he came into the hospital, and inside it was his late brother’s class ring, a paper clip, and a tiny, roughly folded paper airplane.
The airplane had confounded her at first. Albie had given up paper-folding of all kinds after his injury, frustrated by the inefficiency of his hands. Her instinct was to preserve the plane, just as she would keep his clothes unwashed and never use that paper clip. But something about it wasn’t sitting right with her.
Sloane dried her hands with a paper towel, then looked at herself in the mirror. She didn’t look well. Pale and exhausted, her hair greasy, her clothes rumpled. She tied her hair back, hoping it made her look halfway presentable, and went out to meet the crematory operator, who had agreed to give her a few minutes for a bathroom break before they started.
No one had to witness the cremation, but Sloane wanted to. She had identified the body beforehand, forcing herself to stare down at the face that was Albie but not quite Albie. The tuft of dark blond hair that stood out at an angle from his head was undeniably his, but without the life in his face, in his eyes, the body could have been a wax figure. Still, she had agreed it was him, and now the casket was sealed, ready on its cart next to the tray that would roll into the cremation chamber.
The crematory operator was named Walter, and he was about her age, soft around the middle with a pale, drawn look to his face.
“Ready?” he said.
She nodded. Walter showed her the button she would press to start the process.
“Don’t be alarmed if the bottom of the casket catches on fire really quickly,” he said. “It’s really hot in there so the finish might light up too.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ve seen worse.”
Walter nodded, and looked away as Sloane approached the button. But she wasn’t as ready as she’d thought. She reached over and rested her hand on the casket. The paper plane was in her back pocket.
“Actually, Walter,” she said, “would you mind giving me a second alone?”
She could tell he was trying not to look annoyed. She had found that people fit into one of two categories when interacting with her post–Dark One: some went out of their way to be accommodating, and others assumed the worst of her. Walter had been sighing at her since she walked in, so she guessed he was in the latter category. But he nodded and slipped out of the room. Sloane waited until the door closed behind him, then took the plane out of her back pocket.
She unfolded it, and smoothed it out on the casket. Written right in the middle of the paper was I’m sorry. I couldn’t carry it anymore.
Sloane’s vision went blurry, and she crumpled the paper in her fist, squeezing it so tightly her knuckles ached. In the time that had passed since Dr. Hart had delivered the news, she hadn’t cried, hadn’t even come close. Not even when she was listening to Esther sob on the phone. Not even when she held Albie’s shirt up to her nose to see if it still smelled like him.
Either way, we’ll carry it. We always do.
Sloane slumped over the casket and sobbed, hugging the wood tight. She felt like she was losing her brother all over again, but it was worse this time, because she would remember more than the itchy wool dress she wore when they lowered the casket into the ground and the way Cameron used to wake her up for the first frost and drag her outside to make footprints in the grass.
With Albie, she would remember the Survival Beer they got after every altercation with the Dark One, the looks they exchanged whenever Matt went into hero mode, and the way they had held each other upright when they escaped captivity together. She had half a lifetime of memories of Albie. They had understood each other’s pain in a way no one else had.
Now there was no one left who did.
The sobs subsided in a minute or two. They always did. Like something inside her didn’t have the patience for such reckless emotion. But she rested her cheek on the casket for a while longer, the wood warm now from contact with her skin. Then she straightened and flattened the crumpled paper against the wood as best she could, folded it, returned it to her pocket. She wiped her eyes and