Her voice was a whisper. “Not yet. I just want to—” She didn’t finish.
We stayed until the cold worked through our layers, until the wind’s teeth gnawed us raw as we bled through a haze of decay.
We left the swings empty, chains rattling in the dark, and drifted back toward the street, two shadows among shadows.
Even when we were gone, I knew this place would remember us. Every star would weep for what we’d lost. Even the wind knows what we lost. It carried our grief like soot, scattering faded memories like bones. And kept going, and kept going.
Until everything became shadow, until everything was silent enough to hear time rot.
28
AMELIA
I stayedin the motel bed all day yesterday.
Caiden tried to tell me to eat, to cry, to do something, but I simply laid there. He gave up and went out to do his own thing.
Today was the day that I had been dreading. My mother’s funeral.
I had been restless all night. Drowned by nightmares and sweat.
When we were in bed, Caiden laid on the far end of the bed, while I laid on the other end. He still hadn’t told me why he only got one bed. I thought he might try to use the opportunity to feel me up, but he did not.
He laid there, quietly, unmoving, but he was there.
I was grateful for it.
My lipstick was the wrong color, and my lips did not belong to me. The dress I’d brought was black, but not the right black. The glossy kind, synthetic and abrasive, not the black of true mourning.
I fingered the hem, feeling the static snap under my palm. My arms looked thin and frail as I stared at myself through the mirror.
When the knock came at the door, I let it go unanswered for several minutes, until the banging shifted from “gentle” to “please don’t make me break down this door.”
I shuffled to open it.
Caiden stood there, his eyes widening for a moment when he saw me.
I almost did the same.
He wore jeans and a button-up collared shirt, the sleeves rolled up exposing his strong forearms. For a moment, I forgot we were about to go to my mother’s funeral, and I had the urge to reach out and stroke the skin on his arms.
“You ready?” Caiden asked.
“I guess so.”
We moved through the morning in silence. I pressed my knees together and watched the world blur past.
It was cold, and even with the heater blasting my bare legs were covered with gooseflesh
The parking lot was already half-full. A gathering of battered sedans and two pickups bloomed in the morning fog, like animals huddling over a carcass.
Caiden killed the ignition, hesitated, then got out and came around to open my door like it was a real date. I almost laughed at the formality of it, the way he held out his hand, and the pause before I took it.
We walked together through the low, hunched building and into the thick, humid air of the funeral home foyer. There was a fake fireplace, a bowl of dusty mints, and a velvet guestbook with three pens chained to it. The place smelled of lilacs and antiseptic.
A trickle of people had already begun to pool in the viewing room, each one with the same look: a mixture of boredom and unease, faces flushed with the effort of looking appropriatelysad. Most of them I recognized only as shapes from my childhood, blurry as the faces in dreams.
There was Mary, a coworker from my mom’s old job, already teary and clutching a tissue to her nose; Mrs. Francis, who always smelled like mothballs and used to babysit me; and a few of Mom’s old drinking friends, hollow-eyed and leaning against each other. Taylor, my mom’s AA sponsor.
