The Ashes in the Urn - Part 2

When I got home, I placed the urn in a comfortable spot right next to the bookshelf, near the fireplace. The house was eerily quiet – my son, Roman, was staying over at a friend’s that night and my husband was working late, as usual. He’s a busy corporate lawyer, so he’s always at the office. I used to teach nursing at the local university, but I stopped three years ago when my father got sick. I was by his side twenty-four hours a day when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. As a nurse, I thought that if I could just be there for him, he would recover and come home. He died two months after being diagnosed. 

Dad’s death was harder on me than it was on my older sister. She was always the stronger one. When dad was alive, we used to be close. Every winter, dad, Roman and I would fly out to visit her across the country in California. I loved spending a few weeks away from the cold and snow. Long Island is a great place to live, but the weather makes me miserable. I always bug Steven about leaving New York, but he argues that it would be difficult for him to leave his law practise and Roman to adjust to a new school.
I grabbed a book from the monstrous shelf looming over me and sat down on the maroon winged armchair near the window. As I read about the search for the Higgs Boson particle, I started to drift off to sleep. In my dreams, I kept hearing the sound of tires squeaking and a car horn honking. I couldn’t see what was happening, but the dream filled me with a sense of dread. I woke up in a cold sweat and looked over at the urn. While I slept, it had fallen over. It didn’t break, because the carpet cushioned its fall.
As I walked over to pick up the urn, I noticed that something had spilled out of it. I gasped as I realized what it was. “Oh my God – these are somebody’s ashes!” I thought, as I picked up the urn and swept the fallen ashes back into it. With a shiver, I moved the urn into a shoe closet near the front door. I couldn’t at it anymore, knowing that it housed human remains. I decided that I would return the urn to the house on Sydenham Street tomorrow. The book lady must have forgotten about the contents of the urn, or she wasn’t paying enough attention when I had asked her about it.
Even though I was a little startled, I made dinner for Steven as usual. He came home around seven and we ate together. After watching a little bit of TV and chatting about how his day went, we headed to bed. I didn’t tell Steven about the ashes in the urn.