![]() ![]() I glimpse the magic of the moment, but it’s only the splendor of nature. The setting sun splashes golden on the surface of the lake, limns the far mountains afire and falls on the ashes of my former life. I open the box and scatter my wife over the blossoms and the shoe and the lake water. “You were the best me,” I say to Aine’s ashes. Honeycrisp fills the shoes with blush and pearl apple blossoms. A slight breeze stokes small ripples along the edge of the lake.įrom his abdomen, Chaussure yanks the pair of red Crocs that Aine had always worn in the garden and places them near the shore. Blue Wren Lake was Aine’s favorite place to visit, with its silver water and rocky shore. I don’t remember leaving I-5, but the sign for CA-3 and Shasta-Trinity National Forest appears out of a daze of thoughts. That choice defined my life, and now that life was over. I never understood what she’d seen in me, but I was grateful every day that she’d chosen me. When we first met in our early twenties, I was shy, awkward, boring. Would I have become a talking math book? A possessed laptop that could only communicate through Excel formulae? It should have been me that died. Not for the first time I wonder what Aine’s magic would have done to me. “Who got the most magic, John?” Honeycrisp asks, but I don’t have an answer. Chaussure mostly reflects Aine’s serious side, the sorrow when Aine and I finally gave up on having children. The wind carries away Chaussure’s muttered retort. I love the tree for it, but she’s not Aine. She raises her branches and says, “Look at how magnificent these blossoms are.” She’s Aine at her most flamboyant, her most extravagant. ![]() Her voice of rustling leaves rises over the howling of the highway wind to punctuate her point, that she has more magic. In full bloom, Honeycrisp’s pale pink flowers flutter in the wind as scores of them billow out of the car windows. I try to be thankful that at least I have them, but can’t muster any optimism. I realize these two are all I have left of her and I sag, the strength draining from me. My grip on the steering wheel is so hard my fingers tingle, numbness spreading. They’re quiet for some minutes, looking out opposite sides of the car.Īs if she’s read my thoughts, Honeycrisp whispers to Chaussure just loudly enough for me to hear: “It’s definitely me.” There’s a muttered reply, then a reply to that, and they’re back to the argument. Aine’s death has hollowed me out, sucked me dry.įinally, I flick off the tunes and shout. ![]() Instead, I turn up the radio, not for the music, but for the noise. I want to scream at the two in back to shut up, that their argument means nothing, that Aine is gone and none of it matters. But after a few days the salt shaker stopped singing Jimmy Buffet, and the playing cards stopped dealing out bridge hands to the four empty chairs at the dining room table. But droplets of her magic splashed to other parts of the house, and life was chaotic for a bit. When Aine died the magic spilled out of her like red wine from a cracked Bordeaux glass, then flowed into the things she loved … primarily our wee apple orchard in the backyard, and to her walk-in closet in our master bedroom. The right half of Chaussure’s head is comprised of the matte black, faded floral print Danskos she’d worn when the stroke took her life. At his right shoulder are the ballet slippers from when she was twelve and played a snowflake in the Nutcracker Suite, while his left arm is the battered boots she’d worn to hike the Pacific Crest Trail in her early twenties. I notice Chaussure in the rear view mirror, a panoply of my wife’s memories. Not in a materialistic way, but more the way that people collect mementos. In the backseat, the apple tree, Honeycrisp, and the golem, Chaussure, are arguing over who received more magic from my wife.Īine loved shoes. Every time I think of the box my throat constricts, and I drift between highway lanes, lost in memories. I try and fail to avoid glancing at the passenger seat, expecting Aine, but only ever see the small, mahogany box I made to carry her on this last trip. The box of my wife’s ashes is riding shotgun. Rolling north along I-5, we’re an unlikely set of mourners: a tax accountant for Trinity Bank, a sentient apple tree, and a shoe golem. ![]()
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