Page 101 of Into the Mountains
She looks me in the eyes, her breaths coming faster now in rhythm with her hips.
“I love you, Eli.” The four words slip off her lips so easily when just a short time ago, I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear them.
She comes first and her cries echo off the cave walls. I’m close behind her and my moans now mix with hers—a melody for the two of us. Her forehead rests against mine as our orgasms subside, our bodies returning to a calmer state.
“Thank you for coming with me.”
“Right now or like, on this trip?” I ask, earning a light smack to the shoulder.
“Both.”
The next few hours pass with various tasks. Once we got back from the cave, we had a list of things Charlie wanted to get done. One of which I’m assuming she’s putting off for as long as she can. A task I only discovered because I was the one cleaning the living room earlier this morning. Sheets covered various things in the room—furniture mostly. But there was one smaller sheet covering something on the shelves that hugged the fireplace and when I lifted it, there were two wooden urns there, protected from dust, forever conserving the contents inside. One is a slightly darker stain than the other. What made her leave them here? Why not bury them or scatter the ashes?
“Charlie?” I start cautiously. I’m not sure what her reaction will be to rediscovering her parents' urns, but I’d rather tread carefully than barrel through what could be something she isn’t ready to face just yet.
She comes around the corner from the hallway and stops in her tracks when she sees where I am. “Oh.” It comes out short and soft. “Um. About those…”
I let her figure out what she wants to say or how she feels about my findings. Instead, she says, “Those are my parents.”
I feel like that’s the answer I should have expected, but I didn’t. “The left is Anne and the right is Paul.”
“Nice to see you again,” I wave awkwardly. It’s weird that the last time I saw them, we were having a board game night only a room away in the breakfast nook. And now they’re just ash and fragments of bone.
“Why didn’t you bury them?” I ask, making sure there’s no hint of judgement in my tone. I don’t know what it’s like to have parents like hers and lose them. Mine weren’t great and losing them didn’t really have that much effect on my life. Nothing compared to her.
“Dad didn’t want to bury Mom yet. We wanted to wait until her favorite season in the fall. She always loved the colors of the leaves and the changing of the air. And then a few weeks later when it was time, I found him.” Her eyes close and I can almost hear her swallow from a few feet away. Whether she’s trying to swallow back her tears or swallow away the memory of finding her father, I don’t know.
“The idea of burying them both…was too much. I figured I’d be ready to come back sooner than now. I just didn’t and I know that makes me a horrible person leaving them here in their abandoned house and I’m shitty for doing everything that I did. I just…”
“Couldn’t,” I finish for her. “I understand.”
“I know you do,” she whispers. “You understand more than anyone and I hate that you do.”
Her soft hair falls through my fingers as I tuck it behind her ear. “If I didn’t, then we wouldn’t be here, love.”
She leans into my touch and breathes in, closing her eyes like if she doesn’t take it all in now it’s all going to disappear in the blink of an eye.
“You’re right.”
I can’t help but smile at those two words that have become so precious to the both of us. “My eyes might be closed right now, but I can literally feel you smiling.”
“I can’t help but do that when you admit I’m right.”
She opens her eyes only to roll them at me, pressing her forehead to mine briefly before looking back over to the urns.
“Where should I bury them?”
“That is something that is your decision.”
“I hate making decisions.”
“I know.”
We fall quiet as she considers what she wants to do after all this time. Tears well up in her eyes and she looks up trying to blink them away.
“Here doesn’t feel like home anymore. But taking them with me to Blue Grove doesn’t feel right either. I might belong there, but they don’t.”
“This might not feel like home to you, but it was home for them,” I say, nodding in their direction. “This house, this town, was their home. It was your home at one time too even if it isn’t now.”
