Page 160 of Whisper
His legs shook as he made his way up the gently sloping hill to David’s grave. The headstones blurred into a spinning carousel while David’s flew into perfect focus. He wanted to puke. He wanted to run. He wanted to rip up the fresh grass and throw away the dirt, claw his way down to David, pry open his coffin and lie beside him. Lie in his ashes, let David into his body at an atomic level. Would David stay with him, if he held David inside him?
“As-salaam-alaikum,” he choked out.
David’s mother blinked at him. Fresh tear tracks carved mascara down her cheeks. “Wa alaikum as-salaam,” she whispered. “Did you know my son?”
He couldn’t speak. He nodded, collapsing to his knees. One hand traced David’s name on his headstone as he covered his mouth with the other. David’s ring touched his lips. He kissed the gold, the promise they’d made each other.
He held the ring out in the palm of his hand to David’s mother. “We were married.”
She frowned.
“Do you remember when he called you and told you he had found someone he wanted to be with forever?” Kris watched her face morph from confusion to shock, terrible shock. “And he told you his name was Kris?” His lips trembled, his chin. “That’sme. We were married in Canada a few weeks before. He didn’t know how to tell you.”
“No…” She shook her head. “No, no, no. My son was not—”
“We were in love. So deeply in love.” Damn it, he was crying again. “Here, look.” Fumbling, he reached for his phone and pulled up a few pictures they’d taken. They weren’t the best, but it was them. In Hawaii, cuddling. Kissing. On the beach, holding hands. In Toronto, in matching suits. Kissing after their wedding. In front of their new home. Lying in bed together, shirtless. David kissing his cheek.
She pushed his phone away and squeezed her eyes closed. “Allah,forgivemy son,” she whispered. “Forgive him, in your mercy. Forgive him from his sins. Make his grave wide and peaceful. Allah, please do not punish him in his grave!”
“It’s not a sin! We were in love!”
“Itisa sin!” Fresh tears burst from her eyes. “You come to me and tell me my son sinned, that he turned against Allah. You bring me this here, at his grave? What are you trying to do? Hurt me?”
“No! We both loved him, I thought—”
“He will be punished for this! And now I must know it! Now I have to think of him, facing an eternity of agony in his grave!”
“We were in love!” Kris screamed. “I loved him! And he loved me! Why does that need punishing? What the fuck kind of God does that?”
She stood, grabbing her purse and her shoes. “If you loved my son, you would have cared for his soul. His relationship with Allah. Now—” She covered her mouth and shook her head. Then turned and strode toward a parked sedan, her head in one hand. Her sobs floated back toward Kris, echoes that seemed to grow, surround everything.
He fell to his face on David’s grave, tears flowing into the fresh grass. He didn’t, couldn’t understand. Of all the things he was ashamed of, in all the ways he’d failed so spectacularly in his life, loving David was never something he regretted. Never, ever.
Why? Why did the world fight against them? Why was their love so suspect?
Why had David been taken from him?
Why had he lived? Why was he still enduring, when the love of his life was not?
He didn’t deserve to live. He’d failed on September 11, he’d failed to stop the vice president and his quest for Iraq, and he’d failed on the Hamid operation. There was blood on his hands, no, he was swimming in blood, an ocean of it, waves that drowned him when he closed his eyes. And in the center of it all, the very center of his failures, was the taste of ashes on the back of his throat.
Everythinghe’d tried to protect turned to ash. Towers to bones, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. His love, in the back of a trunk.
His torment, his torture, was to keep on living.
Only God could be so cruel.
Dan eventually picked him off the grass and helped him back to the car. Kris mumbled his address, and Dan made the long drive in silence as Kris pitched sideways and lay on the bench seat, clinging to the leather like if he let go he’d be launched into space, or the tether that kept him leashed to the last remnants of his sanity would break.
Would it be so bad to be insane, though? If he hallucinated David, but spent the rest of his life in a padded room, would the trade-off be worth it? Could he ever imagine David the way he truly was, though? Could he ever conjure up the totality of his existence, his soul? All his perfections, all his imperfections, every one of his deepest thoughts and secrets, things Kris had known and hadn’t known. He could never recreate David, not if he spent his entire life trying.
The sun had set by the time Dan pulled into his driveway. The shape of their house made his spine shiver, called up every memory of David’s smile inside their walls.
How many dreams had David packed into their house, staring at each room like he was watching a future movie play out. What had he imagined for them there? What was he hoping for when they both came home for good?
He walked the entire house, his hands trailing over walls and cabinets, kitchen counters and the back of the couch. They’d made love there and there, fast and frenzied, happy pouncing after unpacking. Slow and sweet, kissing until they ran out of air and they just kept going, never separating. The garage, where David’s old truck still sat. He’d moved into Kris’s life in that truck, taking them from weekend sleepovers to full time partners.
The porch, David’s favorite spot in their home. They’d drunk beers and held hands, watching the sun set. Ate cinnamon rolls and laughed over breakfast, listening to birds chirp. Walked the property, the tangled bushes and leaning trees, the rough scrabble of northern Virginia. If David was going to find peace, he’d said to Kris, he’d find it right there, holding Kris’s hand.
