Carolina Moon

he’d turned to when he’d turned from his family sat here with him while he reminisced and remembered and grieved?
    Why her, instead of me? Why had it never been me?
    Faith set the notepad aside, took out a cigarette.
    The tears came as a complete surprise. She had no idea they were in there, burning to be shed. Shed for Hope, for her father, for herself. For the waste of lives and dreams. For the waste of love.
    Tory stopped at the edge of a bank of impatiens. The quiet, flower-strewn park was enough of a shock. Her mind slid the image of how it had been, green and wild and dark, over the one in front of her eyes. They tangled, refused to merge, so she blinked the memory away.
    There was Hope, trapped forever in stone.
    And there was Faith, weeping.
    Her stomach muscles danced uneasily, but she made herself walk forward, shivering as images of what had happened there eighteen years before fought to take over. She sat, she waited.
    “I don’t come here.” Faith dug a tissue out of her purse, blew her nose. “I suppose this is why. I don’t know if this is a horrible place or a beautiful one. I can never make up my mind.”
    “It takes courage to take something ugly and make it peaceful.”
    “Courage?” Faith stuffed the tissue back in her purse, then lighted her cigarette in one sharp motion. “You think this was brave?”
    “I do. Braver than I could be. Your father was a good man. He was always very kind to me. Even after …” She pressed her lips together. “Even after, he was nothing but kind to me. It couldn’t have been easy to be kind.”
    “He deserted us, emotionally, the psychologists would say, I expect. He abandoned us for his dead daughter.”
    “I don’t know what to say to you. Neither of us has ever dealt with the loss of a child. We can’t know how we would cope with it, or what we would do to survive that loss.”
    “I lost a sister.”
    “So did I,” Tory said quietly.
    “I resent your saying that. I resent more knowing it’s true.”
    “Do you expect me to blame you for that?”
    “I don’t know what I expect from you.” On a sigh, she reached down for the cooler she’d set beside the bench. “What I have here is a nice big jug of margaritas. A good drink on a warm evening.”
    She poured the lime-green liquid into two plastic cups, offered one. “I did say we’d have a drink.”
    “So you did.”
    “To Hope, then.” Faith touched her glass to Tory’s. “It seems appropriate.”
    “It has more bite than the lemonade we’d usually drink here. She liked her lemonade.”
    “Lilah would make it for her fresh. Plenty of pulp and sugar.”
    “She had a bottle of Coke that night, gone warm in her adventure kit, and she …” Tory trailed off, shivered again.
    “Do you see it, that clear, still?”
    “Yes. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t ask me. I didn’t come here, in all the weeks I’ve been back, I haven’t come. I haven’t had the courage for it. As much as I dislike being a coward, I have to survive, too.”
    “People put too much emphasis, too many demands, on courage, and they all put their own standards on it anyway. I wouldn’t call you a coward, but I do keep my personal standards low.”
    Tory let out a half laugh, drank again. “Why?”
    “Well, then I can meet them, can’t I, without undo effort. Take my marriages, though God knows I wish I hadn’t.” She gestured grandly with her cup. “Some would say I’d failed in them, but I say I triumphed by getting out of them as unscathed as I did.”
    “Were you in love?”
    “Which time?”
    “Either. Both.”
    “Neither. I was in heavy lust the first time around. God almighty, that boy could fuck like a rabbit. As sex has been, for some time, a priority pleasure for me, he certainly fulfilled that part of the bargain. He was dangerously handsome, full of charm and fast talk. And a complete asshole.” She toasted him absently, almost affectionately. “However, he fit the bill of being exactly what my mother despised. How could I not marry him?”
    “You could’ve just had sex.”
    “I did, but then marriage was a real slap in her face. Take this, Mama.” Faith tipped her head back and laughed. “Christ, what an idiot. Now, the second time, it was more impulse. Well, and there was that sex angle again. It was still perfectly inappropriate, as he was much too old for me, and married when we began our affair. I suppose that one was a little shot at my father. You enjoyed