Write, Wrote, Written

Sunday Scribblings #75

“‘The End.’ That’s what I want my gravestone to say. Nothing else.”

He didn’t turn around. Stephen hadn’t even said anything. Somehow Adam just knew he was there.

“I was hoping I wouldn’t find you here,” Stephen said, “Abigail called me when she couldn’t reach you. She got worried because you weren’t picking up.”

“Did she tell you about last night?”

“Well, she didn’t get into the details….”

“I kissed her.”

Stephen grinned. “It’s about time,” he said.

Adam turned to face him, finally. Stephen had seen him looking better. Locks of uncombed black hair fell in front of his dark, sunken eyes. A day’s worth of stubble dotted his face. In his hand, he clutched a single red rose.

“If it’s such a great thing, why do I feel so awful?” he asked.

He turned his back to Stephen again. They were in the graveyard of a tiny Catholic church in Maryland, a little over half an hour’s drive from downtown D.C. on an exceptionally clear and sunny fall afternoon. Among the three-hundred-year-old markers populating the cemetery was the one to which he currently devoted his attention. It was newer than most of the rest.

“Adam, Abigail cares deeply for you, and I know you care for her. It’s not something you should feel bad about.”

Adam chuckled bitterly. “Really? Steve, I’ve faced horrible things in the dark, and I’ve destroyed them with wooden stakes and silver bullets. I’ve recited incantations in languages I don’t even know, at the same time praying to God that I wasn’t opening a gateway to Hell. And here I am, still alive. Emma died in a car accident caused by a bloody drunk driver on a beautiful, sunny day just like today. Don’t tell me you can’t see the irony in that.”

“Adam–”

“Don’t say it.”

“Don’t say what?”

“That life must go on. Knowing what I know–what we know–about the evil that crawls on this earth, can you really be sure?”

“Adam, you know better than anyone that all any of us can hope for is that we do something meaningful with our lives in the time that we have. Emma did. She was a brilliant doctor and a good person. She saved thousands of lives. And even if you think you shouldn’t be here, you still have to deal with the fact that you are. It’s not just that life must go on. It does go on.”

Adam looked back over his shoulder at him. “I still miss her.”

“And no one’s saying that you shouldn’t.”

“What if I’m afraid?” Adam asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

“What if you are?” Steve replied.

Adam knelt and placed the rose gently at the foot of the gravestone. Neither of them spoke. They both just remained motionless, Adam kneeling over Emma’s grave and Steve standing a few feet away, as if time had stopped altogether. God himself seemed to aid in the illusion. The wind died, and ceased the rustling of the particolored leaves in the trees. The songbirds fell silent. Only after a minute did Steve even realize that he was holding his breath. It was Adam, though, who finally broke the spell.

“I suppose I can come up with something better than ‘The End,’” he said.