“Here’s the thing about love—it’s an uncomfortable feeling. It pushes your boundaries. If any of you would have told me I’d be standing here talking to you a year ago, I’d have laughed in your faces. Silently, of course.”
“Oh, my goodness.”
“She speaks.”
“Are you recording this?”
I heard all those whispers behind me, and knew Luna was in great discomfort, but I couldn’t help chancing a look at Trent, her father, who sat at the aisle behind me. He was smiling at the stage, his eyes shimmering. Pride radiated from every pore of his face.
The entire room was so quiet with scandalized shock, you could’ve dropped a pin on the floor and it’d make a colossal sound.
I returned my gaze to my son. He was smiling.
For the first time in months, he looked pleased.
Maybe not content.
And definitely not happy.
But there was something promising behind his jade eyes.
I looked back to Luna, just as she clicked the remote.
“The truth is…” She sighed. “I didn’t want to talk here. It was part of my promise to Rosie. She asked me to make this for Knight, Lev, and Dean so they’d remember her the way she wanted them to. Not in her last month, struggling, unhealthy, and fighting for each minute that passed. She wanted you to remember she’d had a good life, and that she expects nothing less from you. This picture was taken over forty years ago, in Rosie’s backyard in Virginia. Her first-ever memory. She told me it meant the world to her, because she’d thought a bucket full of water was the most joyous thing someone could have before she moved to glitzy Todos Santos, with all the Olympic-sized and kidney-shaped pools and the glorious ocean. She said Lev and Knight always asked her why she put them in buckets of water every summer when they were little. It was so they could remember that the small things in life count the most.”
Luna smiled at Knight, giving him a wink.
Next was a picture of Rosie, Emilia, and me from high school. Em and I were seniors; she was a junior. I had my arm thrown over Emilia’s shoulder, but it was Rosie I looked down at with a smile. Rosie stared at the camera, horrified, and although I’d lived many happy years with my beautiful wife, it still pained me to know I’d caused her a heartbreak, no matter how minor, no matter how long ago.
“Knight, Lev, Rosie asked me to tell you about this moment. Said it was the moment she realized she was in love with your father. But she chose not to do anything about it, because she loved her sister just as much. This is a message from post-life Rosie to you, in her own words: ‘Don’t be a Rosie. Be a Dean. If you want something, no matter what it is, go for it. Falling in love is rare.’”
Luna’s eyes were now on Knight, only Knight, and something in the room shifted. She wasn’t merely speaking the words, she was becoming them.
“Don’t give up this precious gift. Chase it. Catch it. Hold it close. Don’t let it go. And if it leaves anyway…”
Her eyes clung to Knight, and for the first time—for the very first time since I’d known my own son—there were tears in his eyes. It gut-punched me to the other side of the room.
“Fight for it,” Luna finished.
There were more pictures. More stories. One of us on our wedding day that captured me picking her up, crossing-the-threshold-style, and walking away in the middle of a soul-crushingly boring mingling session with a few of my colleagues. I’d carried her to our vintage rental car, straight to the airport, and to our honeymoon in Bali, Indonesia.
Knight in our arms when he was one day old.
Lev’s angry-red face right after birth.
Rosie’s first lengthy hospitalization, where the entire family had sat on her bed. We’d played cards, eaten cinnamon mini-pretzels, and made up elaborate life stories for all of the staff who’d tended to her.
Each story lifted me up and brought me back to life. The audience laughed, cried, clapped, and gasped at the stories Rosie had left for us. And by the time Luna was done, no one remembered how weird it was that she’d spoken. Everyone was laser-focused on the fact that Rosie had left us with such happy memories.
It was when we stood up, and people trickled up to her casket, that I understood why my wife had enlisted Luna Rexroth to do this for her. The finality of the situation hit me as if it was the first time I’d learned my wife had died. I clutched the back of the pew, righting myself.
Levy scurried to Bailey, who threw her arms around him, letting his pain soak into her like Rosie had for me, countless times.
I closed my eyes and breathed through my nose, expecting Knight and Luna to have a similar reunion, especially after the exhibit of loyalty and trust Luna had put on. To my surprise, I felt a hand on my shoulder. When I opened my eyes, I vaguely recognized the woman in front of me. She looked like a distant memory. A yellowed old picture, curling at the ends.
“I’m so sorry for your loss.”
She sounded genuine. I nodded. I wondered at which point, if ever, it was acceptable to ask her who the fuck she was. Instead of putting both of us in an awkward position—truth was, I didn’t care who she was—I smiled politely and moved toward the neat line of people who’d paid their respects to my wife and wished to say goodbye.
“Wait,” I heard the woman yelping behind me. “We need to talk. I need to…I need…I need you.”