Coffees with Luke & Audrey

XXI

“Someone once said that death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”

— Anonymous

“I brought you the paper,” she said two weeks later. She sat down, plastering on a friendly smile. “There’s tons of crosswords in there for you.” Audrey held out the paper for him to take, only he showed no reaction to her arrival, his eyes set on the opposite wall as if he could see through it. Her smile slipped at this, but seconds later she forced it back because they could not both be sad, and put the newspaper on his bedside table. “So Lindsey’s birthday’s coming up.”

Silence.

“Do you know what you’ll get her? Obviously you can’t go shopping yet, but you know, in a couple of weeks I think you’ll be allowed to. There’s a lot of good sales coming up, so that’s a bonus, right?”

Silence. The clock on the wall was beginning to sound impossibly loud.

“She’s not fussy though, so I think anything you get her she’ll be happy with. Some people are really –”

“Audrey.”

She had never been good at comfort. Tears and heavy silences always made her uncomfortable, even from the early age of nine and a girl at camp whose cabin she was sharing had started crying because she missed her family. Audrey had headed straight for a teacher and waited outside until the crying ceased. Naturally as she got older, looking for teachers to help was no longer an available option, and so she had had to deal. So now whenever she was placed in one of those situations, or in this case both, her way of getting through it was to talk. And talk and talk – like there was nothing wrong, like the predicament was perfectly normal. And maybe Luke remembered this about her, because the sudden return of his voice stopped her ridiculous prattling instantly.

“Yeah?” she asked softly, afraid if she spoke too loud it would shatter the moment.

He swallowed loudly, was quiet for a long while. Then met her eyes; brown to grey. “Lie to me,” he instructed. “Tell me everything’s going to be okay.”

She wanted to tell him to stop being silly. That of course it would be okay. That everything would work out. Except she could not bring herself to say it because she did not really believe it. There was no way of telling if things would be okay. His brother had died. His family was broken. Lost. And she knew things would not be okay for a long time.

She took his hand. Squeezed it. Pretended not to care when he did not squeeze back. “Everything’s going to be okay.”