"Afterwards", the full version

Here's the full-length version of Afterwards; I hope to goodness it is an improvement, and not merely a 'director's cut'. I do wonder about some of Lucille's rantings (He was gone. He could not be gone...) But there were cuts I did keep, and sections that got largely rewritten; it's not just a blind copy of the first draft, which is one reason why this has taken so long despite the fact that I've already done it once!

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Afterwards

She could not find Thomas. And the world was breaking apart.

She was not certain who she was, or what had happened. Sometimes it seemed she could not think clearly at all, as if parts of her had ebbed away into the great emptiness outside as she played and left behind only a tenous knot of hatred and desire and need, twisting together like smoke. The house moaned about her — Home, she remembered, home and yet a burden — but the fire that flickered forever in the hearth, translucent over dead ashes, did not gutter or blaze up to the long-drawn breaths of the east wind, and the notes of the piano beneath her hands woke no answering vibrations in the air.

There was no reply at all, no presence anywhere. She was utterly alone.

Thomas. She had not known what she needed; the name welled out of her from some place deeper than memory, deeper than thought itself, spinning together wavering strands into a sudden focus of panic and loss.

Thomas— Thomas! She whirled up in panic, knowing now what it was she could not find. He was gone. He could not be gone. They could not take him from her. She could not be left here by herself for always. He could not leave her. He had promised. She had made him promise.

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