Last to Die

pony.
    “Is that you?” He laughed. “You’re really cute.”
    Annoyed, she slapped the album shut. “I’m just doing research, like Julian asked us to.”
    “I’m doing research, too.” He reached into his pocket and unfolded a sheet of paper. “I’m working on a time line of our lives. All the things that’ve happened to you and me and Teddy, and how they might relate. I’m trying to see if anything intersects between us. I still need to get Teddy’s exact dates, but I’ve got yours here. You want to check them?”
    She took the sheet of paper and focused on the two event markers that represented her personal tragedies. The first was the date she and her parents were shot in London, an event so hazy in her memory that it might have happened to another girl, not her. But the second event was still fresh enough to make her stomach churn with guilt. She had stubbornly avoided thinking about it these past few weeks, but seeing that date on Will’s time line brought it back in a sickening rush of memories. How blithely she had slipped out of the Buckleys’ house that night. How tired and worried Bob and Barbara had looked when they’d fetched her in their car.
They died because of me. Because I was a thoughtless jerk
.
    She thrust the time line back at Will. “Yeah. The dates are okay.”
    He pointed to the photo albums. “Did you find anything?”
    “Just pictures.”
    “Can I see?”
    She didn’t want to reveal any more embarrassing photos of herself, so she set aside the more recent album and opened her parents’ album instead. On the first page, she saw her father, Erskine, tall and handsome, wearing a suit and tie. “That’s my dad,” she said.
    “That’s the Washington Monument behind him! I’ve been there. My dad took me to the Air and Space Museum when I was eight. It’s
such
a cool place.”
    “Whoop-de-do.”
    He looked at her. “Why do you do that, Claire?”
    “Do what?”
    “Put me down all the time?”
    A denial reflexively bubbled to her lips; then she saw his face and realized what he’d said was true. She did put him down all the time. She sighed. “I don’t really mean to.”
    “So it’s not because you think I deserve it? Like I’m disgusting or something?”
    “No. It’s because I’m not thinking at all. It’s a stupid habit.”
    He nodded. “I have stupid habits, too. Like how I’m always using the word
like
.”
    “Just stop it, then.”
    “Let’s agree we’ll both stop it. Okay?”
    “Sure. Whatever.” She turned more pages in the album, saw more photos of her handsome dad posing in different settings. At a picnic with friends under the trees. Wearing a swimsuit on a beach with palm trees. She came to a photo of both her mom and dad, their arms entwined, standing in front of the Roman Colosseum.
    “Look. That’s my mom,” she said softly, stroking a finger across the image. Suddenly the scent of the perfume on that scarf cut through the fog of lost memories, and she could smell her mother’s hair, feel her mother’s hands on her face.
    “She looks like you,” said Will in wonder. “She’s really beautiful.”
    They were both beautiful, thought Claire, gazing hungrily at her mother and father. They must have thought the whole world was at their feet when this picture was taken. They had striking good looks and a lifetime ahead of them. And they were living in Rome. Did they ever stop to think, did they ever imagine, how prematurely their future would end?
    “This was taken nineteen years ago,” said Will, noting the date that Claire’s mom had written in the album.
    “They were just married then. My dad worked at the embassy. He was a political secretary.”
    “In Rome? Cool. Is that where you were born?”
    “My birth certificate says I was born in Virginia. I guess my mom came home to have me.”
    They turned more pages, saw more images of the same handsome couple smiling at a dinner, holding up champagne glasses at a cocktail party, waving from a motorboat. Living
la dolce vita
, her mother used to say. The sweet life. And that’s what Claire saw in these photos, a record of what seemed to be a never-ending string of good times with colleagues and friends. But that’s what photo albums were meant to show, the best moments in life. The moments you wanted to remember, not the ones you wanted to forget.
    “Look. That’s gotta be you,” said Will.
    It was a photo of Claire’s mother, smiling from her hospital bed as she