"Who the fuck are you?"

... She has never met this man in her life. She has a brief moment of panic, of 'what if she picked the wrong door', before realising walking to the wrong person's house doesn't make sense? But also, why is this strange man in William's house.

"I'm Chu Chu? I'm here to see William?"

"Oh, great, you're his whore. Well, you're not going to get any money from him."

"Excuse me?"

"He's dead."

"He's dead?" There is a smarter thing to say, a kinder one, but she can't think of it in the moment.

"Got stabbed this morning. So you won't be getting any money from him."

"I'm not here for money, I came here to see him--" Which is equally impossible and an equally good reason not to keep standing on the door step, but she can't quite work out how to move.

"And then he'll give you a gift, no doubt."

"No, we'd just talk." There's little point defending her reputation. "Who are you? You never said."

"I'm his brother. Charles John."

"Oh." William had told her about him. He's-- a bit different than what she expected. "I'm sorry for your loss."

"Thank you for your sympathy. Now go away."

"Is there anything I can do?"

"I, unlike my brother, am capable of going two days without a cunt."

He is angry and grieving and getting offended won't help. "I know there is a lot to be done, and I wouldn't want you to have to do it alone." A lot of what she did for the family business was to help people be as comfortable as possible, and handle all the little things that needed one person who wasn't crying to do. It's very different trying to do that when you're only barely not crying yourself, but it's a role she knows how to play.

"Goodbye."

He closes the door in her face.

And now she's in front of a closed door.

She should leave. She isn't wanted here.

But this is probably the last time she'll be in the garden, and the last time William ever opened the door has happened, and and and--

The door looks exactly like it did before, like William was running fifteen minutes late as always and she was waiting at the stoop for him to dress.

At some point it's going to properly hit her that he's dead. Not that she doesn't know that already, but a certain amount of her is glossing it as 'he is indisposed and his brother is running around being angry.'

He's going to need a funeral. He's going to need a coffin, and he she's pretty sure he wouldn't have bought a burial plot ahead of time (because why would he had died young.) They're going to need catering. And a... church? A church hall  that would be willing to host the company William keeps kept?

And flowers. They're going to need flowers.

It's kind of difficult to help organise that when you can't actually get in the door.

"Scram!" he yells from inside the house.

Ideally she would be able to argue that she has every right to be here, let her in, but-- even ignoring the everything else, he's his brother.

She'll send a card. A nice one. With cogent arguments about why she should help. (That won't work, but it sure feels like it should).

She starts heading back down the garden path.

No one stops her.

The world keeps, inexplicably, going on, as if it has no idea at all that William is dead.

Which makes sense, of course.

And she has classes tomorrow, too.

She's just going to hide in her boarding house room, where no one is going to question why she's crying.

A while later, there's a phone call for her.

"Miss Chu?"