and I follow her gaze and realize that she’s looking at the framed family photo on the fireplace mantel. “Oh, that’s my family,” I offer. “Mom, Dad, little brother.”
She barks out a little nervous laugh, as if embarrassed to be caught in the act. “You look…close.”
“We were.”
“Were?” She is still studying the photo. Something flickers across her face again. She comes and sits down next to me.
“My mother died when I was nineteen. She drowned. My father died earlier this year.” I realize that I haven’t said this out loud in months, and unexpectedly the grief wells up inside me and I’m sobbing. Big heaving gasps of woe. Ashley turns to look at me with wide eyes. Dear God. She’ll think I’m a basket case. “God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize I was still so raw about that. It’s just…I still can’t believe my family is gone.”
She blinks. “What about your brother?”
“He’s a mess, so he’s not much help. Jesus, I’m so sorry, bawling all over you like this.”
“Don’t apologize.” I can see conflicting emotions flickering across her face—Is she repulsed? Have I screwed it all up?—but then they settle and smooth into something soft and reassuring. Her hand stretches across the couch to rest on top of mine. “How did your father die?”
“Cancer. It came on very quickly.”
I see her swallow. “Oh. How terrible.”
“It is,” I say. “It’s got to be the most agonizing way you could die—slowly, like that, just eaten up. It was like the cancer just stole him and then left his body to die for weeks and weeks. And I had to just sit there watching this, wanting him to die so that it could all be over and he’d be out of pain, but also begging him to live for just a little while more, for me.”
I am about to go on, but then I realize that she looks a little stricken, and so I stop myself. Her hand grips tighter onto mine. “It sounds awful,” she says hoarsely, near tears herself, and I’m surprised and touched that my father’s death is making her feel so emotional, too. She must be an empath (another thing I am not but should be).
Tears are gathering in the folds of my nose and I need to wipe them away, but I’m unwilling to break the connection of our hands so I let them drip freely. They rest on the velvet nap, tiny puddles of woe.
“I am very…alone…right now.” My voice is small.
“I can’t even imagine.” She is quiet for a moment, and then: “Or, maybe I can imagine.” Something in her voice has abruptly changed, her speech more tentative, as if she doesn’t quite trust the words coming out of her mouth. “My father is gone, too. And my mother is…ailing.” Our eyes meet and there is something painful and sharp that passes between us, an unspoken understanding that can only be shared by those of us who have lost parents too young: How dreadful it is to live in a world without them.
“How did your father die?” I ask.
She looks away for a moment, and when she looks back there is a wistful blankness in her eyes, as if she is excavating an old memory from deep in the recesses of her brain. She slips her hand from mine. “Heart attack. It was very sudden and really devastating. He was such a…kind and gentle man. A dentist. We were really close. Even when I moved out for college he would call me every day. Other dads didn’t do that.” Her shoulders rise and fall, almost theatrically, as if shaking off a memory. “Anyway. As I like to say: Inhale the future, exhale the past.”
I like this. I inhale, and exhale, but still feel like crying. “What about your mother?”
“My mother?” She blinks fast, as if unprepared for the question. Her hand falls to the nap of the couch, and she rubs it, hard. “Oh, she’s lovely.”
“What does she do?”
“What does she do?” She hesitates. “She’s a nurse. She likes taking care of people. Or, she did, until