SandScript 2020

comfort poses. “I came here a time or two
with you and Holly, remember?” she said.
She had taken her baseball cap off
and was letting her hair move in the faint
breeze.
“Yes, I do remember.”
“And I imagine you came here with
her before I even knew you, too,” she said.
I nodded. Holly was my late wife, my
soulmate, my friend, and the mother of my
daughter. Carmen had been friends with us
both. Holly had died over three years before.
Ovarian cancer. “Yes, we did. She loved this
place,” I said.
The sun got higher. It was warm
but not hot. We watched the horses nosing
around the ground and scraping at the rock
with their front feet. The sun glinted on bits
of mica in the mountain walls surrounding
us and made the angled quartz inserts shine
with a clean white light.
We were quiet then, but it felt like
there was something to say. I had brought
my saddlebags up onto the rock with me,
and now I opened them and pulled out some
little boxes of food; multi-grain crackers,
brie, pears, blueberries. A big bottle of water.
I moved over to create some space between
us and laid the food out on the rock. I spread
some brie on a cracker and handed it to her,
leaving the box with the fruit in it open. She
smiled and said, “Thanks,” and took a bite.
“I know we’ve talked about this,” she
said, “but now here we are at the day, and
I’m still… I don’t know. I love you, I want to
marry you, and yet there is a part of Holly
that is still here for me.”
I looked at Carmen in her riding
clothes. She was wearing a white, long
sleeved western shirt with snap buttons,
jeans, and boots. She was strong and brown,
like Holly had been, but she was a little more
filled out. She was born almost two years
after Holly and now she was 38, twice the
age Holly had been when I met her. I was
52. Carmen had been a good friend to us, a
frequent visitor in our home, and we in hers.
I nodded. “Yes, she is still a part of
me, too. She always will be, because of Beck
and also just because our marriage was a big
part of my life.
“But then again, I don’t think you’ve
spent the last 20 years being a nun,” I said
with a smile. “We both have history.”
“Well, yeah, but still… I mean, I know
it’s right, I think you and I are perfect,” she
said, “and yet, there is this added dimension
of sadness and loss and maybe a few tiny
shades of guilt and betrayal of my friend.”
“Guilt?”
“So… here’s the thing,” Carmen said.
“I’m just going to say this to get it out. In
actually marrying you, I feel like I’m taking
over something that’s not mine. I want to
be—I want to continue to be—with you,
and I know, I already spend a lot of time
with you in your house and with Beck, but
somehow, to actually marry you and move
in with you, to become the ‘lady of the
house,’ to become the step-mother, it feels…
well, it feels great, but it also feels wrong
somehow, like I’m erasing Holly. Replacing
her.”
The horses had wandered a little
bit around the park, and now they drifted
closer to us, listening to our voices. Like
every part of the desert, this place was full
of life and death, both at the same time.
Walk just about anywhere in the Sonoran
Desert and you’ll find a ton of life, a huge,
FICTION
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