“I’m sorry,” I cried. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, mom. I’m sorry.”
I did not know what I was apologizing for. For the years lost and taken for granted. For every mischief I got into. For waiting so long to grieve.
It had been too long. I didn’t even remember the sound of her voice. Slowly, but surely, the pieces of memory, so fragile and precious, had cracked and melted and ebbed away on the tides of time like so much glass being fractured, crystal by crystal, into sand. Her voice that had sung to me when I was young.
The tears ran and wet my collar as I pressed my handkerchief to my face and soon it soaked through, and still I cried and cried, the wet and dripping handkerchief clutched between my fingers in a paralysis of sorrow, nothing mattered. Not even my nose dripping so much, my tears wrinkling my face, so hot and wet and constant. My mom’s body was here, under me, and for the first time in a long time I let myself care. I let my emotions rise up inside me and take over, and in the roar of hurt and pain I found myself again.
I sat there for a long time, until I was steady enough to stop sobbing.
“I love you, mom.” I pressed a hand on the stone. It was cold and hard and dead, so unlike the tree in my grandmother’s yard. I thought that I would want to stay and talk, but now that I had seen where she lay buried, I didn’t want to. I didn’t know why. It struck me that I had been expecting more to come of my visit, for the world to stop, to change direction.
I stood up and touched my collar. It felt frosted, and that was when I realized that my hot tears had turned to ice in the air here. I pulled the coat collar out and brushed the frost away. There would be more tears later, but for now the world felt peaceful. Not numb, not suppressed. Just peaceful.
Walking out of the cemetery, my thoughts were a jumbled mess. I didn’t even notice when a car pulled up next to me, and I started when the car stopped at the curb in front of me and the driver got out. It was Eliot. He looked at me over the hood of the car, and I just looked back. I didn’t care how horribly puffy and red my eyes must be. He didn’t care for me anyway, so why should I care what he thought? Eliot walked around the front of the car to me.
“I’m glad I found you, Brynn! I talked with Mark already, but he said you had been gone since the morning. I thought you might be here.” Eliot stopped in front of me, just then noticing my bleary face.
“Brynn? Are you alright?” He dug in his pocket and brought out a fresh handkerchief. I took it gratefully and blew my nose. The sun had broken through the afternoon clouds and its rays warmed the top of my head.
“I’m fine. Just went to go visit my mother.” I said nothing about seeing his family’s plot, about his wife.
“Your mother? I—I had no idea. I thought you were visiting your ancestors… Of course. I’m so sorry. Brynn. Forgive me.”
Before I could stop him, he pulled me into his arms and hugged me tightly. My heart pounded against his, and we stood together for half a minute that seemed like a lifetime. His chest rose and fell and pushed mine to breathe with it, and for those moments we were breathing as one person. A surge of desire ran through my nerves as his hands touched my back, ran along my shoulders possessively. Then I remembered everything, remembered that he had pushed me away, and anger rose up to take its place. I needed to be alone, to think about my mom. I did not want to have Eliot edge his way back into my thoughts.
“Why are you here?” I asked, keeping my frustrations bottled. “Did you come here to…” I waved towards the cemetery, not wanting to say his wife’s name.
“No, no,” he said. “Nothing like that. I came to take you to the academy, if you’ll let me. Your, ah, friend Mark is on his way there already.”
“What’s the hurry?” The last thing on my mind right now was Mark or Eliot, and I resented having my day interrupted by two people I had diligently been trying to avoid.
“The problem.” He opened the passenger side door for me, and I reluctantly got in. “You two found a nice little opening into the answer. I checked it out earlier this morning.”
“Oh?” I crossed my arms. “Not last night?”
Eliot recoiled with the snide remark, as though I had slapped him across the face.
“I’m sorry I interrupted you last night. I was so intrigued, and this is such a new avenue to explore, I couldn’t help but come. But I am very sorry to have disturbed the two of you.”
I flushed. “You didn’t disturb anything. Really.”
“Really? He seems enamored of you.” Eliot’s smile was pained, but his emotions towards me were mere trivialities.