Owning Jacob - SA

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He found the locked box the day after the funeral.

It had been his worst day even before he opened it. Until then there had been an aim, something to focus on that filled the days with at least the illusion of purpose. The bureaucratic rituals of death and burial were details behind which he could hide, while the funeral itself was unreal, a pantomime which he watched with a numbed detachment. Afterwards, though, once he had closed the door on the last of the friends and mourners, there was nothing to occupy the space that Sarah’s death had caused. He had put Jacob to bed, turned on the TV and quietly got drunk until the fact of tomorrow, and the tomorrows after that, was smudged by an alcoholic fog.

When he woke the next morning the day was as cold and bleak as the empty bed beside him. He got up and dressed, as though by moving he could keep one step ahead of the awareness that dogged his heels. Jacob was silent as Ben poured milk on his cereal, but his eyes darted about the kitchen as if he were looking for something. Ben wondered how much of what had happened the six-year-old was able to understand.

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