Looking back, I remembered all that came after—walking into a room to retrieve something but not remembering why I came in the first place. Reading the same page of a book five times before I’d realized that I had read it before. Starting a sentence and not being able to finish it, words adrift on some stormy sea. It was a miracle that I could even find the mental strength to string a few together, like slippery fish. There, but beyond my grasp.
Uncle Tito wanted to prescribe a medicine for anxiety for me. But as I had done after my brother had died, I declined to take it. I was almost afraid of becoming trapped in a claustrophobic state of grief. Instead of the meds handing me the key, they would shut the door and force me to face it all at once.
I had always preferred to take grief in pieces. Process each one, give each moment the attention it needed, but then be able to leave the rest until I could handle more.
There was no such relief when we lost Matteo. I had taken something when Uncle Tito had prescribed it for me then because it was impossible to take the grief in waves. Grief had sucked me under. It was still with me. Athingthat refused to sit anywhere else. I acknowledged the gaping hole on a daily basis—a missing piece that grief filled.
I couldn’t think of Matteo now, or maybe I’d never rise above the surface.
What was it that I was thinking of before? Was it clarity? Yes. How could I forget?
Rubbing my temples did nothing to soothe the images or the voices, nor did it take them from me.
I was afraid to be trapped with them without an escape. Memories that came to me in vivid flashes that were not flashes at all, but long streaming movies of the mind—one body holding another, as though sheer contact alone could stop the bleeding. The pale face of a man who knows he’s about to die, and in the moments before, makes his peace with the world he would soon be leaving behind.
A low susurration of voices, as ticklish as the wind to fall leaves, but cold enough to force the hairs on my arms to rise like goosebumps on the skin, the clash of elements causing me to shiver then and in real time.
Blood swirling down the drain as I washed him clean, afraid that I’d never be able to forget his face in that state when I closed my eyes each night. And I haven’t since.
Bile rose up my throat, and I forced it back down into my stomach. The acid continued to eat me from the inside out. It had only been a couple of days, yet the mirror reflected an image that showed a gaunt and pale figure, eyes too green for her face.
After my brother passed, I had stood in front of the mirror, wondering if I too had lost more blood than my body could make. I wondered if I was dying—but slower and with more pain. I knew how that felt years after, when I’d lost our baby, but worse.
Quickwas what the doctors had said about my brother, their voices a susurrus in the stark corridors of the hospital. A paradox between life and death, that place—new lives were coming, others were going, and not all of them were old and feeble, ready for their next stage in the journey.
Maja had once explained to me that there was a reason why the development of the baby takes nine months. “Because,” she had said in Slovenian, “the infant in the womb might be preparing for the journey of life outside of the mother, but the mother was preparing for the birth.” At the end of the nine months, a woman is ready— hurting and aching with the strain of the long haul.
And this, she had compared to the taking of a life too soon. “There is a reason why we should grow old,” she had said, tears slipping down her cheeks. “We are prepared for the next stage of life then. Ready to let go.”
Elliott hadn’t known what had hit him, I thought with a surge of emotion so strong that I had to brace myself for the retch.
This time, though, there was enough time to speak. It hadn’t been slow, but enough time to make amends.
Take care of my family.
I love you.
I’ve always loved you.
Cool tears slipped down my cheeks, running over my arms, collecting on the counter.
Then the unearthly wail, arms cradling, head to heaven, calling out for the return of the soul…I leaned over in time to grab the wastebasket before I heaved. My stomach reflected the rest of me, nothing else to give.
I was so damn tired, yet I couldn’t sleep.
“Scarlett.”
“I’m fine,” I croaked. “Just nerves.”
A frisson of deeper unease settled over me at the familiar words. I had said them before, and here we were again.
Brando leaned down in front of me, eyes bloodshot and vacant. He ran a hand over my head to check surreptitiously for fever while I brushed my teeth.
“You don’t have to do this, baby.”
His worry for me blazed through the dimness in his eyes, a small ember from the wildfire that burned deep inside his wilderness. I wasn’t sure if he was lost to it or was running from it. The last time I had been on this journey was to say goodbye to my brother for the last time—same hour, same place—and so had he.
“No.” I touched his face lightly. “I do. Just like you do, too.”
