“Alice.”
I look up at my father. Arlington, Massachusetts. The last time I ever saw him alive.
What is happening to me?
We’re finishing our dinner in a restaurant. He’s just called my mother a fucking devil. With one exception, we eat the rest of the meal in a thick and dreary silence.
“I wish I could live now,” he says, tossing his napkin onto his empty plate.
“What do you mean?”
“Now. Right now. Not in the past. Not thinking about anything else. Just here. You. This.” A considered pause. “Forever.”
“I don’t understand,” I say.
But I do.
He means a world without a past, the one thing I’ve always wanted. The ability to Be Here Now.
Forever.