It’s the only date that’s repeated every year.
Some years, the boys’ birthdays are missed - sometimes with something scribbled in the margin, a footnote, a day or two late.
“Dean says Sammy bought them tickets to see a movie. I don’t remember what. But he said it was ‘awesome.’”
“I should have been there. I’m sorry, Mary, I know I should have. But this is more important. Lives were at stake. They’ll understand. You’ll understand.”
Would she? The presumption makes her nose wrinkle.
“Sammy said he didn’t want to do anything for his birthday anyway.”
But November 2nd - always there.
Some years, there’s nothing but the date. Sometimes she catches a faint scrawl, hesitant, as if he started to write and faltered at the last second. Ghostly yellow-brown stains mark the page - crusted edges tinged with salt.
It’s like staring into a chasm - the yawning abyss of your own absence. She feels hollowed out.
Some years are perfunctory.
“Mary’s been dead six years.”
Followed seamlessly by a note about the efficacy of iron versus salt in slowing ghosts, a sneering aside about some other hunter he’d argued with at a bar (those seemed to happen a lot), a reminder to pick up more cans of soup before he leaves again.
“Note: Sammy doesn’t like cream of chicken; he says the texture makes him feel sick. Hopefully it’s not the only thing left.”
Part of her likes these entries best. Somehow, they make her feel the most real. That’s what happens, right? People die, and life - life just keeps marching on, whether you like it or not. The relentless mundanity of existence has no care for grief.
“Sammy doesn’t like cream of chicken.”
She traces the words: a fleeting, boring, beautiful little snapshot of a boy she never knew. Would never know.
“Sam ran away. Again. Third time this week. He didn’t get far before Dean found him - dragged him home by the ear. I chewed him out. Of all the nights, he chose this one? And he just stood there, unflinching, unrepentant. Dean, I think, wanted to hit him. And I almost let him. Nearly did it myself. But I saw you in his face, Mary - that stubborn set to your jaw. You’d drive me crazy when you wouldn’t back down, you know that? You just always had to be right. I couldn’t do it. Sammy took himself off to his room, calm, infuriatingly calm - didn’t even slam the door. Dean and I split a bottle of Jack.”
Bitter rage flares in the pit of her chest.
“You just always had to be right.”
He wrote it like she was supposed to smile wryly - smooth his cheek, be thankful that their child had pissed him off in the same way she had. Thankful that was enough to stop him.
It hadn’t stopped him in any way that really mattered.
“Fuck you. Fuck you. FUCK YOU!”
The words tear out of her throat. They should reverberate off the sterile concrete, but instead they’re swallowed, dying impotent. God, this place is like a prison. A tomb. Maybe she’s still dead after all - buried deep in the earth. Maybe she’s still a girl, property of her father, chained to the legacy. Maybe she never got away.
“Sam ran away. Again.”
She slams the journal shut.
It takes her three days to resume.
Some years, he waxes poetic - pours out flowery tributes to a perfect wife, a perfect mother. A goddess. An angel.