He Finished the Crossword After He Died

The Sunday crossword was ours — mine and my grandfather's, a fifty-year tradition for him and a twenty-year one for me, the two of us at his kitchen table with the paper folded to the puzzle, arguing amiably over anagrams. He did it in pen, always, in a small confident hand, unbothered by mistakes because he rarely made them.

He died on a Saturday night, in his sleep, peacefully, the kindest version. I was the one who let myself in on the Sunday morning — I had a key, I came every Sunday — not yet knowing, expecting the smell of his coffee and finding, instead, the still house and, eventually, upstairs, the truth.

I did not go into the kitchen properly until later, until the practical horrors of the day had been dealt with and I was alone in his house waiting for someone to collect me, hollow, and I sat at our table because it was where I always sat, and the paper was there, folded to the crossword, where he'd have left it Saturday evening for us to start together on the Sunday. Our ritual: he'd fold it and leave it out, and we'd begin fresh together in the morning.

It was not fresh. Three answers were filled in. In pen. In his small, confident hand — I know that hand better than my own; I have decades of Sunday crosswords in it. Three answers, in his writing, correct, that had not been there when he folded the paper and left it out on Saturday evening, because we always started it together, empty, on the Sunday, and he had never once filled a single square in advance, in fifty years of doing it, because that would spoil our beginning.

Three answers. In his pen, which was capped, beside the paper. In his hand, which was upstairs, and had been since the night before. Filled in, correctly, sometime between his folding the paper Saturday evening and my finding it Sunday morning, in a house that was locked, that held only him, who was gone.

I have the page. I did the rest of that crossword myself, that morning, crying, in my own worse handwriting, finishing the puzzle he'd started — because that was the ritual, we finished them together, and he'd started it, so I finished it, and it felt like the last Sunday, which it was.

A handwriting expert I eventually, half-ashamedly showed it to confirmed the three answers match his hand and not mine, which I knew, and could not confirm how or when, which I also knew. I've stopped needing the how. He always started the crossword. That last Sunday, he started it early, and left it for me to finish, the way he'd left everything for me to finish, and I did, and I do the Sunday crossword still, alone, in pen now, and some Sundays I leave it folded on the table on Saturday night, empty, just in case, and it's always still empty in the morning, and that's all right. He only needed to say goodbye the once.