Work Text:
You want to think of nothing but your deadline tonight. You type and type away, deliberately avoiding thinking about the other deadline tonight.
Your silly husband will come to his senses, and call you to apologize, and you will show him what you wrote and maybe act it out together. He has always supported your writing. And you have always supported him, in being his best.
That's why you left. This is his best. This is him putting aside his justice in favor of his fear, and you can not support that. You love the silly fool, and you can not support this execution.
So you left. You left hoping he would bend, that he would follow you, and you are angry that he didn't. And he can be sad about this all he likes, but as long as he does nothing about it, you are not coming back. Not even for his birthday.
So you remain mad at him. Still in love with him, but angry.
Writing has been an outlet, a way to pour all your feelings onto the page. Tonight is his birthday, so as perplexing as the timing is, you are feeling in the mood for something romantic. Steamy.
He keeps calling to interrupt, and you are annoyed with him. He keeps procrastinating, but you are sure he will do the right thing. You just wish he would stop taking his sweet time about it.
You told him to stop calling you tonight. You say it is the night of your deadline, but in truth it is his.
But he keeps calling. Keeps begging you to come back.
You stop answering.
(You will regret that later.)
Your daughter is at her lessons, and its just you, candles, and the typewriter. Set to the tune of the ringing of the phone.
Your daughter should be home by now. Maybe she is spending the night with her friend. She is mad at you for fighting with her father, but she doesn't understand.
At 12am you pick up the phone to tell him to knock it off, only to have your heart stop in your chest.
Your husband is dead.
The deadline doesn't matter anymore.
The deadline-
You fall to your knees and cry.
You won't hear him apologize. You can't apologize for not calling him on his birthday anymore. Your last conversation with him was a dismissal.
The world is now filled with things you will never be able to do with him.
You kneel on the floor, and later, you can't say how much time has passed. Grief is like a fog, eating up the clarity of the world. But a thought shines through like a light in the fog.
You are not the only person who will miss your husband tonight.
You have to find your daughter. She needs to know. Even if it will hurt her.
As much as you want to let her live in ignorance for a little longer, she would hate you in the long run for it.
That you refused to call him with her tonight will already damage your relationship with her. But she is your daughter. You will be there for her, through this.
You walk up the stairs to where she has her lesson, only to learn that she never showed up. Sometimes she does that. The tutor still gets paid, and doesn't seem to mind too much.
Your daughter may be playing with your neighbor's sister, the one with the yappy dog!
You march there and pound on the door, surprised that the yappy dog isn't making a racket.
You pound the door so hard it opens. A horrible stench wafts in.
Oh no
You march in crying.
There are two bodies. None of them are you daughter.
You feel sick with relief and terror. Your daughter is not here. Your daughter is not dead.
You pick up the phone and call the police. You like to think that you are not a woman prone to hysteria, but this is not your finest moment.
The operator asks you to remain in the area, but you have to find your daughter. You put it down and continue the search.
No luck.
Tears in your eyes, heart pounding in your chest, you march back upstairs and ask for your tutor to help in the search.
No luck.
No luck.
No luck,no lucknoluck!
You could tear your hair out from the stress of it.
Your husband is dead, and you want the world to stop and pay respect to your grief about it, but your daughter is missing. The world must go on. At least until you find her.
The last thing you told her was not to call her father for his birthday. Then the door slammed, and she went off to her lesson.
Better the tutor deal with it then you, you had thought. Your darling daughter has inherited both of her parents stubbornness.
What if she ran out to call her father on a payphone? What if she's been kidnapped? What if she was killed, like that other little girl! Abducted!
Horrifying possibilities float through your mind.
What if that's why your husband had called! To let you know she wasn't where she was supposed to be! And you didn't listen. You had refused to pick up the phone, to hear what may have been his last words.
You wish you could talk to your husband about this. Then he could worry, and you would calm down and refute every overblown worry that came out of your mouth.
But he's not here to be scared for you, so you are scared alone. No one is here to calm you down.
The sirens of the police distract you from your dark musings.
A man in white dances up the stairs. Two officers follow behind him.
You go back to your neighbors apartment.
When they enter the apartment, the dancing man falls onto his knees with a gasp.
“Kamila!” He cries out. “Someone get a doctor!”
The other officers share a look, and one dutifully goes over to the phone to call for a doctor, presumably.
The other officer comes over to you.
“You are the one who cal-”
“My daughter is missing.” You interrupt.
“I'm sorry?”
“My daughter is missing. I came to this apartment because she was friends with the girl here.”
He opens his mouth, then shuts it, stepping closer to take a look at you.
“Are you the wife of the Justice Minister?”
“I am. What does this have to do with my daughter?”
“We traced the last calls made on his phone. One of them was to an abandoned house.”
He looks over to the body of the dead little girl, before shaking his head.
“Your daughter is inside. Along with two other people. She was kidnapped.”
You gasp in horror. “What do they want!”
His voice gets hard.
“The execution of Detective Jowd.”
“Didn't t-that already happpen?” You stammer.
You have been categorically against the execution since it was first proposed. It was the reason you were fighting with your husband. You could not understand why he seemed so fearful yet insistent on going through with it. He begged you to understand, but he refused to explain.
Was this what he was afraid of?
“It did. We have been negotiating for her release.”
“What else could they possibly want!” You ask desperately, grabbing onto his scarf.
“I don't know.” His voice is blank. “Would you like to come by the station and wait?”
You shake your head, declining.
The phone rings. The inspector answers it.
He listens for a while. His voice is hard again when he replies. “Fine. I will see you there.”
He nods at you, then leaves.
The crime scene investigation continues around you. You go back to your apartment.
Time slips into the void around you. It's not like when you were writing. You are tight with worry, hazy with grief. You can't think about it, and can't not think about it. You are in limbo, and it is agony.
The noise of the phone startles you.
When you answer it, you didn't expect to hear your daughter. “Mo-.” She starts to call out.
Before you can say anything, an unknown male voice takes over. “Come alone to Aurelio Capellini's if you want to bring your daughter home.”
You have never driven to a restaurant so fast in your life.
You go inside. The door is open, which should be suspicious. You run in anyways.
Amelie is sitting at a table by the window. You call out her name, and run to your daughter.
You worry for a moment that it is a fake, but she is running into your arms, and Amelie is safe, and you are crying.
A knock at the window, and you both turn. A short man gives a bow, and then gets onto a motor scooter.
You hold your daughter close on the way home.
You can tell her tomorrow your husband, her father, is dead.
Tonight has been too much.