Chapter 19: The Things We Carry

The sky was cracked open with clouds again.

It hadn't rained yet—but the wind smelled like something waiting. The kind of waiting that makes the air heavier, like it's holding its breath.

David stood barefoot on the porch, a mug of tea forgotten in his hands, watching the horizon blur. The steam had long gone cold, but he still held it as if warmth could return by willpower alone.

It had been two days since Zayan handed over Mavia's letter, and one day since David had found the unsent one in the box. He hadn't written since.

Not because there wasn't anything to say.

But because the words inside him felt too heavy to move.

Behind him, the door creaked open.

Meher stepped out, arms crossed tightly against the chill. She didn't speak at first, just looked out at the sky with him, like she was trying to read something written across the clouds.

"You ever going to drink that?" she asked eventually, nodding toward the mug in his hand.

David looked down at it. "It's cold."

"Then pour it out. Make a new one."

"I don't think tea is the problem."

Meher didn't reply. The wind picked up, stirring her hair across her face. She didn't brush it away.

They stood in that easy, quiet tension that had grown between them lately—less like discomfort, more like recognition.

David finally asked, "Did you ever think we'd still be here? After everything?"

She looked at him carefully, then said, "No. But I'm not surprised either."

He turned to her. "Why not?"

"Because you and I… we don't run. Even when we want to."

There was something in her voice—something solid. Not pity. Not softness. Something like knowing. Like truth shaped by survival.

David let out a breath. "I wanted to run."

"I know."

He glanced at her. "Did you?"

"Every day."

The wind pulled again, a sudden gust swirling dust across the porch. A plastic chair wobbled and stilled.

Meher walked over to the porch swing and sat, pulling her knees to her chest like she used to as a teenager. David hesitated, then followed, sitting beside her but leaving a respectful space between them.

"I used to think silence meant someone didn't care," she said.

He looked at her.

"But now I think… maybe silence is what happens when you care so much you don't know how to speak."

David nodded slowly. "Maybe that's what happened to Mavia."

Meher didn't answer. But her shoulders dropped, just slightly.

As if something inside her had been waiting to hear that said out loud.

---

Later, they walked together.

No destination in mind.

Just side by side, down the street, through the neighborhood where they'd once biked as kids, the same cracked sidewalks Mavia used to jump across like lava.

The houses hadn't changed. Not the crooked fence on Sixth. Not the mailbox shaped like a fish. Not the old woman's garden with wind chimes made of soda cans.

But they had.

At one point, Meher stopped in front of a low brick wall and ran her fingers along it.

"Right here," she said, "he tripped over his own shoelaces trying to impress someone. Fell flat on his face."

David smiled. "Did he cry?"

"He blamed gravity."

They both laughed quietly, the kind of laugh that comes not from joy, but from remembrance. The kind that starts small and ends in silence, because the memory deserves it.

After a pause, David said, "I wish he'd told us more."

Meher nodded. "Me too."

"But maybe," she added, "we weren't asking the right questions."

David looked at her.

"What were we supposed to ask?"

Meher didn't answer right away.

Then: "Maybe not anything. Maybe we just needed to stay longer in the silences. Maybe that's where he waited."

They kept walking.

When they passed the corner where the ice cream truck used to stop every Saturday, Meher whispered, "I still expect to hear the music."

David nodded. "Me too."

The street was quiet now. Not just quiet—empty.

Grief, David realized, was like that. It changed the way things sounded. Even silence was different now.

---

That evening, Meher sat at the kitchen table while David opened Mavia's notebook again.

He turned to a page he'd skipped before.

A sketch.

Three figures.

One was clearly Mavia—hair tousled, hoodie sleeves pulled over his hands, sitting on a ledge.

The other two weren't detailed. Just outlines.

But one of them had Meher's necklace. The other had David's glasses.

Underneath the drawing, in Mavia's unmistakable handwriting:

> Not always together. But never apart.

David didn't speak.

He carried the notebook into the kitchen and laid it in front of Meher.

She didn't cry.

She just traced the line of the sketch with one finger.

"He knew," she whispered.

David sat across from her. "I think we did too. We just didn't say it."

She looked up. "Why don't we say things when we know them?"

David didn't answer. Maybe because the answer was too close to shame.

---

As the night deepened, the lights in the house glowed warmer.

They didn't turn on the TV. Or play music.

They just talked.

At first about little things—memories, songs Mavia hated, the time he made them watch an entire documentary on moths "because silence deserved wings."

But as midnight neared, the conversation turned inward.

Meher rested her chin on her palm. "What happens after this?"

David blinked. "After what?"

"The posts. The letters. All of this."

"I don't know."

She studied him. "Do you think we go back to who we were?"

David shook his head. "I don't even remember who I was before this."

Meher gave a small smile. "Me neither."

Then she asked something unexpected.

"Do you remember when we were thirteen, and we hid in the greenhouse during that thunderstorm?"

He laughed. "You were convinced the glass would shatter."

"You held my hand," she said.

David grew quiet. "You remember that?"

"I never forgot."

He looked at her, not with surprise—but with recognition.

Because he had remembered too.

"I think," she said softly, "you were the first person who made me feel safe."

David felt something press behind his ribs—an ache, but not painful. Just... real.

"You were always braver than you knew," he said.

She shook her head. "No. I was just good at pretending."

They sat with that.

The kind of truth that didn't need fixing.

---

There was a stillness between them now—not silence, but something more like balance. The shared understanding of people who had seen one another raw and stayed.

David leaned back in his chair. "I'm glad you're here."

Meher nodded. "I don't think I could've done this without you."

He thought about how far they'd come since the funeral—the shouting, the locked rooms, the notebooks, the letters left in drawers.

And now this.

This quiet. This trust.

This... whatever it was growing between them.

Not love. Not yet.

But something sacred.

Something that had survived the fire and come out breathing.

---

That night, David returned to the blog.

He opened a new draft.

> Grief changes shape, but it doesn't disappear.

Sometimes it becomes silence. Sometimes music. Sometimes another person's presence in the kitchen at 2 a.m., making you laugh when you thought you'd forgotten how.

I used to think healing meant forgetting.

Now I know it just means remembering without falling apart.

We carry the ones we've lost.

But sometimes, if we're lucky—we also find the ones who stay.

He titled the post: The Things We Carry.

And he hit publish.

The notification ping felt small. But the relief in his chest didn't.

---

The next morning, Meher passed him a cup of tea without asking.

She had added too much sugar, on purpose.

David smiled.

"You know," she said, "he'd be so mad if he knew we were bonding over him."

David laughed. "He'd pretend to hate it. But deep down…"

"He'd be smug about it for months."

David sipped his tea.

And for the first time in weeks—

He felt something like light inside his chest.

Not bright. Not blinding.

But warm.

Alive.

---

End of Chapter 19