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When he leans back, the glow from the candle glints on a silver chain around his neck, disappearing under the neckline of his shirt.
I stop chewing, a memory rushing over me.
That necklace. I know what’s at the end of that chain, concealed by fabric.
I stared at it, one sunny afternoon while Atticus drove me home from school, shortly after Aria died.
My entire world had been shattered into smithereens. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. Every waking moment was like breathing in wet concrete.
During lunch, I would hide in the library because I didn’t want to interact with anyone. Death is awkward. Most people don’t know how to respond in the face of such senseless tragedy. Some offered uneasy sympathy, others pretended nothing had happened, while a bunch of my so-called friends gave me a wide berth.
One day, Atticus found me in the recesses of the library, hiding in the back of the stacks.
“Do you need a ride home?”
I nodded and then followed him out without a word.
The entire drive, I sat in the passenger seat, my gaze continually drawn to his profile.
After a few minutes of staring, he tossed me a glance before his eyes focused back on the road and a flush crept up his neck and into his cheeks.
“I like your necklace.” I could only make out the edge of it in profile. The sun streaming through his windshield made the thin silver chain sparkle against his skin. I’d seen the pendant before, when we’d crossed paths in school, and earlier when he’d found me in the library. It was a tree, the branches sprawling and twisting out from the trunk, reaching for the edges of the smooth circle surrounding it.
“My mom gave it to me.”
There were whispers when he first moved to town. His parents had died, and he’d been sent to live with his aunt and uncle.
So he knew.
We drove in silence, until curiosity poked at me. “What does the tree mean?”
“It’s the tree of life. It represents a force that connects us all, through life and death.”
Life and death. Two sides of the same coin. One is not possible without the other, a fact I’d been confronted with when we buried my baby sister.
“It’s beautiful.” The word cracked in my mouth. I averted my gaze from his profile, staring out the window, swallowing back the heaviness that threatened to consume me at any given moment.
Sometime later, he pulled off the main road and onto the gravel drive. I directed him through the Fox Cottages property and up to the house.
I paused, fingers on the door handle. “Does it ever get better?”
“No.” The word was soft, quiet, apologetic.
I pushed open the door. Before I could shut it behind me, Atticus spoke again.
“She’ll always be gone.”
And isn’t that the worst part?Alwaysis too interminable to fathom. I’ll never hear her laugh again. I’ll never braid her hair, tease her about her crooked smile, or be there when she falls in love and has her heart broken. She won’t experience any of it, cut from life too soon.
“Eventually, though, you’ll be able to breathe.”
“When?”
“I... I don’t know. It takes as long as it takes.”
Without another word, I shut the car door, and I never looked back.
The entire interaction became lost to the black fog that encompassed those months.
