Greg talked to Jordan about wood grain for forty-five minutes and looked happier than Claire had seen him in years. It occurred to her that maybe she hadn’t been paying close attention to him either.
Harper sat on the porch with a plate of empanadas and guarded them with her life. She did let Jordan rest his arm across the back of her chair, and she didn’t stiffen or pull away.
Elena held court at the kitchen table, telling Sam stories about David as a child. They were either true or maybe slightly improved, but Sam listened with the patient attention of a man who understood that loving Nina now meant loving David’s memory, and loving David’s memory meant listening to Elena.
Listening to Elena, however, was an endurance sport that he had apparently trained for.
Lucia moved through the party like a stage manager, refilling drinks and adjusting the music. She checked on the slideshow setup with intensity that she had inherited from her father.
She set up the laptop, connected it to the television in the living room, and at some point in the early afternoon, she stood on a chair and whistled.
The room went quiet.
“Attention,” Lucia said. “I made something. I’m very proud of it. You’re all going to watch it. Now, if you cry, there are napkins. They’re white from the Piggly Wiggly. You’re just going to have to deal with it.”
She pressed play.
The slideshow opened with a photo from last year’s birthday dinner. There were three women with their glasses raised, smiling.
This was the same photo they had looked at on Claire’s living room floor the night before the skydive.
They were smiling, but something behind their eyes was not alive.
Lucia had set it to music.
The opening notes of “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” filled the living room.
Claire laughed. Harper groaned and rolled her eyes, and Nina put her hand over her mouth.
The photos continued to play.
The stage at Hank’s. Folly Beach at dawn. Their polka dot bathing suits, waist-deep in the December Atlantic.
There was a picture from Señora Morales’s kitchen. Nina standing at the stove.
There was the rock-climbing wall, with Claire frozen halfway up. She wondered who had taken that photo.
There was the tattoo parlor and their wrists in a row.
Picture after picture after picture crossed the screen, bringing back memories that none of them would ever forget.
The final picture was at the skydive, the yellow plane, and the neon jumpsuits.
The last photo, which Lucia must have gotten from Cal because none of them had taken it, was of the three women on the field, holding each other, tiny against the enormous blue sky.
The song ended, and the room was quiet.
Elena was sobbing into a napkin, which she would totally deny later, of course.
Greg was holding Claire’s hand, which he had reached for during the polar plunge photo and had never let go.
Jordan now had his arm fully around Harper, and Harper was leaning into him.
Sam stood behind Nina with his hand on her shoulder, and Nina covered his hand with hers.
Lucia finally stepped off the chair and looked at her mother.
“I know Dad would have made a spreadsheet,” she said, “but I made a slideshow. It’s still the same energy.”
