“You can feel it, can’t you?”
Babs was standing just behind me, her purple and mint nylon jacket whooshing a little from the breeze. She was still wearing her hat—the kind gentlemen wore in movies from the 1940s, black with a stiff brim—and had to use one hand to keep it from blowing away.
“Feel what?” I asked.
“The mountains,” she said, stepping up beside me. “My Morty always said that people climbed mountains not to see the world but to see themselves.” She smiled wistfully, her other hand coming up to touch a pendant she wore on a silver chain around her neck.
“They make you feel smaller,” I said.
“Exactly.”
“Why didn’t Morty come with you on this trip?”
Her hand stilled over her heart. “Oh, he’s here,” she said, tapping the pendant beneath her fingertips.
Understanding hit me all at once, and I felt a pang of guilt for not having considered it sooner. “In your heart,” I said softly.
“Well, yes, but also.” She tapped the pendant again, firmly this time. “Right here. When I picked him up from the funeral home, I knew he’d hate being stuck in some urn on a shelf. “There’s this woman a few towns over who makes trinkets out of remains—mostly pets, mind you, but I figured, why not a person?”
I didn’t have an answer for that, or any sort of response really. My gaze flicked to the pendant again, taking it in with this new information in mind. It mostly just looked like a smooth tiger’s eye stone, its golden-brown swirls catching the light, set in silver.
“I spent forty-three years with Mortimer Milton,” she said, carrying on with a smile I didn’t really understand. “And hardly a day passed when he didn’t make me laugh. Not just a chuckle, either—laugh so hard I cried. So, why wouldn’t I want to bring him along with me now?”
I looked at her, standing there with her shoulders straight and her face looking older and younger at the same time. And although I was a little taken aback that this woman wore a pendant made out of her dead husband’s ashes, I also felt a strange little ache in my chest.
My dad died right before my parents’ thirty-second anniversary. But my mom would never…
“I think that’s lovely,” I said.
Her green eyes glistened as she turned to me. “Well, thank you, sweetheart. You know, I still miss him more than I can say. It’s hard, but I wouldn’t trade a moment of it. Not one. I was the luckiest woman alive, and I know it.”
The wind swirled around us again, and she gave a small shiver. “It’s too cold to be standing out here. Should we go into the chapel?”
I nodded, glancing one last time at the view before falling into step beside her, and Babs, well, she tucked her arm into mine, as though we were long-lost friends.
“When… How long…?” I asked.
“Nineteen months, two weeks, and three days since I lost him,” she said, her voice quiet. “He passed in his sleep, right beside me. Somehow, I knew he was gone before I even opened my eyes.” She sighed.
“My dad died two years ago.” Three words… My. Dad. Died. I still couldn’t say them without feeling my throat thicken a little. “How do you get over that?” A rhetorical question, really.
“You never get over it, Luna. You just find a new way to carry on. Morty wouldn’t want me to stop living just because he’s gone. I’m sure your dad wouldn’t want you, or your mom, to stop either.”
A gust of wind swept up the valley, and she had to reach up to keep from losing her hat.
“Nice hat, by the way,” I said.
She winked. “Morty wore it every day.”
I shook my head.
My mom never, not in a thousand years, would have worn my dad’s old clothes, let alone have his remains made into a pendant. It was all too sentimental for her, a little too much like something my grandmother would have done—if, that was, my grandfather had stuck around.
“Oh, it’s even colder in the shade,” Babs said with a shudder, letting go of my arm as we reached the heavy wooden door.
I stepped ahead to open it for her, and she gave me a grateful smile as we moved into the chapel.
Oddly enough, the stillness I’d felt outside seemed to follow us in here. It wasn’t the same—without the wind, it was definitely warmer—but there was a quiet, timeless peace in this space that I hadn’t expected.
