Epilogue
Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge
“There she is,” Graham said, pointing to a marble headstone etched with Erin’s name.
A rush of emotions flooded through Aida. It was hard to believe that she hadn’t seen Erin or Graham for three years. This
was not the reunion she had ever expected. Aida knelt and placed the bouquet of white tulips on the grave. Below her name
was etched a quote from Langston Hughes, a poet Erin had always admired. Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid.
“I’m glad I came,” Aida said. “Thank you.” She stood and gave her ex-fiancé a hug.
“I’m glad you came too,” he said. “Have a good trip home.” Graham shook Luciano’s hand and returned to his car.
“He seems like a nice guy,” Luciano said after he was gone.
“I think he is?” she said, trying to remember. “I’m having one of those weird memory issues again,” she admitted. “I think
he was a nice guy, but just the wrong guy for me.”
“His loss, my win,” he said.
Aida turned back to the grave. She didn’t want to leave just yet. “I can’t even remember why she moved back to Boston,” she
murmured to Luciano. “I can’t remember . . . so many things.”
Luciano put an arm around her. “It’s okay to forget details,” he said gently. “It doesn’t change what she meant to you.”
Aida nodded, though the forgetting weighed heavy on her.
It wasn’t just the details about Erin—it was everything.
The past few years had been hazy, a common experience, she knew, but it was still unsettling.
The pandemic had disrupted more than just daily life; for millions, it had left a strange fog over memories, making it harder to grasp the little things that once were so clear.
“I know.” Aida wiped her tears with a tissue she’d pulled from her purse. “I feel like something important happened that I
should remember . . . It’s on the edge of my thoughts, but I can’t quite recall it. But I remember her laugh, the way she
made me feel loved.” She smiled through the tears. “That’s what matters, right?”
“That’s what matters,” Luciano agreed, his hand resting on her shoulder.
They lingered a little longer, silent, watching the shadows shift as the afternoon sun filtered through the trees.
Eventually, Aida kissed her fingertips and placed them against her friend’s name. “I love you, Erin,” she whispered.
As they walked slowly back toward the car Yumi had loaned them, Aida slipped her arm through Luciano’s.
“I’m looking forward to the concert tonight,” Luciano told her. “You’ve told me so much about the Hatch Shell, and we couldn’t
have asked for more beautiful weather.”
“Me too. I’m glad the city decided to rebuild after that bad fire. It’s a perfect way to honor both my parents’ and Erin’s
memory.” They had spent so many magical nights at the Hatch Shell, watching symphonies and movies, and when she was little,
her parents would take the girls to puppet shows.
They paused at the pond in front of the Mary Baker Eddy Monument to watch a pair of swans gliding across the water.
“Do you ever wonder,” Luciano said, “what the world would be like without this?” He waved a hand at the pond. “This beauty,
this happiness? It seems strange to say that in a cemetery, but I’ve found so much joy walking through this magnificent place.”
Aida knew exactly what he meant. Not just that the cemetery was beautiful, although it was.
“Do you really wonder that?” she asked him. “What the world would be like without happiness?”
He was silent for a moment, then shook his head. “No, I think I already know. I think we both do.” He turned to her and pulled
her close. “I feel like we’re always collecting happiness, storing it up, living it, breathing it.”
She grinned. “We are, Luciano. We are.”
* * * * *