I stay with her most of the day, and Nua joins us sometime in the night.  I haven’t eaten anything in quite a while, and wake up when Bayan brings in breakfast.  Nua does as well, smelling pancakes, and sits up.  Ava opens her eyes, but doesn’t move.  

Bayan sits on the foot of her bed.  “Miss Ava.”

She shakes her head, closing her eyes again, and pulls the covers over her head.  

“Miss Ava,” says Bayan again patiently.  “You have to eat.”

“Why?” she says, her voice muffled, and Nua sighs.  “Because if you won’t, we won’t.”

I almost protest.  I’m starving.  But I see Nua’s face, and see what he’s trying to do, and I nod.  “Ava, please.”

After a moment she sits up, glaring at Bayan.  “You two, eat.”

“Only if you do,” answers Nua.  She makes a face.  Bayan pours syrup over some pancakes.  

She eats half a bowl of yogurt and granola, and then lies down again.  We count it as a success, and Bayan takes our trays away.  I lie down next to Ava.  She’s curled up on her side, facing me, and Nua lies as well, wrapping his arm around her from behind.  She sighs, and her hand slips into his.  “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” murmurs Nua, looking over her head at me, and she just sighs, yawns, and shakes her head.  A tear trickles down over her temple.  And, just as we’ve been doing for the past few days, we take a nice long nap.  

I wake up to Ava’s finger on my nose.  She squishes it, and then when she sees my eyes open draws her finger away.  “Aber.”

“Hey.”

“Where did Nua go?”

“Dunno,” I say through a yawn.  “Probably to see Bayan.”

“Will you come with me?”

I look up at her, and she looks down at me.  She has makeup residue all over her face and her hair is messy.  She’s twisting her fingers together, tapping the vital scanner thing against the back of her hand, and her eyes seem perpetually filled with tears threatening to spill over.  “Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

So I go with her.  

She talks as she wanders around the house, her sweater wrapped around her frail body.  She’s always been skinny, but it’s just because she’s sick, and now even more so.  We avoid my bedroom with Keol’s inside of it, and the room where he lay for those days.  She says that she hasn’t been taking her medicine, that she doesn’t care anymore, and she refuses to listen to anything I say to the contrary.  The doctors know this, that’s why they’ve given her the thing to keep on her finger, keeping her pulse and her temperature and the rest.  She says her lungs have been killing her for four years and all they’ve been doing is pushing it off.  So why not now?  I don’t know how to answer this.  

She tells me about Penny, she talks about Owen, she tells me that they loved each other so much, she tells me about Keol, when they first started talking.  As we wander the shelves of the library she tells me how he always called her Miss Ava, like Bayan did, until she told him to stop.  And he always agreed with everything she said, and it annoyed her, and one day she asked him why, and he said that her mother said to.  Everything he did was because her mother said to, at least at first.  She wonders what would have happened if her mother did not say anything to him, or if her mother never even picked him out to be her husband.  

After a while of wandering, she leads me outside, and I find myself tensed, as if she were about to fall and I’d have to leap to catch her.  Once the fresh air hits her face she pauses for a second, squeezing her eyes shut, and sways.  I can tell she’s dizzy, and I touch her shoulder gently.  “You okay?”

After a moment she shakes me off.  She goes to stand by the fountain, then runs her finger along the stone that Keol used to sit on.  “We got married here,” she murmurs.  I have a feeling she doesn’t mean just me and her.

And then she’s walking again, wandering, towards the melody of flowers that flows through the whole right side of the backyard.  And she steps right into them, crushing some under her bare feet, trailing her fingertips along the tops of the ones beside her.  

And she stands in the field of flowers, surrounded by reds and oranges and yellows, by fragrance and a breeze that lifts a few strands of her limp hair away from her shoulders, by the memories of those she kept alive through the tender care she gave these plants.  Owen, her friend, her first prominent, her favorite, her love.  Penny, her twin, her other half, her blood and beating heart ripped away from her.  Keol, her enemy, her second prominent, her partner in crime, her passion.  Her life is defined by the men that she’s lost, and the men that she still has: Nua, her reluctant one, her distant one, her caregiver, and me, her last, her confusion, her choice.  

The sun is going down.  It rises every morning in front of the house, over the water.  She and sometimes Keol would go down in the mornings to watch it come up.  It sets every day behind the house, casting rays of golden pink light over the flower garden and the fountain and the swimming pool, her beautiful reminders.  She stares off into the trees on the horizon, her hands trembling at her side.  I don’t know if it’s from cold or emotion or memory or illness, but suddenly she says, her voice weak, “When I die.”

“You’re not going to die,” I answer, but my words are carried away in the wind and she doesn’t attempt to catch them.  “When I die, you’ll be free.”

I sense someone approaching.  Ava doesn’t seem to notice, and I can tell it’s Nua.  He doesn’t say anything, just listens.  I say quietly, “I don’t want you to die.”

It’s not a lie.  It should be, but it’s not.  Ava knows it.  She closes her eyes.  “I can set you free, and I need you…”

She trails off, inhaling deeply, and then exhales.  The sun is almost hidden amongst the trees.  “I need you to find Penny.”

The wind becomes chilly all of a sudden, and I feel Nua’s fingers curling around mine.  He answers.  “Of course.”

She opens her eyes then, not expecting to hear his voice.  She doesn’t expect anything out of Nua, she’s told me that, that’s the beauty of their relationship.  But now, he’s standing here, with me, with our wife, our mutual woman who’s dying in a field of flowers in the shadow of luxury, and he stands with her.  “For you.”

He reaches his other hand out to her, and I see her shiver involuntarily.  She’s so thin, and frail, I’m afraid she’s going to blow away.  After a moment she moves towards us, and although she takes Nua’s hand, she comes closer until her arms are wrapped around our necks and she’s pulling us both close to her.  

Nua gently pulls away first, but wraps his arms around her shoulders.  “You’re freezing.  Come on.”

And he leads her back to the house.  After a moment, I follow.  

Nua, her caregiver.  

Owen, her friend.  Penny, her blood and beating heart.  Keol, her passion.  

Me, her choice.  

We will follow her, lest she forget.