Epilogue — Evelyn’s Morning
Everything was different now.
Evelyn had known it would, but knowing hadn’t prepared her for it. Vincent was gone. She had made coffee and carried two cups outside without thinking about it. The second cup was just something her hands did.
Laura came through the side gate a few minutes later. She was still wearing the outfit she’d slept in. She looked at the yard for a moment before she sat down.
Neither of them spoke right away.
“How are you sleeping?” Laura asked.
“I’m not, really,” said Evelyn. She smiled a little. “Vince was a terrible sleeper. Kept me up for thirty years. I assumed I’d finally get some rest.” She looked at her coffee. “Apparently not.”
Laura wrapped both hands around her mug.
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
“Of course.”
“How long did you know?”
Evelyn was quiet for a moment. A bird moved through the maple at the edge of the yard.
“We found out about the glioblastoma about eighteen months ago,” she said. “But, you know, Vincent had been sick, in one way or another, for most of his life. This was just… the thing that got him.”
Laura nodded slowly. “You handled the party really well.”
“The whole thing was his idea, but yeah. I did most of the work,” Evelyn looked out at the yard. “He wanted everyone in one place. He wanted to see all of them—like, actually see them—while he still could. While he was still himself.” She paused. “His doctor gave us a window. We planned around it.”
“You planned all of that,” said Laura quietly. “Knowing…”
“I vowed that I’d do anything for him.” She said it plainly, without sentiment. “That was just the last thing.”
They sat with that for a moment.
Evelyn thought about the week before the party. She had stood out here alone one morning with her clipboard and her coffee and looked at all of it and thought, this is the last thing I will ever plan for him. She had stood there until the thought passed, and then she had gotten to work.
She thought about the room at the end of the hall on the first floor. The hospital bed they’d rented, and all the equipment they needed to minimize his time in the hospital. The silence in the house in those last few days after the party, and how much more deafening it was now. She’d been holding his hand when he went. It was peaceful, and she hadn’t been ready even though she had known for months that it was coming.
She did not say any of this to Laura.
“He really liked you,” she said instead. “Both of you. He talked about you after you moved in. He said it was nice to have young people next door again.”
Laura smiled. Her eyes were wet.
“I’m glad we came,” she said.
“So am I,” Evelyn said, holding her mug with two hands.
As she sipped her coffee, an image of Vincent appeared in her mind. He was fifteen. She’d just turned sixteen. She loved the way people orbited around him. How he was so easy to talk to, so charming and sweet. How he made her feel like the center of the universe. How scared she was when he had surgery on his spine a year later. How his smile never faded.
The yard was quiet. Somewhere down the street a car started and pulled away. The morning light moved slowly across the grass.
Evelyn picked up her coffee and held it in both hands, looked at her garden. It had been weeded, and she spotted a few tomatoes that had begun to ripen. Evelyn did not say anything else for a while.
Neither did Laura.
Keaton Aymar 