Attention: ALL
Subject: Personal Quarters
Please submit requests for new quarters arrangements within the next two weeks, understanding that there are limited appointments for single and family dwellings. Reassignments will be announced at the end of the month, with a week to appeal decisions.
—Dr. Tanner, Planning
When I wandered into the living room a week later, I expected it to be empty, but Dad was sitting at the little table. He watched me intently as I entered, and a moment’s panic seized me.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Are you sick? Did something happen?”
“I’m fine, honey. Don’t stress about me.” Dad’s worry lines deepened as he shifted in the chair. “Why don’t you join me?”
On the table beside him, Faraday’s urn was propped atop a too-familiar bundle of red fabric. Her wedding dress.
I thought it was gone forever, just like her.
I squeezed my eyes shut as though that could stall the chasm breaking open in my chest, but memory painted my eyelids with sandy landscapes and skyscrapers. No, no, no. I turned to check the calendar on the home comm like I cared. This was what normal looked like, checking news.
The screen format had been updated, with a brand new discussion forum and daily updates for every department. President Marshall had made a full recovery and commended Commander Han for her foresight and valor. V’s progress with dismantling the RC had a section of its own too, noting that there would be six separate elections happening on Earth today, and that two newly independent states had chosen to repurpose their armies toward sustainable infrastructure, rebuilding what the RC had destroyed.
Meanwhile, Brand was back on Earth for his trial. Stephan was there too, ready to testify against him. One monster down, a million more to go.
I noticed there was faux meatloaf for lunch and shepherd’s pie for dinner, neither of which I was cooking. No dessert tonight.
This was Day 336 for the trust. But on Earth, it was June 12.
Faraday’s birthday.
How could I have forgotten?
I spun to my dad. “How’d her dress get here?”
“Honey...” Dad’s voice was wet gravel, too thick and heavy to handle. “Is there anything I can do?”
“No.” A log of emotions dammed my throat, and I couldn’t—I couldn’t anything, but somehow I wound up in my room, busying myself with the most mundane tasks. Dry washing with a sanitowel. Dressing, not thinking. Clean shirt and pants, no uniform. Trying not to remember how Faraday had twirled in that dress. How she’d kissed my cheek and promised I’d be home before lockdown. I laced my boots extra tight.
Just a day, a normal day. I couldn’t let a single feeling squirm its way out. This was our new world, far away from the pains of the past. We’d mourned and medicated, or at least I had. Still, every step back to the living room added another pound to my dam.
The rumpled dress, outrageously red, screamed from its too-close-to-her-urn seat. It wasn’t the shock of new crimson satin, nor the candied velvet so popular in the corporate states. Her red was smoked paprika and roasted chili, one shade shy of sunrise, and rose petal soft.
It wasn’t fair. Even in death, she kept the liveliest colors.
“I’m here if you need me,” Dad said.
I dropped into a chair next to him, silent. If I said anything, I’d crack wide open. My insides would run and drip like egg yolk.
“Your mother, she couldn’t—She needs to work to keep her head. You know.” His hands wiped at the table like he was petting it. He went on and on, and I tuned him out. The carpet swam into focus, cold folds of gray. Industrial ripples.
At some point, he took my hand, and I let him, though my eyes stayed locked on her urn, on the fabric’s reflection, my dad’s and mine, in the cool light from the tablet screen.
She was glaring bright, and we were too small, sucked inside. She was more real than ever, and we were faded distortions.
Last year purple streamers had hung all across the front of her fiancés’ diner. Khalid and Zara had shut down the whole block, letting buildings full of people spill into the road. I’d ended the evening with my first hangover. My sister had held my hair and sung me to sleep in her softest booth.
“I’ll make it up to you next year,” she’d said.
Promises. Once so easy.
Dove... I heard her so clearly, but it couldn’t be her. It couldn’t.
I missed her so much.
The dam hadn’t burst, but it leaked through my pores.
“What can I do? Can I—” Dad wrapped bear-like arms around me. “I love you, I love you. I understand,” he murmured while his tears rained onto my head.
Faraday’s urn, that ridiculous purple sphere, rocked on the table. She’d be twenty-eight today.
I couldn’t leave her here anymore. Not in this boring room, not for another day.
I owed her. We all did. We always would.
When Dad released me, I swaddled her urn with the wedding dress, folding her inside. He didn’t ask, my good dad, not even when I walked out the door with her. Somehow I knew it would be the last time I called those quarters home, because with her truly gone, I didn’t need to live with my parents anymore. Then I carried my sister all the way to the courtyard and slipped inside as someone left.
The courtyard had changed.
Flowers grew where there had only been grass, and potted trees polka dotted up the walls. I wasn’t the first to bring an urn or keepsake. Dozens of such mementos circled the largest tree.
It was a cherry, soon to bloom.
I set Faraday carefully next to a ceramic Buddha and whispered, “Happy birthday,” but that broke the dam and there was no going back. I surrendered, spilling out a raw torrent of words and ugly sobs.
“Look at that lovely moon, you said. That’s where we belong. But it’s your stupid birthday, and you’re still gone. And I miss you! I’ll never stop missing you.”
I beat the ground, bruising the tender green stalks, weeping onto the dirt, and wishing the pain would go away. I wasn’t surprised when I thought of Danny’s ashes and Stephan testifying back on Earth, where the rest of my sister would remain, though instead of anger at them and all the trouble they’d caused, I only felt worse, missing them too.
“Lane?” Someone who looked like a finger-painting of Andrek put a hand on my shoulder. His smoky scent crashed through my fog.
It was Andrek. With Joule, V, and Halle trailing after.
My lips trembled too much to know if my smile worked.
They squatted close by on the grass. Andrek’s arm pressed around me, and I let my tears flow until I ran dry. My whole body felt liquefied, afloat.
“Happy birthday,” Joule said softly, not to me, but to Faraday. “I brought you a present.” He dug a food container from his pocket. Inside was a breakfast muffin he’d stuck an electric candle into. The faux flame shivered as he placed it next to her urn.
V placed a hand on my back. “Sing with us, Lane.”
They were so sweet and good, but I didn’t want to sing. I tried to say so, but only a strangled hiccup escaped.
Halle grinned. “No worries. We’ll sing for you.”
And they did. It was horrible and off-key and nauseating to hear, but I was so grateful, so spent, that I gurgled a laugh.
I opened my mouth to choke out a thank you, but that wasn’t what came out. “You lot are the absolute worst.”
“We know!” Andrek and Joule said together.
“Isn’t it great? We should never start a band!” Joule added, which set Halle off into giggle fits.
V slipped her hand into mine and looked like she wanted to kiss me, even with my face all wet. “We love you too.”
And though I felt a hundred things at once, the bad exactly as bad as the good was good, I managed to stay in the moment, letting all of it wash over me.
Maybe the pain would never go away, and it would smack me sideways every now and then like it had today. But even if the hole grief left never shrank, I was still growing, and that left more than enough space for a whole lot of life.