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Molly's hands--still in her pockets for warmth, though she wore gloves as well--sought and found the enamel box and held it tightly. She nodded.
The two women traipsed across the snow as Graham and Ursula took notes in a little book they kept, trained their camera lens on the sky, and discussed what they were seeing like two scientists dissecting a theory.
As they neared the stream, Carina reached out and took Molly's hand. With their heavy gloves it was more like just holding onto one another in the dark for stability than two friends clutching one another from the emotion of the moment, but it was still nice.
"You can say anything," Carina assured her, glancing Molly's direction. "Do you see that?" She pointed up at the sky. Molly nodded. "That's everyone in heaven standing together and trying to look down on the people they love."
It was so simple--so childish really, this hope--that it brought tears to Molly's eyes. She looked up at the lights dancing above them and watched for a moment, hoping that Rodney was there, looking back at her.
The lights that night were bright green and purple, and they twisted and danced around one another, blending and swirling before pulling apart and shooting light in all directions. As the colors spiraled together and then separated, Molly felt a lighthearted playfulness coming from the sky, and for a moment she thought that maybe the northern lightswerejust a thin curtain between this world and the next, and that perhaps their loved ones were just out of reach, watching, sending their love, and sometimes orchestrating little tricks of magic and sleights of hand to make sure things went right for their humans still on Earth.
Carina wandered away from her, talking quietly as she looked up at the sky. This was Molly's chance to say what she wanted to say, and in the end, it didn't matter whether Rodney really heard it or not. What mattered was thatshefelt like he was there.
"Roddy," she said in a hesitant tone. "I hope you're up there." Molly turned her face fully to the sky and watched the swirling lights. "I hope you can hear me and see me, and I hope you know how much I miss you."
Molly paused. Did she really hope that her late husband could have seen her with Adi? With Casper? Her cheeks burn for a moment in spite of the freezing cold temperature. She decided then that she was okay with him seeing everything--all of it. After all, he was gone and never coming back, and Rodney was nothing if not a man who believed in love and feelings and in the experience of being human. Part of his desire to travel and see the world was to experience life and to truly see it all. In her heart, Molly knew that while anyone would kind of (at least on the surface) want the spouse they'd left behind to mourn forever and remain celibate, the practical part of a person would never want their loved one to be lonely. To miss out on the rest of the human experience.
"Anyway," she said, stopping in her tracks and dragging a heavy boot through the thick snow. "I want you to know that I will love you until the day I die. I thought losing our baby was the worst pain I'd ever feel, but I never even got to meet that baby, so I didn't love it the way I loved you. I hope that--wherever you are--you know how much you're missed everyday. Oh!" Molly interrupted herself, laughing as she got into the flow of this one-sided conversation. "I met your grandparents and they were wonderful." She tucked her hair behind both ears. "You probably already know that, but I wanted you to hear it from me. I spent time with them, and we buried a bit of your ashes in their garden."
As she approached the edge of the stream, Molly stopped and looked around, searching for Carina. She spotted her over by the trees, still looking up at the sky. Carina was far enough away that the only indication she was talking to the sky were the puffs of breaths that came out of her mouth as she spoke.
"Everything I've done so far has been for you, Rodney. I wanted to carry on with your wishes and to see the world. I'm trying to make sure that all the places you wanted to see are places that I'm seeing for you--forus." Her eyes well with tears that immediately freeze on her cold lashes. Just then, the lights collided in the sky and burst into a shower of color that looked like a kaleidoscope of rainbows. Molly took a sharp, surprised breath at this moment of beauty before going on. "I don't know what the future will hold, but I do know that no matter where I go, who I meet, or what I do, you'll be with me. You live in my heart, Rodney. You always will."
Molly pulled the enamel box from her pocket and, with some effort because of her thick gloves, she unlatched the lid and held it in the palms of both gloved hands.
"This is the last bit of you that I'm going to leave out in the world, Roddy," she said, gazing at the surprisingly small bit of ashes. "The rest I'll keep with me for however long I live. The rest is mine."
Molly looked right up at the dazzling light show above and took a deep breath. From the pit of her stomach she yelled at the sky, "I love you, Rodney Kobayashi! I love you so much! You were the best husband any woman could ever want! I'll miss you until the day I die."
Without hesitation, Molly turned the box over, emptying its contents into the cold, dark water that flowed past her. Now Rodney would travel. He'd go wherever this water went. He'd freeze and thaw and become ice or a glacier or who knew what. But Molly knew that he wasn't truly gone as long as he was out in the world, traveling in streams, or mixed with warm sand, or floating on the wind.
"Forever, Rodney," Molly whispered now, looking up at the lights again. "Forever and ever and ever."
Epilogue
Molly wipes everything down with a flourish after locking up The Scuttlebutt for the night. The coffee pots have been scrubbed clean, the trash taken out, and every stainless steel surface shines. Owning this little shop has given her purpose for a lot of years now, and she runs her business the way she ran her ship: with discipline, thoroughness, and an eye always on the next destination.
She pushes in every chair just so, sweeps the floor one last time, checks to make sure that all of her ingredients for morning are laid out and ready to go. Molly makes her scones and muffins at three-thirty in the morning while the first pot of coffee brews, and by the time she opens the doors at five, she's always got a batch of warm blueberry muffins and a carafe of house coffee ready for any early birds who might find their way to her shop.
The lights go off, the door is locked and checked twice, and then Molly climbs tiredly behind the wheel of her golf cart, ready to drive straight home and go to bed.
But tonight she's feeling a bit restless. Her mind has been busy all day, turning over the adventures of her life and appreciating the way that her friends here on Shipwreck Key were so engrossed in her telling of it. She'd been utterly charmed by someone as young as Tilly or Athena or Harlow caring one whit about an old lady's life story from forty years ago, and of course she'd felt flattered that people who'd lived legendary lives of their own had bothered to listen to hers. And honestly! Cobb Hartley--a rockstar! Marigold Pim--a woman who'd walked hundreds of runways and been considered one of the world's biggest supermodels. The former First and Second Ladies! It was astounding to Molly that any of them had given her story a second thought, so she'd been tickled by how involved they'd been as she talked about her little boat and her travels.
But at the end of the bonfire that night on the beach, when she'd told them about Christmas Eve under the northern lights, they'd all had questions--so many questions!What had happened to Adi? Did she ever see him again? What about Helena--did she have a boy or a girl? Does she have any photos of them? Had she ever thought of looking up any of the people she'd met along the way?Molly had laughed at the questions, shaking her head. "No, no," she'd told them that night. "Sometimes it's better to leave things in the past and just keep moving ahead."
She swings her golf cart into the sandy drive of her bungalow now and lets herself into the house, turning on a lamp in the front room and kicking off her shoes. She loves her life on Shipwreck Key, loves her small house with the palm tree right out front, loves the short drive from the house to the coffee shop. Molly even loves her banter with Bev Byer, and the time that they've spent together over the years. She wouldn't trade any of it for anything else--except maybe for a bit more time with Rodney.
Rather than getting into bed by eight o'clock with a mystery novel, as she normally likes to do, Molly showers, washes her short, cropped hair, and puts on an oversized t-shirt. She takes a hot mug of tea to her front room and sits on the couch, pulling her bare feet up under her. On the coffee table is a blue box; Molly stares at it for a long moment as she blows the steam from the top of her tea.
Finally, setting the mug down, she lifts the box into her lap and slides the lid off. Inside are her memories. These are the things she holds dear, things she doesn't need to look at very often, things she doesn't need to share with anyone.
Very gently, Molly pulls a stack of loose photos from the box, looking first at the one on top. It's a picture of her and Rodney on their wedding day. He looks so young and handsome in a suit jacket and with hair that's a bit long in the back. She's wearing the feathered hairdo favored by women in the early 80s that looked so chic on Farrah Fawcett. Her wedding dress was nothing more than an off-the-rack dress from JC Penney that she got for twenty-five dollars. It had a yellow slipdress beneath a lace overlay, and the shoulders were floaty cap sleeves. In her hands, Molly held a lush bunch of frangipanis, and on her face she wore an adoring smile as she looked up into the eyes of her new husband.
They'd been so happy that day--and every day before and after as well. No matter the circumstances, Rodney had brought her a kind of comfort and peace that no one else ever had. Not even close. And just as she'd promised him on that Christmas Eve in Lapland, she'd never stopped missing him, never stopped loving him, never would.
Molly shuffled the photo to the back of the pile and turned the next one so that it was facing the right direction. It was one of Helena holding a baby boy on her hip, both of them smiling with the Bristol Channel in the background. The sky was cloudy and gray, but Helena looked young, happy, full of health and vigor, and her baby boy, Brian, grinned as he shoved a meaty little fist into his own mouth.
Molly had gone to the U.K. once in her thirties and had called Helena, hoping to meet up somewhere that worked for her young friend, and wanting to meet Brian, if possible.
