sounded a little crazy. He had no need for his orange tie, and couldn't have opened the drawer to look for it, anyway. And banter about a dinner he would never eat again made him feel even more like a ghost.

You're trying too hard, Richard. Take a breath.

Keith, for his part, appeared to be going about his daily morning routine almost as if everything was normal. That was as long as you didn't look into his eyes to see the emptiness there. He took a shower, but Richard still couldn't bear the agony he knew would come if he looked on his partner's naked body, so he had taken those few minutes to walk across the hall to his office.

Richard kept a beautiful home office, if he did say so himself. He'd decorated it in a very conservative style, and friends had told him it could pass for a lawyer's office, rather than that of a college professor. He'd opted for an ornate wooden table, rather than a traditional desk, and behind it he had an antique credenza that kept most of his office supplies. The desk was sparse, except for his computer, and a few framed photos. He did most of his scholarship on line now, so he had very little in terms of printed books or articles on the desk.

But he still loved his books, and two of the room's walls were lined with floor to ceiling cherry-wood bookcases. They contained everything from scholarly tomes on linguistics to complete collections of Zane Grey westerns and Ray Bradbury paperbacks. Walking along his bookcase, Richard ran his fingers down their spines, listening for the water to stop running in Keith's shower. And nestled among a batch of poetry he saw his very rare 1856 edition of Whitman's Leaves of Grass. It was in an archival, acid-free slip case that he'd had specially made by the Preservation department at the Marriott Library. The book was one of his most prized possessions, one of only a thousand copies ever printed, and passed down in his family for generations. It was probably worth more than any car he had ever bought, despite the missing title page, and the overall poor condition. He was seized with a desire to pull it off the shelf and thumb through those old, brittle pages. But he knew he'd never thumb through another book, ever again.

After his shower, Keith went downstairs, had his breakfast, and took his coffee into the living room. Richard had finally learned to ignore the blood tree on the wall and the pool of gore on the carpet, although he was still careful to step around it. He knew if he was going to stay in this house, he'd have to find a way to cope with this constant reminder of his gruesome death.

For a time that morning, Keith just sat in his big, overstuffed recliner with a cup of coffee, alternately reading Ariel by Sylvia Plath (for probably the hundredth time, Richard thought) and jotting notes in his journal—probably ideas or snatches of poetry that Plath inspired. Richard sat across from him on the couch, and just watched him; wishing he too could have a cup of coffee to start the morning.

If it hadn't been that Richard was dead, and that Keith was going to spend his life in this house alone, it looked like a pretty typical morning on any day off Keith and Richard had spent in the past decade. But the fidgeting in Keith's fingers and the faraway look in his eyes told Richard that no matter what normality he tried to bring to his day, his husband knew nothing would ever be normal again.