4338.213 · August 1, 2018 AD
The Smallest Voice
Greta stands in her kitchen worrying about a son who has gone silent, while another son she has not seen in years walks through her front door with news he refuses to share with her. The morning unfolds at the wrong end of every closed door in her own house. By the time she has had enough of waiting and pushes the study open herself, the wall behind her husband and her returning son is no longer a wall at all.
Greta Anne Smith is in the kitchen when the knock comes. Her toast is burning, her eldest is unreachable, the police are not calling her back, and the youngest of the three sons still under her roof has just slammed the front door behind him on his way out. She has been holding this household together with the small machinery of breakfasts and tea-towels and worry, and the seams are starting to show. When she runs to the front door and finds Luke — Luke, who she has not seen in years — standing on the other side of it, she throws her arms around him before she has time to ask why he has come. The answer arrives a moment later, in the form of a request she is not part of. Noah takes Luke into the study. The door closes. Greta is left in her own hallway with her arms still warm from the hug.
She makes tea for Jerome. She admits to her youngest son that she does not know what is happening in her own house. She waits as long as she can bear to wait. And when she finally pushes the study door open with the full weight of a mother who has had enough, the wall behind her husband and her returning son is alive with colour, and a voice older than the room is asking her if she loves him.
