It was peaceful.
The sun rose up over the water that morning. The sky was pink and purple and blue all at once, and it shone across the ocean like a pathway on the rippling waves. The grass in the dunes waved and a few brave grains of sand twirled in the breeze before settling back down onto the silent shore.
The house was quiet. The curtains were drawn, darkness spreading over us, and it was quiet.
It usually wasn’t quiet. Usually she was coughing, usually her breaths were raspy and weak, usually she woke up with harsh gasps that woke us up too, but it was Bayan who woke us up early that morning. It was quiet. It was peaceful. Bayan put his hand on my shoulder and murmured, “Master Aber.”
I sat up, surprised, and then noticed it wasn’t just him. There were two doctors standing behind him, and Nua rolled over too. But between us, our wife did not move. She was still. She was not coughing, was not gasping, was not breathing. Bayan pulled me out of the way, and then leaned over and gently picked her up. Nua and I could not do anything except watch as he cradled her against his chest, and took her away. Then a few minutes later he came back. He told us that Miss Lilly was going to the hospital now, and that she’d be back soon. There was no machinery, no beeping and no flashing lights, no rushing around and hurriedness like just a few days before in Keol’s room. This time, it was peaceful.
That was a week and two days ago. In all that time, Miss Lilly has not come home. Bayan has, a few times, to pick up clothes and papers for her, but he can drive, and he just gets right back in the car and leaves again. The first time he came home Nua and I went downstairs to meet him, to ask what was going on. We bombarded him with questions, but finally he just held up his hands and said, “I can’t tell you anything.”
And Nua and I both said, “Bayan,” and he gave a small sad smile, and said, “I’m sorry.” And then he was gone again.
It’s not until a week and two days after he took our wife from us that he returns and tells us that Miss Lilly is on her way home. All we did that whole time was wander around the house, petting Shiv the cat, looking at the books we have lying around but not reading them, turning on the TV and not watching it. Miss Lilly locked the library before she left, and all the doors, too, so we could not go outside. But now Bayan finally unlocks them for us, and I want to ask him what happened, but I cannot get the words out; I know the answer, anyway. Miss Lilly is on her way home, by herself.
Nua finds me leaning against the railing on the back porch, looking out over to the fountain and twisting the wedding ring around and around my finger. The sun is almost directly above us, and light glistens off the water and the shining stone. His blond bangs are falling in front of his eyes, but he still squints as he leans against the wood next to me. “She just came back.”
I don’t say anything. I don’t want to. I want to be alone, but I can’t, because my mother-in-law is home and childless and waiting for her two sons-in-law.
She stands in the foyer, her coat still draped around her. I see Bayan peeking in through the door that leads to the kitchen, but he doesn’t come out to meet us. She stands soberly, her hair swept up in a fancy bun without a single strand out of place. In her hands she holds an urn.
“What is that?” asks Nua quietly after a moment. He means to ask who.
Our mother-in-law doesn’t answer for a moment. She should be angry that he spoke to her out of turn, but she doesn’t seem to care. She simply looks down at the silver container and then says quietly, “Keol. And Ava. Together.”
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Nua glances at me, and then nods. Her mother holds it out for him to take.
It should be the prominent, her favorite, to take her ashes. But her prominent is dust mixed into her own and she had no time to choose between me and Nua which one she wanted more. It probably would’ve been me, Nua told me that a few hours after the doctors had told us what we already knew. “She was going to pick you next, Aber.”
But Nua takes the urn, and her mother just watches her daughter pass into our hands, and then turns on her high heel and goes through the door that Bayan was looking through. He’s gone by now, he knows to stay out of her way.
Nua holds it slightly away from his body as if it were going to bite, and then looks up at me. His eyes are wide, and he’s not sure what to do. We weren’t exactly told about this part of the job.
It was all a mystery, at first. I knew I would never be married by choice, but my marriage to her was better than I expected. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere outside without her by my side, but I did anyway, and she didn’t care. And I could roam the halls all I wanted as long as I didn’t disturb her or her mother. Surely as time passed I would’ve gained more freedom, too. Nua could go outside without her as long as he had her permission. Keol could do anything he wanted.
I follow Nua up the stairs and into the bedroom that stretches the whole width of the house, windows looking out onto both the beach in the front and the garden out back. He places the urn on the coffee table, then falls to the couch. He never knew her like I did; she left him alone. She never wanted a third husband, or a fourth in me, although we did spend one night together, one that lasted forever but was gone quicker than I could have ever imagined. But no one knew her like Keol. No one knew her like he did, the depths of her heart and body and mind, the aches for her dead prominent and the desire for freedom, the illness wracking through her and the smoke curling out of her mouth, and now they’re together, twisted with and inside and surrounding each other, cradling each other for eternity.
I go over to the window as Nua studies the silver urn. The curtains are still drawn over the windows, but the fancy lights hanging from the ceiling of her room are on. I pull the heavy red curtain back slightly, letting a shaft of sunlight filter in. “Her mother said she’d want to scatter Keol into the garden.”
Nua laughs slightly, but I can’t tell what’s behind it. “I don’t think we can scatter him now, can we?”
“Not like that,” I agree quietly. Not with her. It’s been a week and two days since that morning, when we watched the doctors take her away. They don’t know exactly how she died, only that she was dying. The smell of her cigarettes infused into everything she touched, even for the weeks after she stopped because Keol told her he hated it; it seeps out of the curtains right now, a reminder and a memory.
We’ve been sleeping in here, usually with the cat on the bed somewhere too. Nua and I always shared a room. Keol had his own; I wondered why at first until I realized that she didn’t always want to spent the nights in her own bed, and then I was glad Keol didn’t have a roommate. But Nua and I always slept together, in two separate beds until the night when he lay next to her as she grieved for her second dead prominent and then I lay next to her on the other side, and then for the rest of her remaining days. And last night we came back here, no conversation between us, and no wife between us either, but we slipped beneath the heavy red comforter anyway and slept, deep and dreamless.
There’s not much to do anymore. What did we used to do before? Nua and I traded books. Bayan cleaned the house and cooked the food. Miss Lilly did her work. Ava and Keol fought and laughed and went swimming and watched TV and she painted his nails and he pissed her off and they loved each other. Now they’re both dead. Now they’re both sitting in an urn on the table over there, and there’s nothing we can do.
Miss Lilly has not said anything to us. She is only related to us by law. I do not think she wants us here. We don’t want to be here, either, not without Ava, but there’s nowhere for us to go. I’ve thought about it. I do not think she would let me go back to my family. I only came to this house when Miss Lilly’s people raided my family’s home, which doubled as a shelter for boys who had run away from their wives. I don’t know what happened to my parents after that. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were in jail. I also don’t know what happened to my twin sister, but based on the things I’ve seen about her since we were separated, I’m not sure if I would want to go back to her.
Oh, Abigala. She got mixed up in something that she shouldn’t’ve. And she may be paying the price, right now, and there’s nothing that I can do. There’s really nothing I can do. Nua and I used to just read all of the time, but Miss Lilly has locked the library. She has also locked the front and back doors again, unlike before. Keol had been allowed to go in and out and wherever he wanted whenever he wanted, so the doors were always open. I admit I abused that sometimes, which is probably why she’s closed them shut. She’s in charge. She’s always been in charge, but in the past few months there’s been a buffer in the form of our wife. Now, Ava is dead and gone. And sometimes, I envy her.