“Where is she?”
That was an easier question. One Ian could answer, though he didn’t want to.
“You’ll see her at the memorial service. That’s where she is,” he said, before even thinking about how the words came out.
That wasn’t what he meant to say. He should have been more careful. Emma was detached. When he looked at her, it was like he was looking through a screen. Like she wasn’t quite real. There had only been a few tears, and he only knew about those because he’d felt them soak through the shirt he was wearing that night. But he hadn’t seen any of them. His daughter looked at him through still, cool eyes and waited. She waited for an explanation. She waited for something to change. He didn’t want to confuse her any more than he knew she already was, but his grasp on his own reality was so thin. He felt like he was slipping from the edge of the Earth. He clawed into everything in him, digging down to his very bones just to stay conscious rather than letting himself slip into memories and let himself fade away.
Emma was silent as they drove. She didn’t know this car. Usually, that would mean she spent the ride exploring it like a cave, finding all the little buttons and cubby holes, comparing the seal of the stitches in the leather seats to the fabric of the last one. But this time, she just sat, staring between the two front seats at the windshield. The sunlight was a lie. Just looking through the window, the bright yellow glow looked like heat. It was the kind of sunlight that should warm upturned faces and soothe muscles into a nap stretched across a picnic blanket. Instead, it poured down from the sky like ice.
The house on the hill was white, a shrunken version of a mansion, with columns on the porch and glass on either side of the door. Emma hesitated in front of the door. Not like she didn’t want to go in, but like she didn’t know she could. There was no one else there yet. The long driveway kept the house at a distance, making it look like they were the only ones who existed. Ian knew the door was unlocked, so he stepped inside without hesitating.
It was a strange moment walking into the foyer. He knew what to expect, and yet he didn’t. It was all taken care of for him. He didn’t have to make any arrangements or plans. Mariya had done it all. It was so much like her. She ironed out the wrinkles on his shirts and the details of her own funeral.
She never wanted him to worry or to have to answer impossible questions. The day they got married was the day they created their living wills, and she went a step further by putting down every final wish she could think of. She ensured that if the time came when this burden dropped into his hands, he would know how to carry it. Ian looked at them a long time ago, but he stopped before getting all the way through. He couldn’t bear the thought of ever having to use them.
But that was Mariya. Precise, measured. Everything perfectly laid out in its right place.
It meant everything to him to have people who would handle it for him. He had an idea of what would be waiting for them in that room, but not enough to be able to fully envision it. At least they weren’t in a funeral home. Mariya hated them. She didn’t want to be a spectacle. She knew there would already be one. Somewhere there was a crowd, chairs in the grass, a canopy over a gaping hole. Here, she only wanted warmth.
Seeing the urn took his breath away. He didn’t want to look at it. It was all Emma could see.
“Where is she?” Emma asked. “You said Mama would be here.”
He held her hand tighter. The other was balled in the pocket of her jacket. She could take it off, but he wouldn’t make her. He couldn’t cry now. He couldn’t let himself feel anything. This moment couldn’t be about him. It had to be about Emma and easing her into awareness. He guided her up to the urn, close enough for her to touch it if she wanted to. Mariya had never been shy about the urns that held her parents. She didn’t treat them like relics, afraid to breathe near them. She regularly took them down and held them, talking to each of her parents as she dusted them and adjusted their positions on the mantle. She would want Emma to feel the same way about her.
“Emma, she is,” he told her gently, but firmly enough for there to be no question.
It was agony watching his daughter stare at the urn, wondering how her mother got in there. Ian never wanted her to have the pictures in her head he couldn’t run away from. He saw her lying there; the blood tinting her hair. He saw her lifted and covered, knowing it would be the last time he saw her before she’d be treated as only a remnant. They didn’t understand. None of them did. Not the emergency responders, not the doctors. They didn’t know he was the remnant; he was the remains left behind.
Emma couldn’t bear the idea of not being able to see her mother’s face again. That she was in that urn, and there was nothing that could be done to change it. Ian couldn’t explain it to her yet. One day she would be old enough to understand this is what Mariya wanted. He would never say it was what he wanted. What he wanted was his wife. He wanted to take hold of time as it rushed past it and drag it back by the sheer force of his will and the love he felt for her. He
