“I really can’t tell you anything else.” The woman in the gray suit said unsympathetically, but my mother still cried. Nothing could stop her. I watched them from above, not making a single noise. My mother had just gotten home and found a disrupting sight in our usual simple house. Nobody could change what had happened today.

All of a sudden the door slammed open but without a noise I could hear. My father stood there with tears flowing down the cold curves of his face just like the river we visited so often. His fingers curled and then straightened, curled and then straightened. They stopped and he quickly crossed the strawberry red carpet of the living room toward the stereo. Everyone in the room stared as though he would start to throw furniture or just blow up like a nuclear bomb.

His fingers shook as he sifted through my CDs. He picked out my favorite Tori Amos and slipped it in the player. You could now hear the flawless noise of the CD against the player as his hands shook. The volume, which he had altered, now shook the house with an awful roar. Not one of the uninvited house guests made a move to stop him. The graffiti of the song drifted word by word in everyone’s presence.

My father crossed the room once again, but this time to my mother. He pulled her close is if no one was watching. They sat down on the wooden-framed antique sofa my parents had allowed me to choose. It had to be the most beautiful piece of furniture in the room. They clung together, not talking. The teary mist had been forgotten. As though nothing had happened, our little party was now ending and all of the strangers were disappearing. Someone turned off the light near the sofa.

Mother got up and started swaying to the music. My father joined her as if the two of them did this on a regular basis. I had never seen them together like this before. Not even hold hands. A slow rhythm came on and the two of them stood close, not yet dancing, not yet touching. Staring into one another’s eyes. Would anything, even this, interrupt their love for each other? No, they imagined without even knowing the other’s thoughts. It was not a time for talking. I watched the two of them staring blankly, not knowing when to stop looking, afraid to find something. My mother sat down again. My father stood for another few minutes, then started to lie down in a fetal position in some effort to ward something off or away from him. He stopped the thought and put his head down lightly on her lap.

I watched Mother and Father, Greta and Dorin. They slept until four in the morning and as if it were timed, they both awoke at exactly the same moment. Mother looked around to see if she were still in a dream, but unfortunately, it was still the night before. I still sat up in the loft covered in a smooth and silky cover. Though my eyes were locked with a door bolt never to open again, I saw Mother sit up, stand and go to the kitchen. She came back with a knife lying softly on her arm like an infant.

“If you should need an exit from your misery, I will follow gaily.” Smiling, mother set the knife down on the glass coffee table and set herself down once again.

Father stood up slowly, unsure of himself but all the while staring at the knife. He picked it up as softly as Mother had placed it down. I heard a kitchen drawer open and close and then Father walked back to the living room, the knife no longer in his arms.

A knock on the front door didn’t surprise my parents as if it were a play. My father got up to answer the door. Two men stood at the front door and entered without being asked. Mother stood and tears started to fall from her jeweled eyes like a broken pearl necklace. What would Mother and Father say? Lightly, but very sure of himself, one of the men spoke, “Would you like to show us where the body is?”