Midnight Wonders

7.2.3. The End of Summer

On a Saturday morning, Luc went to Cora and asked her if she remembered what they'd put in the closet seven years ago.

"Probably nothing," she said, and shrugged. "We might not have put anything there in the first place."

"I'm going to check," he said.

"Okay." Cora paused, looking as if she wanted to say more, but she just patted him on the arm and left.

Luc made his way down to the abandoned closet at the back of a room they never used. The room was crowded with all the things they never used, that they could no longer use. Luc had never liked to go to that room, for he always felt guilty about never using or wanting or needing the items kept in there.

He hesitated outside the door. It was always closed. Spiders had probably taken over the entire room. He considered taking the vacuum with him. Just in case.

Luc entered the room. It was cleaner than he'd expected. Everything was stacked very neatly and in an orderly fashion. He almost commended his past self, then remembered he'd probably spent unnecessary hours organizing the room in an attempt to alleviate his guilt.

He crossed the room to the closet. He pushed a box of old clothes he'd been meaning to donate for years out of the way, then opened it.

Jackets he'd forgotten he owned were hanging there, along with a supply of colorful plastic clothes hangers. His were all metal now. Beneath them, a pair of dress shoes. Luc had forgotten about those too. And next to the shoes, a nondescript cardboard box.

Luc knelt in front of the closet. His knees felt ancient. Taking a deep breath, he pulled the box out towards him. It was startlingly heavy. He didn't know what he had been expecting. An empty box? He wouldn't have been surprised.

He opened the box.

A photo album. So he hadn't made that part up. Luc gently lifted the album out of the box. It was a thick book, leather-bound. He ran his fingers over the cover, which had collected a thin film of dust despite the box. There was nothing about it to indicate what the album contained.

Luc's heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in his throat and in his ears. Yet he could still hear his own quickening breath above the sound. His hands were trembling, and his insides constricted painfully. He didn't know if he dared opened the book, see what was inside. He didn't know what he was afraid of; he already knew his previous "recollection" of events was merely a dream. There wasn't going to be anything in the album.

He opened it.

Just as he'd expected, nothing. Luc thought he should have been relieved, but instead he felt like he couldn't breathe. There was just...nothing.

His entire life had been nothing.

Everything he had ever known was a lie, or was gone. He had left home twice and neither time had come back the same. He'd had Kay, then lost him, then found him again, and now he was gone for good.

He ought to stop thinking about it, but it was hard to stop. It felt impossible.

The worst part was that he knew it wasn't. Because he'd done it before.

Luc got out the phone in his pocket and texted Emma to ask her how to spell his name.

She sent it back in a single text and did not have to ask who he meant. K. A. Y.

Then she asked him if he wanted to go furniture shopping with her because she and Annabel had bought an apartment and it needed furniture. He replied that he did and that they should also invest in an air mattress for Tristan, who was still sleeping on the couch despite Cora and Luc both offering to share their beds. Tristan didn't want to share Luc's bed because he felt it wasn't enough space for the both of them; he didn't want to share Cora's bed because he felt it was indecent; he didn't want to take one bed and have Luc and Cora share because he felt guilty for getting a whole bed for himself.

Emma found that funny and said she'd stop by later to pick him up.

For a while Luc just sat there with his phone in his hands on his knees, and he stared at Emma's text with nothing to say in return. It would have been easy to say, "Okay," but it felt like a fake word. It meant too many things; it couldn't possibly be real. He stared at the screen so long it got tired of looking back at him and turned off and he was met with the faint image of his distorted reflection in the black surface.

In a sudden flash of emotion, he wanted to hurl his phone across the room and watch it slam into the wall and crumble apart. It felt like the thing that was supposed to be able to do everything but couldn't even make him feel a little better. And it wasn't even the device's fault. He didn't even know what he wanted. It couldn't capture a whole person. But even the aspects of a person it could capture, Luc didn't have. He wished he had an image he could stare at so he could sharpen the blurry one in his brain. He wished he had audio that he could play over and over so he couldn't forget the already-fading memory.

But he didn't throw anything. It was useless. Instead, Luc went and found a Post-it note and a pen, bringing them back into the room. He knelt in front of the closet once more and stuck the Post-it onto the front cover of the photo album. It was crooked. He was afraid to adjust it. The corners would lose their tackiness and spring up unbidden.

He wrote Kay's name with the pen. The ink blotted when he made the second stroke on the Y. He wanted to wipe it off. It was too late; he'd only smear it.

Luc closed the pen with a click. He stared at Kay's name, written in his own unfortunate handwriting. He'd gotten used to writing slowly to make sure the words were clearly legible to his third-graders. He had written Kay's name so slowly he could see his shakiness in the uneven lines. Something about it looked wrong, yet perfectly right.

That was all Luc had left of him. Just a name, and a memory, which would eventually fade as all memories did, until all that was left was this.

Luc put the photo album back into the box. It didn't lay flat. He picked it up again and took a closer look inside the box.

There was a ring.

His heart stopped. He pushed it out of the way and it skidded over to the corner. The photo album fit horribly into the space. Luc put the pen in the box, too.

He stared at it all for a moment before hesitantly reaching out to pick up the ring. It wasn't his; he knew that. Yet it was familiar. Of course it was: it was one of a pair, and he had seen its twin. Of all of them, only Tristan wore a ring.

Luc had never had a ring. He'd never wanted a ring; not that he could remember, at least. He didn't want a ring now. He didn't, but somehow, looking at it ached.

It was such a solid little thing. It was supposed to be the one thing that would last as everything else decayed.

Luc took the ring and closed the box again. Feeling empty, he replaced it in the closet and got to his feet. He shut the door with what felt like a horrible finality. He tightened his fist around the ring and closed his eyes, leaning against the closet door. He had never felt hollower, yet never felt heavier.

He breathed.

Then he straightened and went out to the kitchen, where Cora was teaching Tristan how to make coffee with the machine.

"Did you find anything?" Cora asked Luc brightly as the coffee machine whirred.

Luc held out his fist. Cora and Tristan stared at it. To Cora, Luc said, "I thought you might want this back."

Cora's eyes widened. She held out her own hand, and Luc dropped the ring into her waiting palm. Tristan, who had been looking confused until then, nearly dropped the cup of coffee.

"I put it away?" Cora said, staring at the ring. "I mean, I suppose, but..." She looked up at Tristan, who had set down the cup. "Does that mean we're engaged?"

"Well," said Tristan. "If you want it to."

Cora slipped the ring onto her finger, then held up her hand to examine it. "We're engaged," she declared. The coffee petered out into the cup, and the machine stopped.