Past-memory-Mark walked through the graveyard and, like it was tethered to him, my body followed him.
He stopped at a small grave plaque in the ground, and I shuffled around him to look at it. Nothing prepared me for reading my own grave plaque.
It was smaller than I thought it would be. Simple. Tilted a little to the left, like even in death no one gave a fuck about me. The inscription read:
EDWARD “EDDY” JAMES
Loved by few. Forgotten by too many.
Even if that were true, that stung.
Memory-Mark knelt in the dirt as if it owed him answers. His fingers were filthy; nails packed with soil. He wasn’t crying, not really. But his whole body looked like it had been weeping for years.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I should’ve been stronger. And been with you for real. Protected you. I shouldn’t have taken you there.”
I stepped closer. Reflex, maybe. Habit. I still wanted to comfort him. Even now. Even after everything. He bowed his head and breathed out my name like a prayer.
The haze returned, and the surrounding scenes changed as if Mark’s grief was unpacking before my very eyes.
When the surrounding haze dissipated, I knew exactly where we had ended up. It was my mother’s front room. You never forget the smell of your childhood home.
My mum sat in her old chair, the one with the floral cushions and the busted spring. She looked older, frailer, but her eyes still had that spark. That steel.
Mark was kneeling beside her, holding her hand like it was the only thing anchoring him to the earth.
“I let them take him,” memory-Mark said to my mother, shame spewing from his throat. “I stood by. I didn’t swing. I didn’t scream. I didn’t stay. I just let him be a victim to those sick assholes!”
She said nothing at first. Just looked at him with that quiet knowing she always had. I wanted nothing more than to reach out to her and say I am sorry. Tell her I love her. Tell her in my last moments I thought of her.
“I didn’t know my son by the end. I regret that most of all. I regret not having given him a safe space to live in. A home to be himself. Love. I regret not having loved him like he deserved.” My heart, if I still had one, wanted to burst out of my chest. “He was thrown in the trash, and died alone, did you know? Butmy son wasn’t trash. He was my son!” She was crying now, and Mark tightly gripped her hand.
The real Mark stood next to me and took hold of my hand. “She loved you.”
I murmured some sounds in agreement. A pained cry.
Another scene bled through, this time the motel. It was our first time.
The same cheap sheets. The same fucked-up dynamic. I saw myself in the mirror, hickeys down my neck, bite marks across my shoulder. But the worst part?
I lookedgrateful.I wanted to hurl up my stomach contents, but I had not eaten in years.
I grabbed him. The real one. Here. Now. Beside me and made him face me.
“You let me believe that what we did was love,” I whispered. “You knew I had nowhere else to go. And you made me feelwanted. But only on your terms. Only when no one else could see us together.”
Mark’s voice shook. “I know.”
“I wasn’t just trash, Mark.”
He looked at me. Eyes full of something finally breaking open.
“Iknow.”
I turned away from him. Let the motel fade. The clearing dim. Let the weight of whatcould have beencollapse like a building behind us.
Then there was silence. I let it extend around us until it echoed in our ears. The kind of silence where you could hear your heart thump through your chest. The silence where you can hear your blood pumping up from your feet and back down again.
I paused. I knew what I needed to do.
