Chapter Text
The night that Annette disappeared was also the night that Gilbert’s wife, Jeanne-Marie, handed him divorce papers to sign.
It wasn’t that Annette saw the papers and ran off terrified that her parents didn’t love each other any more. No. Annette had been playing in the yard, near the row of thick bushes that made the border between the neighbors and them. She had no idea that a divorce was even in the process of happening.
There had been a thousand little cracks and entirely expected. Gilbert had taken too many undercover jobs, been away from his family for lengths of time. He found that he was more himself as “Gilbert Pronislav” than as “Gustav Dominic”. In the same way that he pulled away physically because of his work, he pulled away emotionally. It happened when you realized that you married just to appease other people, and sex with a woman was a chore. Jeanne-Marie put up with a lot for him. He didn’t deserve her, for many reasons, and she deserved a man, a husband, who could give her everything that she deserved in a relationship. Gilbert was horrible with communication, he could never remember dates and if it were truly important, he would have remembered so and so’s birthday, or this anniversary.
Gilbert signed the papers. They went to the backyard, to gather Annette inside and to explain as best they could that mum and dad were going to be living apart but that didn’t mean they loved her any less.
She was gone.
Amber alert, every police officer in the city put on active duty because one of their own had his little girl missing. The mayor even sent her condolences, as had the Chief of Police. The men and women from his squad room all gave their condolences, or back patting “we’ll find her” assurances.
It didn’t matter.
The only thing that would put his world back together would be having his little girl in his arms again.
Gilbert drinks.
He kept the house in the divorce. Jeanne-Marie still came by once every other week.
“I need to make sure that your corpse doesn’t stink up the place.” She said, kicking a bottle to the side. It is not her job to clean up after Gilbert, not that it ever had been. “Of course, considering how you are pickling yourself, you might not smell that much.”
From his place on the couch, Gilbert grunts. The curtains are closed, making the room dark enough to let him forget his headache. Jeanne-Marie, of course, draws them open so sunlight hits him in the face. He flinches.
“The fuck, Jeannie.”
“Get up.” Jeanne-Marie starts lecturing him in French. Gilbert only catches half of it as he rolls off the couch and forces himself to stand up. With a shuffling tread he makes his way to the kitchen and blindly puts on the coffee pot. There was something to be said for his habit of putting everything away in the exact same place. Or so he thinks until Jeanne-Marie takes away the pepper he was about to put in the coffee filter.
“...Bacon.”
“Hein?”
“I need bacon.” Gilbert pressed the power button on the coffee pot too hard and needed to press it again.
“You should know what is in your own refrigerator.”
When he opens the door to the refrigerator the sudden burst of coolness against his face sobers him up enough to see that he does not have any bacon. Well. Shit. There was barely any food inside. A paper chinese food container was knocked on its side, the brown sauce making a tacky pool under the top corner. It’s not the best but it would do. The smell of it is sour and curls unpleasantly in Gilbert’s nose, but he eats the cold noodles anyway.
“Where were you last night?” Jeanne-Marie’s voice is soft. The timbre in it makes Gilbert look up at her. In all the time they’ve known each other, married and not, he’s never heard that tone from her. Like a snowflake that had melted against his ear.
“Out.”
“Gustav.”
“That’s not my name anymore.”
“ Gustav .”
“I said, I was out.”
“Out where?”
Gilbert looks down into the depths of the noodles. If he stares long enough, perhaps she will forget the question or accept his answer. Nevermind that the fact that she never did let anything go was a reason that they divorced. Not the only reason, by far not the only reason, but one of them.
“Out where?”
“Some gay bar,” Gilbert admits, irritated. “Does it matter? I made it back here fine.” Last night is mostly a blur. There is a face that appears when he tries to think, younger than him, but with eyes older than anything he’d seen before. All that really exists is that face, sometimes fingers under his chin, wrapped around his chest. Gilbert touches the side of his neck. A pair of small scabs flake under his fingers.
Ow.
“You should be careful…”
“Why?”
Jeanne-Marie sighed. “You probably went there drunk, and came home drunk. Like the last time, and the time before that, and the time before that. You’re not taking care of yourself, and at some point you’re going to catch an STD, or worse, pass one to someone else.”
Gilbert didn’t look up.
The noodles curdled in his stomach, growing and frothing such that he could feel it in the back of his throat. He ran to the bathroom and heaved up everything that he ate.
A young woman sits next to him at the bar.
Being here is dangerous for him. There’s liquor everywhere, as one can expect, temptation at every turn. (Thirty-One days sober and counting, after two years of pickling his liver. His sponsor doesn’t know why he puts himself in the path of breaking that streak.) The drink before him is an iced tea, plain. The little umbrella that Alois, the head bartender, put in the glass is an attempt to have him smile.
It failed.
Gilbert doesn’t go to his old haunts, the ones he only half remembers at best, between a haze of alcohol and heavy music, and his naturally patchy memory. (Except for that face. That one face that is clear as the full moon on a cloudless night. There’s an ache in Gilbert’s neck whenever he thinks of that eternally young, eternally old face.) He had managed to get out of that scene from when he was diving deep into his sexuality and trying to forget his failures. Alois’ little nook of a bar is a quiet alternative, more suited to his personality, and regularly attended by an older crowd. One regular, Hanneman, easily keeps drawing him into conversation. Said conversation is just Gilbert making an appropriate sound while Hanneman rambles paragraphs in a single breath, but it is soothing nonetheless.
It is strange to see a woman this young here. Gilbert observes her out of the corner of his eyes.
He coughs his drink back up into his glass.
“I… Alois. Keep the change.” Gilbert’s stool fell as he stood. His hands shake as he pulls out a couple bills - doesn’t care what denomination, all that matters is that he needs to go - and slams them on the bar top.
No. Ghosts don’t age. They don’t.
But next to him had sat his daughter. No matter how much she aged, he would never forget her face.