VIOLET SKY, takigawa chris yuu

━ chapter thirty-five

act iii

life will go on;
together?
no.

chapter thirty-five

❛i ran into an old friend❜

━━━━━━

seven years later

The thing with ghosts . . . is that they're not always where you expect.

You expect them in places where they should, by principle, be. Places with memories and feelings attached to them. A park, a bench, a bedroom, an entire country, even.

And theoretically, they aren't supposed to be welcomed. Ghosts from your past. Not everyone wants to be reminded of the past.

Amara understands this keenly.

And some ghosts aren't welcome.

Like whenever she thinks too hard about her mother, her biological mother, Guadalupe de la Garza and wonders, even though she knows she shouldn't, what she would think of her now.

Aside from that, she hasn't completely based her idea of ghosts on something negative. It's just something from her past that she's remembering, that stays with her, no matter what.

Some ghosts are welcome. Some have this . . . pleasant warmth connected to them that sinks into every crevice and corner of her body when she thinks about them.

Jake, who she fell out of contact with in her sophomore year of college when he dropped out of college to start a family with his girlfriend. Chihiro and Chiyo, who she hasn't spoken to since her junior year of college.

And Chris.

But he is not so much as a ghost in her mind, as he is a ghost that is standing right before her. In a place she would not expect: the cereal aisle at the grocery store at midnight.

And she isn't even sure if it's him, because it's been . . . so very long. Seven years, to be exact, since she saw him in person, since they've spoken. But you don't quite forget a face, certainly not the face of someone who meant the world to you.

The history of it hits her — it's been so long, hasn't it? — and she averts her eyes from the man standing a couple feet ahead of her, perusing the opposite side with the rows of granola bar brands.

Ricky is asleep in his car seat, propped up in the kids' seat of the basket. Looking at him strikes a barb of guilt in her chest. It's so late. He should be home, in bed, but she'd helped close the museum tonight and since they'd hosted a private party, everything was more messy than usual and she didn't want to leave it all to the hands of the janitorial staff. That meant she left at eleven, picked him up from her friend's at eleven-thirty, and, remembering their tragically empty fridge and how she was going to be busy the rest of the week with tours, made the painful decision to come to the grocery store.

The fact that she even let their food supply dwindle so much makes it even worse but she can't dwell on it. Not guilt herself too much, anyway. It wouldn't be beneficial to anyone. The only thing she can do is keep a tighter schedule and make sure it doesn't happen again.

She adjusts his olive green blanket printed with dinosaurs, tucking it tighter around his little body. He's three, about to turn four next year in March, but he's small for his age. Nothing extreme or cause for worry, his pediatrician said, just in the lower percentiles for his age. But given how he was born, she worries sometimes. Especially with how cold it gets in Toronto.