Bosco Kitty's Arc

Chapter 7 of 9

The house feels different when he returns from the cottage. Not quieter — it has been quiet for days now — but heavier, like the air itself has thickened. Bosco moves through the kitchen and stops at the base of the stairs. Above him, Bizzy Dee's door stands open. He climbs slowly, one step at a time, his legs stiff from hours curled in the cottage. The hallway stretches ahead, longer than it has ever been. At the threshold he stops and looks inside. Her bed is unmade, the floral comforter twisted to one side. The medical chair sits empty near the window, its tubes coiled and silent. And just inside the door, packed and waiting, sits the green leather suitcase with worn brown straps. Bosco stares at it. The buckles are fastened. The handle points toward the hallway. Someone has placed it there to be carried out. He steps across the threshold and presses his nose to the leather. It smells like her closet, like wool and cedar and the faint trace of her hand on the handle. He circles it once, then sits beside it, his back against the doorframe. When footsteps sound on the stairs he does not move. He has entered the room. He has seen what waits inside. The suitcase will leave, and so will she, but he will not hide from it anymore. He turns from the suitcase and walks deeper into the room. The flowered rug beside her bed holds the memory of his vigil — the nights he slept outside her door, unable to cross but unable to leave. Now he steps onto it and settles there, his body filling the space he has guarded from the other side. The door behind him stays open. The hallway waits. But Bosco does not look back. Whatever comes through that doorway will find him here, on her side of the threshold, where he should have been all along. The footsteps reach the top of the stairs and stop. A family member appears in the doorway and sees him on the rug. Their eyes go wide, then soft. They kneel and reach toward him, but do not pick him up. Their hand rests on his head for a long moment. Then they lift the suitcase and carry it away. Bosco stays where he is. The room is empty now except for him and the bed and the chair. He has crossed the line he could not cross before. He cannot protect her from what is coming, but he can be here when she returns. He can guard this space the way he has guarded everything else. He curls tighter on the rug and closes his eyes. The room no longer frightens him. It is hers, and so it is his to keep.