Windward Review Volume 19 (2021): Empathy and Entropy

friends.
“I want to see you again,” he said. “Believe it or not, this is the most
conversation I’ve had in awhile.”
…
That night, as she bathed Lumi, she noticed that the little chorus of
voices that usually whispered soothing ugliness in her ears had quieted down
to let her hear Lumi singing.
“Did you have a good day mama?” Lumi asked.
“Yes, baby. I did.”
She put her baby to bed, stroked her hair, breathed her in as she had
since the day she was born. She was not a perfect woman, or a great mother,
but in these moments, she always wanted to be better. She thought of
Scarlet, waking up to a different world that morning, of how some of this light
that Lumi had would be gone. What had he said? At first, she hadn’t asked
for her mother. It was as if she was waiting for her to come out of hiding in a
perpetual game of hide and seek--then she’d never come back. Those tears
must have been inconsolable.
She found her phone and paced around the house, looked at the
pictures, ran her hands over the counter. She found her purse, put her hand
on the bottle of pills, She pulled them out of her bag and heard them bounce
against each other.
She put down the pills and found his number in her phone.
“Coffee?” she texted.
…
The next day, they’d decided against coffee and instead were sitting
in Sam’s car waiting on their Sonic order. The girls were in school, their last
few days before Christmas break, and Emily felt as if she was going to have
to push back all her plans. Christmas would happen, and even though it was
horrible to think about, she was going to have to make her last appearances.
She could not take Christmas from Lumi.
Now, she sat and watched as Sam tapped on the steering wheel of
his car. His car was littered with newspapers, and scraps of papers with notes,
absolutely no evidence of any sort of female influence, aside from the booster
seat in the back, and the pre programed Disney Sirius XM station on his radio.
She kicked her bag to the side, aching to hear the familiar sound. There they
were, bouncing against each other, the sound of the pills bouncing against
each other almost like a rainstick.
When their food came, she ate almost self consciously, while he
squirted ketchup all over his tots and commenced to pick them out of the carton
with his mouth. He smiled at her. “Sorry, I’m used to eating on the road.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
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Empathy / Entropy