Word Count: 1613

“Did you love him?”

The day was not so beautiful as the day his father’s funeral had taken place on, but the gray clouds that stretched across the horizon would remain distant for some time yet, and the hot sunlight was countered by a dry but pleasant breeze. It brushed across the well-tended grass of the cemetery and rustled the bouquet of red roses set before the small rectangle of stone marking his father’s grave—Henri LeFay, 5 October 1965 – 6 April 2012.

Paris sat there on the grass with his eyes shielded by a large pair of sunglasses, protected both from the sun and his mother’s discerning gaze. He felt as if he were in conflict with himself, as some of the numbness he’d experienced immediately after his father’s death rose up to level the sound of his voice and steady the shaking of his hands, while his insides were torn to shreds by that pitiless monster known as grief. He could not look at the grave or the flowers—which seemed too meaningless a gift—and looked beyond it instead, to the trees and the smattering of people standing or sitting by different graves.

His mother sat near him staring he knew not where, while one of her hands absently touched a growing stomach Paris could hardly ever look at without feeling the tiniest shred of resentment.

“I always have,” she said. Her voice was as calm as his, but softer, too—almost reverent.

Father’s Day had never been of particular interest to Paris, nor had it ever seemed to be of a particular interest to his father. He could remember small celebrations before his mother had left—cards and dinners and simple presents—but after she’d gone Paris and Henri had faced the holiday as they faced all the others, which was to say it hardly phased them at all. It passed as another day, drifted by without notice, with no mention, and no change in their behavior, in their relationship, or the circumstances of their family.

It was different now, of course. Paris thought it would always be different from now on, and he hated that because it should have meant something all along, not just when his father was gone and they could no longer speak, could no longer see one another. Now the day felt both empty and full—devoid of his father’s steady presence, but brimming with an emotion they’d all previously neglected to show.

“You still love him now?” Paris asked.

He didn’t know why he was asking her all these things now, but it felt right to.

“I do…” she answered.

“Why?”

He saw his mother’s body shift out of the corner of his eye and thought her head might have turned in his direction, but the frames of his sunglasses obstructed his line of sight too much to be sure. If he pretended hard enough, closed his ears to their conversation and focused on an empty point in the distance, it was almost like he was there alone.

“Probably for the same reason I imagine you’ll always love Chris,” she said, “because he came around at a time when I needed him, and he gave me something I’d always been looking for.”

“What’s that?”

“A family…”

Paris made an indignant sound in the back of his throat. “You already had a family,” he argued.

“Not a good one,” she replied.

“Dad and I were better?” Paris wondered.

“For me you were. A hundred times better. Neither of our parents thought so, of course. Not that mine ever cared much in the first place, but your father gave me a little stability in a part of my life I’d never had it in before.”

“But not for long,” Paris observed.

His mother paused for a moment. He thought she might be frowning, remembering a time they probably both wished they might forget but could never hope to.

“Long enough,” she said. “I didn’t leave because I didn’t love him anymore, just the same as I didn’t leave because I didn’t want you. I left because I didn’t know how to be the wife he wanted. I left because I didn’t know how to help him be the person he wanted to be when I still wasn’t finished figuring out who I wanted to be. I wasn’t any older than you are when we were married and I had you.”

To a part of Paris it sounded almost like an excuse, but there was another part of him that understood—the part that scoured the city for evil every night and had stopped being a kid nearly a year and a half ago.

“When you’re not ready for something like that,” his mother continued, “even if you think you are, it doesn’t matter how much you want it. It doesn’t matter how much you love the people in your life. Eventually it comes back up again, and you have to choose between working through it or pretending you already have.”

“And pretending is worse,” Paris assumed.

“Pretending is always worse.”

Paris brought his knees up to his chest, wrapped his arms around his legs and propped his chin on top. His eyes flicked very briefly down to the bouquet of roses, their red hue dulled and browned somewhat by the tint of his glasses. At the back of his mind there were memories of a different color, passed to him in a failed attempt at secrecy with small, handwritten notes—‘Here’s to creating something beautiful…’

Then his thoughts were a jumbled mess, half of them of his father and half of them of Chris.

For weeks he’d tried to understand where and how and why things had gone so wrong, what had caused everything to spiral down until it seemed as if there were so little left for him to hold on to. He tried to pull himself back up, tried to sort things out and come to terms with it and formulate some way to make it better again, but he still came up empty-handed. Even a month removed from the day his relationship with Chris had changed, Paris had no idea what he should have done differently.

Not gotten drunk the night his father died, obviously, since that evening and the things he couldn’t remember saying seemed to have been something of a catalyst. But whether he’d said it or not, the feelings still would have been there. They would have had to have dealt with them one way or another, and if it had happened later… would Chris have been any more ready for them then?

“Did Dad know?” he asked, looking back out into the gray horizon. “Did he know you still loved him?”

He felt his mother’s hand against his back, smoothing over his shirt consolingly.

“I hope he did,” she said. Now her voice sounded a little less calm, a little less controlled, a little more strained.

When her hand slid up to his shoulder, Paris uncurled one of his arms from around his legs to lift his hand and grab hold.

“I think he knew,” he told her, feeling her fingers tighten. “I think he knows now.”

A warm breeze blew through the flowers and the grass, sending strands of Paris’s hair against his face in a ghostly caress. He thought he heard an answer within the wind, low and far away, too out of reach to be heard clearly, but it was soft and gentle, and he thought it said “yes.”

“How long does it take,” Paris asked then, “to work through it?”

Long, thin fingers lightly squeezed against his shoulder again.

“It depends,” his mother said. “It’s different for everyone. I’m still working through it, I think. It got a little easier over time, but… recently it’s been harder. It’s always harder when there’s more to regret, and no chance of making it right.”

“Do you think it’s worth waiting for?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted on a weary sigh. He imagined she must feel as tired as he did sometimes. “I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer to that. I think the important thing is to keep going, to figure out who you want to be, and then be it, and find happiness in that instead of giving up and waiting for something that might never happen. At least then, if it does happen, you’ll be ready for it… like I wasn’t.”

Paris lowered his cheek onto his knees, closed his eyes, and asked, “What if I don’t know how to be happy anymore?”

A minute passed in silence. Then another. And another. Paris could feel his mother watching him, felt her fingers grip at his shoulder, before they loosened to slip from beneath his hand and drift across to the opposite side. Then her arm was around his back. He heard the short grass swish and crinkle as she shifted and settled next to him, her side pressed to his as she pulled him close and held him tightly.

“Then I’ll help you,” she said quietly, “for as long as you need.”

Paris didn’t think it would be enough. Nothing felt like it was enough anymore, but he didn’t say that to her. He kept his eyes closed and he let the silence overtake them, and he thought about death and life and roses and something beautiful, and all the things in his world that seemed impossible.

And he didn’t know if love was worth it anymore, or even if it ever had been in the first place.

But he wanted it to be.

He still wanted it to be worth everything.