Happily Never After. Kathleen O'Brien

didn’t for a minute think we’d ever need them.”

      “No,” Tom said. For an uncomfortable moment, he imagined his own neatly typed will, duly notarized and filed. Everything went to charity. Everything, right down to the pictures on his walls and the ties on his rack. It was the will of a completely unencumbered man.

      But here, next to Jacob’s aching grief, in the presence of all these dearly departed, Tom realized how pathetic his will would sound when it was read. Like the antiseptic record of a thoroughly unlived life.

      Maybe, he thought impulsively, he’d go back and change it. Maybe he’d leave a few things to Jacob, who was the closest thing to a real friend he’d had since elementary school. Tom also had a painting of a red-haired girl standing on a hillside. It was worth a great deal of money, but he knew he’d bought it only because it reminded him of Kelly. Maybe he’d go back and write in a clause leaving it to her. She’d be pretty shocked, wouldn’t she?

      “I wish I had fixed the damn brakes myself,” Jacob said suddenly.

      Tom looked over at him. “What?”

      “Lillith’s brakes. She needed to have the whole system fixed. Everything was leaking. She had to put brake fluid in every few days. I was always carping at her, telling her to just bite the bullet and get it taken care of.”

      “But she didn’t?”

      Jacob shook his head. “She hated stuff like that. Boring stuff. I knew she hated it. All that time I spent, bitching about how she was letting it go. Why didn’t I just do it?”

      Tom didn’t answer. He knew Jacob didn’t expect him to. There was no answer. Jacob hadn’t fixed Lillith’s brakes, and he was just going to have to live with that.

      The fact that Lillith would undoubtedly be happy to forgive him didn’t make much difference. Jacob had to learn to forgive himself. If he could.

      Sometimes, Tom knew, you couldn’t. Sometimes life’s lemons just couldn’t be turned into lemonade, no matter how hard you tried to squeeze the facts.

      Oh, yeah. Tom knew all about that.

      The sound of the girls squealing and laughing was closer now. Apparently they were in the middle of a war, with pinecones for cannonballs. One of them had just ricocheted off the branch above Tom’s head, and suddenly another came sailing over and caught Jacob in the shoulder.

      “Oh,” the young, high voices said, still giggling, “oh, shit!”

      Two of the children disappeared behind tree trunks, but the girl who had thrown the pinecone came over, dragging her sword behind her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I am Sir Lancelot, and I’m trying to rescue Guinevere. I’m not very accurate.”

      Jacob smiled. “That’s okay. You throw good and hard. When you fix your aim, you’ll be lethal.”

      She smiled at him, retrieved her pinecone, and ran back down the hill toward her buddies. Their daisy crowns could just be seen peeking around the edges of the massive trees.

      Jacob looked at Tom. He almost smiled. Then he looked down at his hands.

      “I would have liked to have children,” he said.

      “I know.” Tom wondered if he should add the conventional statements, like you would make a terrific father, or you will someday. But all those things sounded hollow. Jacob had lost so much. Tom’s instincts told him not to try to minimize that loss.

      “What about you?” Jacob glanced up at Tom briefly, then went back to staring at his hands.

      “Me? What about me?”

      “Don’t you ever want to get married? Don’t you want to have kids?”

      Tom shifted on the bench. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Sometimes it seems that ship has sailed, you know? There’s not a lot of time, and I haven’t really met anyone I—”

      “Is it because of Sophie?”

      Tom gave Jacob a hard look. “What do you mean?”

      “I mean—” He took a deep breath. “Darn it, I know this subject is supposed to be off-limits. Always has been. I can feel it every time I get even close. But I’ve just learned a lot about how short life can be, you know?”

      Tom didn’t answer.

      “Well, it is,” Jacob went on doggedly. “And so it’s stupid to avoid talking about things that matter. If I had Lillith back, you know what I’d do? I’d spend every minute just talking to her. Just telling her how I feel, and finding out what matters to her. I’d never go to an office again.”

      Tom tried to chuckle. “That might be a little hard on the budget.”

      “Screw the budget.” Jacob shook his head. “We’ve got enough money. Why did we think there should always be more?”

      Tom was silent a moment. The priest’s voice drifted sonorously over the gentle air, reaching them as pure feeling, no content. The feeling was peace. Comfort. Forgiveness.

      For that one moment, Tom could almost believe such things existed, even for people like him. After all, it must be for people like him that the concept had been invented. If you’d never done anything bad, you wouldn’t need forgiveness, would you?

      “I guess it is partly Sophie,” Tom said. “I came so close to making a terrible mistake. I loathe the idea of making another one.”

      Jacob nodded. “I can see that.” He paused, and Tom could tell he was trying to decide how far to push. “Did you—did you ever love her in the first place?”

      “Jacob,” Tom said. “I’m not going to do this.”

      “I guess that’s my answer.” Jacob sighed. “Have you ever been in love with anybody?”

      Tom tapped his foot, a small movement that barely disturbed the yellow leaves that had fallen into the mulch around the bench. Though the cemetery was wide and open, the breezes fresh, he had begun to feel claustrophobic.

      Had he ever been in love? What kind of question was that? For a few days, ten years ago, he’d been obsessed with Kelly Carpenter. He had hungered for her like an animal. When he’d looked at her, he’d felt as if someone had tied his intestines into knots and beaten his chest with a mallet.