The Leaving(90)

She was the odd man out, or felt that way until Lucas saw her. His eyes ignited. He smiled. She walked to him and he kissed her by the ear and said, “Thank you for coming.”

“Of course,” she said. Then she said hi to everyone she knew and was introduced to those she hadn’t met in person and it felt like she was part of some strange club and she neither liked it nor didn’t like it.

It was what it was.

Lucas reached into his suit jacket and said, “I have something for you. I found it in an old box of photos.”

He held out a print—an almost identical print to the one she’d burned. Lucas, Max, Smurfette. She grinned and kissed him.

Love was its own happy ending.

After a few more minutes, Lucas took the urn and went to stand by the newly placed stone and started talking about his father, his dedication to his sons, to the investigation, and to the creation of Opus 6 itself. He nodded at something beyond her and Avery turned. Detective Chambers and another man Avery didn’t know but whose dreads were longer than her ponytail. Chambers nodded solemnly.

Turning back toward Lucas, watching his lips move, watching his eyes fill with emotion, Avery wondered what she’d remember about this day later, when she’d be home wiping mascara away in black smears in the upstairs bathroom?

And in the morning, how much would be left when she sat in the kitchen doing the maze on the back of the cereal box again?

How much of today would be gone by next week, and the week after?

What would be left next year when she’d inhale air enough to darken sixteen candles?

Ten years from now? What then? And twenty?

What was the exact percentage of this day that had already slipped away?

She wanted this moment, this half of a half of a percent, to stick.

She set out to capture it.

She chased down those vines by the reflecting pool, their orange blooms like bonfires for Barbies.

She caught that tree, the one that had been turned into a wise old woman by long gray braids of Spanish moss.

She scooped up Lucas—so vulnerable, so fully here now, his tie knot all wrong.

She took it all in with her net, knowing that so very much of it would slip through and fall away hard and fast.

That the curve of memory was steep.

Lucas opened the urn and the wind cooperated as he shook it and the ashes swirled high—like in a movie about spells—before settling and disappearing at their feet.

A return to form.

We are all dust.

All dying.

All losing.

All forgetting.

We are all leaving all the time.