Crooked Little Heart (2011)
“said the nurse, leading them to Charles’s room.
Elizabeth saw the small figure on a huge field of rumpled bed, his eyes closed, his body turning in a kind of spiral. It was as if he were trying to get comfortable in a way he would never achieve again in this world. Rae moaned and pulled up a chair beside him. Elizabeth stood at the foot of his bed, holding his shins through the sheets and thin blanket, barely able to breathe. But she could see that there would be no comfort coming from the outside. The only comfort would be in the ceasing of all this.
“Rae,” Elizabeth whispered. Rae looked at her sadly. The room smelled of age and decay and all the efforts to mask that animal smell—lemon swabs, antiseptics, baby powder. The sun shone through the round leaves of an alder outside the window, casting fluttering geisha shadows across the bed.
“Charles,” Elizabeth whispered.
She sat beside him across from Rae, who stroked his shoulder and arm, wiping at her eyes with her free hand, waiting.
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