The Empty Space in the Middle of the Sofa

Once upon a time there were three siblings.

Tessa, Andrew and the youngest, Simon.

They were together almost all the time. Sometimes they played together nicely. Sometimes they argued so loudly that Mom would say:

“Judging by the sound, two trains and one dinosaur have just crashed in the children’s room.”

And sometimes they simply got on each other’s nerves in a completely ordinary way.

“Don’t touch that!”

“Move over!”

“He’s looking at me!”

“I’m not looking at you! I’m just looking that way!”

Siblings, in short.

But one day, one of them went away.

Andrew.

He was going to be away for a while.

The first day it was almost interesting.

Tessa sat in his place at the table.

“Look! I can sit here!”

Simon took the Lego brick that Andrew usually kept taking away from him.

“And this one is mine now!”

Nobody told them they were stomping too much.

Nobody took the remote from them.

Nobody said:

“I had that first!”

Things at home were somehow suspiciously quiet.

But in the evening, Tessa sat down on the sofa.

Next to her, there was an empty space.

Andrew’s space.

She looked at it.

And suddenly it didn’t seem wonderful at all that she didn’t have to squeeze in.

“Mom,” she said, “there’s somehow too much room here.”

Mom looked at the sofa.

“There certainly is.”

Simon didn’t say anything for a while.

Then he brought Andrew’s pillow and put it in the empty space.

“There.”

“There what?” asked Tessa.

“So it’s not empty.”

The next day they wanted to build a blanket fort.

Tessa held one side.

Simon held the other.

And the middle kept falling down.

“Andrew always held it here,” said Tessa.

For a moment it was quiet.

Then Simon announced:

“Yeah. And he was always terribly bossy about it.”

Tessa started to laugh.

“He was.”

“He’d say: ‘Not like that! Like this! You don’t know how to do it at all!’”

Simon stood up, put his hands on his hips and imitated Andrew:

“PEOPLE! CONCENTRATE! WE’RE BUILDING A FORT, NOT A POTATO SALAD!”

Tessa laughed so hard that the fort collapsed completely.

And then they laughed even more.

But when the laughter was over, Simon sat down among the blankets.

“I miss him anyway.”

Tessa nodded.

“Me too.”

“Even though he’s annoying.”

“Even though he’s annoying.”

“Very.”

“Terribly.”

For a while they sat quietly.

And Mom, who had been listening at the door, came and sat down with them.

“Do you know what’s strange about it?” she said.

“What?”

“When you live with someone for a long time, they make a place for themselves not only at the table or on the sofa.”

She pointed to Tessa’s chest.

“They make a place here, too.”

Simon looked at his T-shirt.

“I don’t have anything there.”

“Not under your T-shirt.”

“Oh.”

“I mean inside. In our lives.”

Tessa thought for a moment.

“And when he goes away, does that hole stay there?”

Mom shook her head.

“It isn’t a hole. It’s more like a little room. His little room inside you. And it stays there even when Andrew is far away.”

Simon frowned.

“And does he have a little room for us too?”

“Of course.”

“For me too?”

“For you too.”

Simon thought about it.

“Then I hope it isn’t messy.”

Mom burst out laughing.

“Knowing you all, it certainly is.”

From then on, Tessa and Simon began to notice something strange.

Andrew was away.

But at the same time, he was still a little bit everywhere.

When someone said his favorite catchphrase.

When they found his sock under the bed.

When Simon built a Lego robot and knew immediately what Andrew would say about it.

“Its head is too small.”

“Exactly,” said Tessa.

And when they went to bed in the evening, Simon sometimes called out into the dark:

“Good night, Andrew!”

Once, Tessa laughed at him.

“He can’t hear you.”

Simon shrugged.

“Doesn’t matter. I need to say it.”

And so from then on, she said it too.

“Good night, Andrew.”

One evening, Mom found a piece of paper on the table.

On it was drawn an enormous sofa.

On the sofa, two children.

The third was drawn a little farther away, on the other side of the paper.

Between them ran a long red line.

“What’s this?” asked Mom.

Tessa answered:

“That’s us.”

“And the line?”

Simon made a face as if it were completely obvious.

“That’s the sibling string.”

“I see.”

“It can’t be cut.”

Tessa added:

“Not even when someone is far away.”

Simon thought for a moment.

“Not even when he’s annoying.”

“Not even when he’s annoying,” Mom agreed.

“Not even when he takes my Lego?”

“Not even then.”

Simon sighed.

“Then that’s a really, really strong string.”

And it was.

Sometimes it stretched across one room.

Sometimes across the whole town.

Sometimes maybe even farther.

But it was always there.

And when the children missed Andrew, they were no longer so afraid of that sadness.

Because they knew that missing someone is not a sign that something has disappeared.

Sometimes it is exactly the opposite.

It is a sign that someone still matters to us very much.

And so the empty space on the sofa stayed empty for a while longer.

Nobody took it on purpose.

Because it belonged to Andrew.

And everyone knew that when he came back one day, he would most likely sit there, sprawl across half the sofa and annoy someone within three minutes.

And surprisingly, everyone was kind of looking forward to it.

The End.