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Virginia shakes her head.
“It was a closet when Dad was alive and Mom needed a thousand pairs of shoes for all the events they attended. But a couple of years after he died, she got rid of all his clothes and most of hers, too.”
I push open what should be a walk-in closet door. The lights come on automatically and I lead Virginia inside.
The room is easily twenty feet long and ten feet wide. The clothes portion is limited to a small section right near the entrance. But beyond that, the space has been transformed into a museum and gallery of the love and life my parents shared for not nearly as many years as they deserved to have together.
The walls are covered in non-studio photos taken on family holidays. Mom and Dad are never together in the early ones, but once Horse and I were old enough to get cameras of our own at about age six, that’s when badly composed shots of their love start appearing.
Virginia points to random photos and I do my best to remember where we were when they were taken. She sniffles, then drops my hand to wipe her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, confused at why she’d be sad.
“Nothing. I’m just moved.” She points to the gold brocade fainting loveseat beside a small table with a reading lamp. “She comes here to read?”
“And talk to Dad.”
Virginia looks up at me, eyes glassy. “Do you ever come in here to remember old times? Or, you know, talk to your dad?”
I exhale a hard puff of air. How to say this without sounding defeatist?
“When I was in my twenties, I would. Less in my thirties. And honestly, this is the first time I’ve stepped foot in here since I turned forty.”
“Because?”
I point around the room, but keep my eyes focused on the discreet urn Mother has placed atop a small bookshelf. “When I was younger, in my twenties, I saw my future on these walls. I always thought I’d have what they had one day. But in my thirties, seeing how losing Dad crushed Mom’s spirit, I came less … once I started to look as old as Dad does in his last pictures …” I hope she doesn’t need me to finish the sentence.
“Will.” Virginia steps into my line of sight, takes my face in her hands, and makes intense eye contact. “There is no reason to believe you won’t have photos on the wall in your mother’s hallway for another forty-three years or more.”
“Mm,” I grunt.
“Will.”
“What?”
I lead Virginia out of my mother’s sanctuary, back to the public and posed photos, and point with two index fingers to mine and Colt’s birth certificates. She looks up and nods.
“It was predestined. I know you don’t like to hear it or want to believe it, but unless you have the power to change those, Virginia, I know it’s not logical, but I just can’t simply turn off a belief I’ve had for more than half my life.”
“But you have been changing it, little by little, day by day, since we moved to the most perfect place on earth.”
She is right. I have become less fatalistic. I don’t expect to be dead in a year anymore. But I also have no reason to believe I’ll still be driving her crazy in all the best ways in forty, thirty or even ten years. That’s just not William Power’s fate.
Virginia has been staring at the wall and bursts out a loud, “Will!” Her eyes are wide and she looks like she’s seen a ghost in the birth certificates. “Will take them down. Take them down!”
Virginia grabs the two frames from my hands and virtually runs back to the living room where Mother and my brothers are eating birthday cake to celebrate Aiden’s thirty-eighth birthday.
“What’s going on?” Aiden sidles up beside her.
I close in on her other side so I can see what she’s looking at.
“Shh.” Virginia waves us away, then pulls her phone from a pocket in her vulva flower dress. She taps the keyboard quickly and pulls up a search result for the day and year Horse and I were born.
She taps each frame right over our times of birth, then waves her phone in my face. Virginia starts to laugh. She’s laughing with her head flung back and with a joy like she’s standing in a summer rain after a drought.
“Virginia!” Mother snaps. “Settle down. What’s so funny?”
It takes her several breaths, but she manages to collect herself. “I’m sorry. It’s actually not funny.” She bites her lip, clearly trying not to laugh.
