Tomás held on to the little checkered dress and cried. It was folded so small, and tucked into the corner of his drawer. On top, he also saw the green eye shadow she’d shown him that day at the pharmacy and a small piece of paper folded in half. Tomás opened it. His hands trembled as he saw his sister’s handwriting, read her words.
Don’t be afraid to talk to me. I love you.
It, and all that it meant, took Tomás’s breath away.
His chest filled to bursting with regret and sadness and the realization of being understood and understanding his sister. But too late. He cried tears he didn’t know he had left. And thought of Emilia.
So she had known, and she had understood that day in her room.
It had scared him. How close she was to the truth. He’d been afraid to say any more that night.
If I had your eyes, I’d wear this color, she’d told him, so softly, so gently, at the pharmacy. He couldn’t even look at her as his heart raced. All he could manage was to ask her where she was going. He was planning to talk to her, tell her everything. He knew he could.
He held the dress tighter.
See you.
He remembered the gentle way she smiled just before the doors swooshed closed after her.
You did see me, Emilia.
But now she was gone.
Tomás cried harder, aching for his sister. For her smile and her words.
He stared at the boxes through his tears, the ones that had been haunting him for weeks now. Stacked neatly and undisturbed in the corner of his room. Each day he grew more afraid of them and pretended they didn’t exist. Each day he was more afraid of coming face-to-face again with what was inside.
Because it was Emilia.
Emilia was inside those boxes. In bits and pieces, recognizable and unrecognizable. And opening those boxes was like pouring alcohol on raw wounds.
Tomás opened the first one and caught his breath when he saw Emilia’s face staring back at him.
The pictures.
He had thought they were crushed and buried. He pulled out her picture and tacked it onto the wall. He stepped back, sat on his bed, searched Emilia’s glossy eyes.
How? he asked her. How did it happen? How did she fall?
How did they let her?
She stared back at him, still and silent. She looked so lonely on the wall by herself. Tomás added the picture of his mother, of himself, and, finally, even the one of his father.
He sat back on his bed, wiped the tears that wouldn’t stop coming, as he searched all of their faces, asking them unanswerable questions.
What did we know? What did we know?
He continued, unpacked the squirrel, and as he reached up to put it on one of his bookshelves, he saw Emilia had written SAM on the bottom of it. It made him laugh and cry. He unpacked one item after another, let himself get lost in thoughts of his sister. He heard her voice, felt her presence, as if she were with him. And maybe it was the unpacking—what he’d been so afraid of—or maybe it was seeing again all these things his sister had found beauty in, all those forgotten, strange items, that made him less afraid somehow.
We lost you, Emilia. But I’ll look for you. Every day. And I’ll find you somehow. I won’t forget you, he promised her.
This is what he thought when he saw his mother on the patio later that week, pouring another bag of dirt into a large flowerpot.
Tomás watched as her hands dug into the dirt. How she would cry as she filled the pots. Her face became smudged with dirt as she wiped away tears with her hands—almost as though it were therapeutic—and still each day, more work. More bags of dirt and pots in every size, plants and flowers and seeds. Lattices and green support rods.
Today, though, he knew it was more than just the work of it all. The distraction. The ceremony. It was more than therapy.
She’s looking for Emilia, Tomás realized.
His mother sat back and brushed her hair out of her face, exhaled. She looked up and saw Tomás watching from the window. She looked at him softly for a moment before waving him over. He opened the screen door and went to her. She looked up at him and he worried she noticed the slight hint of green on his eyelids.
She smiled, motioned for him to grab a bag of dirt. And together they filled more pots; they turned the earth, the smell of damp dirt and fertilizer filling their noses. Reminding them of life.
Through the rest of spring and summer, Nina and Tomás plant flowers and plants and watch as tears fall and penetrate the soil. They watch them bloom and thrive, the vivid colors so alive in the sun. They watch as crows begin showing up, perching on the edges of flowerpots. They think of Emilia.
They tend to the garden, knowing the cold will come and take it away.
And it does. Prickling and fast and so full of pain.
Ma and Tomás look out the window as winter approaches.
“I feel like I’ll always be looking for her, waiting for her,” Tomás tells Ma.
“Me too,” she says.
Winter arrives, swirling and large and so, so cold. They watch as life is choked out of all the flowers and plants they so carefully tended, how they die bit by bit.
And then they wait.
For life to come back to them again.