The Tinted Sky

A Glimpse

   I sat in the car for a while after, the girl, the man, and the woman went to sleep. I knew I should leave. I knew I was risking them noticing I was watching them, but I couldn't get myself to shift the gears into drive, I couldn't get myself to go. What if I was leaving the last piece of Mara I had left behind? I couldn't bear to think of leaving without seeing the girl at least one more time, the doppelganger of my wife. I could almost hear Mara's voice telling me I was being stupid and that I should move on. I could imagine her face as she told me to get out of here and start over.

"You can do it, ya know," she whispered. I stared ahead into the night because I was afraid if I looked beside me, she'd disappear. "You could get out of here baby, and you could make a life without me, and I'd bet you'd be just as happy one day without me, as you were with me." I shook my head and let out a jagged breath, holding back the tears as the pain built up in my chest.

"You don't get it do you Mara" I leaned my head against the wheel of the car gently and closed my eyes "Without you, I don't have a life, without you I'm nothing" I heard her laugh weakly, almost like she was tired.

"Oh baby if only that were true, you'll see my love, you'll see," and she touched the side of my face, and I felt it I felt her smooth, cold hand run down my cheek catching a tear I had let fall. I looked at the passenger seat, and she was gone, and a part of me knows she had never been there but, I wish with all my heart that she had been.

As the sun came up, I put the car into drive, and I drove away without seeing the girl one last time, if I saw her again, I thought I might never be able to leave her. As the little red brick house disappeared into my rearview mirror and then behind a hill, I thought about how much Mara would've hated this small town, where nothing ever happens, and I thought about all the things we promised we were going to do together but never got the chance too, and I thought about the child me and Mara would've had if she hadn't died that night and I thought about how much she loved the sunrise.

"It's an obvious choice baby; the sunrise is the start of a new day, it's a new beginning, it gets rid of all the muck of the day before and hands us a blank slate" I shook my head and laughed at her as she tugged her hair into a high ponytail. "You know I'm right," I shrugged and pulled her closer to me.

"You're not right, but you are" we laughed, and she understood what I meant when I said that she might not have been right about sunrises being better than sunsets, but she was right, the right smile, the right laugh, the right touch, the right feeling, she was the right girl, and I'll never forget how good it felt to be right with Mara.

The scenery became a blur, and at some point, I was on the highway back home. I don't remember the ride much. I do, however, remember the way Mara smelled after a shower, and the way she scrunched up her nose when she wanted to know something, and as I crossed the Lincoln Tunnel into New York I realized just how much I remembered and I hoped I would never forget.