In which some things are explained, some questions are answered, and more questions arise, erm, therefrom.
Ana found Makele sitting beside the stream with his back to a tree. She opened her mouth to ask him what in the world he was doing here, worrying her with his absence, and saw the note. He had clenched his hand around it, crumpling it so as to be unreadable, but she knew it at once. Makele had hardly let go of it since Jan had left. She closed her mouth and knelt beside him and put her arm through his.
He didn’t say anything for such a long time, she was about to speak again, but Makele’s soft baritone stopped her.
“I didn’t want a replacement,” he said.
“I know,” said Ana.
Another long pause made her ache to comfort him, to hold him and tell him it would all be fine, everything would be fine. She knew these were mere words, though, and that the emptiness they felt, both of them, for their lost son would always remain, in some sense. She wanted to laugh. It was an insane impulse, but the empathy she felt for her husband overwhelmed her, and she gripped his arm tighter and lay her head on his shoulder.
“Maybe it was just that the house was full, again,” said Makele. “Maybe I thought that would make it better. Now all we have is time.”
“We have another son,” Ana said. She patted his arm in a slow rhythm.
“I didn’t mean it that way, love. I’m thankful for what we have. I never got a chance to help Kinve find his way in the world.”
Ana pressed her lips between her teeth at the mention of Kinve’s name. She could count on one hand the number of times Makele had spoken it since his death.
“He was as lost as that boy we took in,” Makele continued. Maybe that’s what I was hoping for. Just one more chance.”
“Life only gives us one chance,” said Ana. “But we’re still here. I still love you. I’ll keep loving you all the rest of my life. If it’s one day or a thousand, that will never change.” She looked up at him, and he turned to meet her eyes. “Be here with me,” she said. “Love me completely and I promise you we will get through this.”
Makele let the note Jan had written to him slip from his fingers as he raised his hand to his wife’s cheek. The note slipped down the bank and into the stream, where the slow current took it away. The paper uncurled as it soaked up water, bumped into stones and against the bank on either side of the water, and the ink spread and melted into blurry smears until it was a ghost on a translucent surface.
