Chapter Text
Grief, Karen Wheeler has found, is a funny, strange thing.
She'd found Ted when she'd come down for breakfast that morning. He had been fast asleep in his recliner when she'd went to bed, and...
Heart failure, the coroner's report had concluded. His heart never had been quite right since 1987, since the attack 11 years ago.
Holly had cried herself to sleep, curled up with Karen despite being seventeen, despite being of an age where she rolled her eyes and slammed doors in a way far too remniscent of Michael at that age.
And Karen had felt numb, as she'd cradled her daughter and stroked her hair, the way she used to when she was a child, still sleeping with a night light and struggling with bad dreams.
The absence is strange.
Her bed is empty. The cans of beer in the fridge remain untouched. Those damned cheese balls he liked were still in the cabinet. His glasses sit on his bedside table, still.
She drifts from day to day.
She picks out his suit, the one he'd worn to formal events; to Nancy's wedding six years ago, to college graduations. It was a nice suit, a good investment.
Nice man, good life.
Her tongue feels like lead in her mouth, as her fingers run over the stitching, as she plucks free specks of lint.
Blue. Blue tie. He'd liked blue.
"We'll be there in a few days, mom," Nancy had said over the phone, Audrey shouting a cheery hi nana, hi pop in the background whilst Steve tried to hush her because mommy's on the phone, baby.
"The funeral's not until next week, hon," Karen had reminded her, the line falling silent, the only sound the faintness of Nancy's breathing.
She'd recognise it anywhere. You can't not know your own baby's breathing, even if said baby is now thirty-one with a successful career, a husband, toddler, and if your instincts are correct (they usually are), another on the way.
"I know," Nancy had murmured eventually, and Karen can picture her perfectly; biting on her nails the way she did when she was anxious, head ducked down just so, her mouth a thin line. "I just don't want you to be alone, mom."
God, she'd raised a good kid. Three, to be exact.
"I'm right here," Nancy had cried, barely twenty, fingers slick with her mother's blood and her big beautiful eyes full of tears (her grandmother's eyes, Karen had thought deliriously through the blood loss, Nancy has nana Ruth's eyes, Karen gets to see her beloved, dead mother's eyes in her daughter's every day), her shotgun (shotgun?) limp at her side. "Just hold on, mommy, please-"
Nancy hadn't called Karen mommy since she was thirteen. Back when she was still a lover of dolls and princesses and having mommy daughter days.
Rarely do any of her children call her that these days. All too grown up, now.
They'd said their goodbyes, Karen had wished her best to Steve and Audrey, and that was that.
The station wagon had pulled into the driveway three days later.
Nancy is glowing. Success suits her. Motherhood suits her. Being in love suits her.
(Had Karen ever had that glow? The glow of a woman loved and cherished by a man who worships the ground she walks upon?)
Karen had been afraid, when Nancy had brought Steve Harrington back around again for the holidays, his hand tentatively clasped within her own.
Her throat had felt tight at the thought of Nancy giving up on college, on the journalism career she was working so hard towards. Felt tight as she saw how her daughter looked up at Steve Harrington like he'd hung the damn moon, and he looked back at her like she held the stars in her eyes.
She doesn't speak to her daughter about it. Because Steve had sought her out first.
"She's brilliant, you know?" he'd chattered as he'd washed the dishes for her, sweater rolled up to his elbows and his perfectly coiffed hair starting to droop over his forehead. "Nance, Mrs. Wheeler. Her mind is like, whoa. Totally fascinating and like... I'm not the smartest guy around, never have been. I'm something of an idiot, actually," he'd said, like it was a badge of honour. "I've kind of been in love with her since I was sixteen,"
She remembers them then; Nancy bringing home a much younger version of him. So uneasy in her home, trying so hard to impress and win them over, clinging onto her daughter's hand as if he were terrified that she and Ted would yank Nancy out of reach.
But she'd grown fond of him, that charismatic, sweet boy who never needed to be asked to help around the house, who always offered to help pick up or drop off Holly and Mike if she ever needed a break.
Call me Karen, she'd smiled at him one day when he'd helped her bake a pie. He'd beamed at her so brightly you'd think she'd just handed him millions of dollars.
"But, uh, my point is, not that I was clear on having one, my bad... I'm not gonna drag her down, or like... stop her from being all Nance about life."
Karen had paused her drying of the dishes, startled at how easily he'd read her.
Steve continues on, "I love that she has dreams. That she's so fiercely independent and crazy smart and focused. I don't... super have goals? Career wise, I mean. Personal life I'm all set. But I admire her, Mrs. Wheeler, I always have. She's a goddamn fighter, and I am so unbelievably lucky she decided to take a chance on my shmuck ass. Again."
Karen had studied him again, the nervous twitch in his jaw, the furrow of his brow. And she'd smiled.
"I thought I told you to call me Karen, Steve?"
He'd beamed at her again, all sunshine and hope.
She can so easily see what Nancy loves about him.
Beyond his pretty face, his charisma... Steve Harrington was a sweetheart who radiated optimism, even through his wry cracks and jokes about 1987.
And god knows Nancy needs levity in her life, needs someone who makes her laugh.
"Mom," Nancy breathes, teary eyed, already out of the passenger seat and folding her mother into her arms. "Mommy, I'm so sorry-"
Karen clings onto her, her first baby (all big, curious blue eyes and angry screaming and sweet gummy smiles when Karen would sing to her), and squeezes her eyes shut tight.
"You got a haircut," Karen murmurs, running a hand through Nancy's chin length bob.
"Yeah," Nancy breathes, laughing breathlessly. "The day before... before..."
Nancy and Ted weren't close. Not in the way they used to be.
The way when he'd still humour her attempts to play, or when he didn't complain about going to her ballet recitals, or when he had taught her how to ride a bike, or when he'd sit with her on his lap as they watched Audrey Hepburn movies on Sundays.
Cracks had started to form when Nancy grew. When she'd had her first period at thirteen and Ted had blanched and muttered something about women troubles, when he'd caught her kissing a boy when he'd picked her up from school, when he'd realised his little girl wasn't so little anymore.
Karen sees a glimpse of Ted's little girl, in the way Nancy's face starts to crumble at the reminder that he's gone.
"Nana!" Comes Audrey's shriek, as she throws herself at Nancy and Karen's legs.
Karen can't help but beam down at her, regardless of the emotional weight that sits heavy on her soul. "There's my baby!" she coos, crouching down to pull her into a tight hug and kiss her chubby cheeks.
She only does so when Steve comes to Nancy's side, providing her comfort with his mere presence.
Audrey has Nancy's eyes. Big, round, curious, a blue so bright it mimics the sky. Karen remembers Steve openly sobbing when he'd seen his daughter's eyes for the first time and realised they were a mirror of his wife's.
But she has Steve's smile, all Harrington charm. Her eyes crinkle at the corners like Nancy's, and her nose scrunches just like Holly's.
"Hey, Karen," Steve says softly, an arm around Nancy's small shoulders, keeping her close to his side. "I... I am so, so sorry-"
Karen smiles, a wavery thing, and stands, settling Audrey on her hip. "Let's get inside, shall we? Auntie Holly can't wait to see her favourite girl!"
Nancy opens her mouth to speak, but Karen doesn't give her the chance, striding inside with her chatterbox of a granddaughter in her arms.
"Where's pop?" Audrey pouts up at her when she spies the empty barcalounger. Karen follows her gaze, eyes watering.
If she's honest? She and Ted had fallen out of love years ago. She can't recall the last time she'd felt an ounce of romantic affection for her husband.
(Did you ever? Did you, Karen? It's that dark, nasty part of her brain again. It is a voice she has always ignored, always stamped down with her perfect heels.)
She had not loved him, no, not like that. But the absence is a gaping hole in her life nonetheless.