Page 75 of Holding On

I lean over and put my hands on my knees.

We should have all been in fucking therapy. What was Geo thinking? My breathing is deep, painful with each inhale, and a ringing begins in my left ear.

Maya rubs my lower back, then her hand drops.

“These rocks are so pretty. All that orange and gold lichen mixed with two kinds of green and the white? I’ve never seen that outside of Maine or Canada.”

I turn my head and try not to picture Mom there. She used to say that all she wanted was a bench by the sea. I found out later, after she died, that she meant when she passed away, she wanted a bench overlooking the water for others to sit and rest on.

“She’d want me to take a load off.”

“I’m going to walk with everyone back to the cars,” she says, picking up the four zipped bags. “You come when you’re ready.”

She picks her way down the gentle slope as Jackson crosses the asphalt to help her. He takes two bags and walks slowly next to her as they head south to Molly’s place. My sisters plow through the field somewhat together, staggered, each with their own thoughts.

They’re leaving me alone. I know how hard that is for them.

I glance down at the rocks. The gold lichen starts to catch the setting sun and glows.

“Mom.” My voice doesn’t sound like my own. “I miss you so much.”

The breeze begins again like a whisper in my ear, and my stomach cramps. I need to cry, but I can’t. My eyes burn. I blink and they clear.

I’m suddenly so exhausted. This is where she died. This is where I believe she came to look for us.

I’m here.

“I’m here,” I say to her and to myself.

When I sit, nothing happens. No sudden insight, no sense of relief. Just a slow, gentle understanding of what I’ve come to learn: that life ebbs and flows, and love travels.

Even across time, space, and moments in between.

I move my elbows from my knees and touch the rocks. I feel how hard they are and how slick the white lichen is compared to the others.

Running my hands across their surface, I peer down into the small crevices and furrows where one meets another.

In the sunset, there’s a burning glow of amber wedged between two—the one I’m sitting on, and the one I’m using as a small back rest.

I shift, and spasms shoot from chest to thigh.

But some intangible pain isn’t what rivets my attention. It’s the Blue Turkey beer bottle wedged deep.

Not thrown, dropped, or hidden.

He was here too.

He followed her up here and watched her die.

I stand up, dig by hand. But the rock is too large for me to grip and extricate the bottle at the same time.

I shouldn’t touch it.

I pull a bag from my pocket, invert it, and slip my hand into it like a mitten.

I still can’t grip it. It’s in a crevasse that bends, and it’s wedged tight.

Standing, I take several pictures with my cell phone, holding my breath with every shot. The Lexis pulls up. Chloe’s VW is just pulling out up the road by the farm.