"There's something like a line of gold thread running through a man's words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself."
John Gregory Brown

She hung her head and realized that concentration was a whispy thread that she could not catch within this moment. The simple act of focusing took more energy and ambition than she seemed to be able to draw from within herself. She heard the man across the desk – his voice was a soft tenor drone, background music for the thoughts that chased one another through her mind. She could ignore him. They could listen to his words. This was for them. Not for her and certainly not for him.

In the years after she left, he was the one who called. He was the one who asked if she had found her dream, caught the star, realized her potential. They hadn't really understood why she left and elected not to care. She knew that her life was light-years away from theirs. Another world in another universe into which they couldn't and wouldn't step. But he had made the effort.

She wasn't here for them. They had each other, this small coven. Insulated and insular in their daily lives. She knew that her time would come later on. One day when the sun shone just so upon a leaf, a song touched her ear in just that way, a man and a young girl passed by holding hands. That would be her time.

She turned her attention to the world outside the window and studied the sky. Leaden grey of early fall, the clouds hung low above the turning trees. She had loved this time of year. It brought anticipation of winter and thoughts of snow, fire and exhilaration. She watched the leaves blow in the fall wind and thought of how similar her thoughts seemed to the swirling confetti of yellow and brown.

"Closed casket or open?"

The word escaped her unconsciously, a gut reaction that she couldn't halt until it was out into the still air of the office.

"Closed."

Hanging her head, she could feel her mother's eyes upon her, disapproving and cold. She could read the very thoughts, as if they were projected in stereo from one mind to another. She didn't care. She had become accustomed to the distance at which she was held. But she was firm in her resolution that he would not be put on display before the world to fuel some disturbed need to settle familial guilt.

Quietly her mother confirmed that the ceremony would be closed casket. She sighed in relief and settled back to watch the wind until she noticed everyone rising and preparing to leave. Meeting her brother's eye, she saw the same disapproval that had been telegraphed by her mother's gaze earlier. It was a quiet "for shame" look. It had followed her for years. She was immune now and simply walked away, as she had done time after time. She had learned to wear her ambivalence like a shield.

Several days earlier, when she received the news, she had called Will. It was late at night and the election was weeks away, but she had to leave. He understood, was disappointed and slightly panicked, but compassionate. They had sent flowers. She wasn't certain who would have thought to do so, but the simple gesture was heartening. One meant for her, alone.

After arriving, she knew why she no longer made the trip for holidays. This world was foreign to her – as foreign as her own was to them – and she no longer knew how to function within its walls. Looking back upon her time there, she wondered how she ever survived in this world of simplicity. It made her uncomfortable in her own skin and long for the chaotic world from whence she had come. The stillness was deafening and she often felt it close around her in a dark, frightening embrace.

She had wanted to tell him. She had wanted to run to him and share her grief, accept his strength. He would have given it. He had never denied her that – not once. But they were not what they were and never could be again. Sometimes you wait for something so long that the waiting is all you know. You see the world only through that longing. She had been in that place for too long and when she left him, she tried to shed those colored glasses as well. She couldn't go to him now because she was afraid of the longing rising up from the small box into which she had sealed it, the key on a chain around her neck. Her personal albatross.

The day of the funeral was overcast. Fitting, in a way. It was as though the heavens weren't certain if they should weep at the loss or celebrate the welcoming. She wanted to think the latter, but didn't have the faith to put her heart behind the intention.

Dressing, she thought of how seldom she wore black. Black was mourning. Black was a symbol of supplication to the end of everything. Black meant that there would be no more of what was once loved.

She put up her hair and fastened her pearls. Looking around the room, she saw the detritus of childhood. Her niece was pink and plump and cuddly. The black seemed out of place and shocking in a room made for light and laughter. She mused on the ironic difference that aging made so painful. In childhood, the "what-ifs" weren't specks on the horizon and in adulthood, they never disappeared.

Downstairs, the voices were subdued and footsteps muffled. She could picture her mother, stiff and proper, and her sister, hovering to the side, ever the pretty, needful one. They were not friends, she and her sister. Never close, distance and time gave them an excuse for their natural inclination to be civil, but not friendly. Her brother would be outside, walking impatiently, cursing under his breath. Believing himself the head of the household, he would issue orders and ultimatums.

She knew they loved her. They were of the belief that one must love family. But they did not understand her - her life, her dreams or her desires. She understood that and forgave them, but somehow knew they could not forgive her. They couldn't forgive her for being what they wanted her to be. To them, it was the ultimate betrayal.

The church was full, people standing in the nave, respectfully silent. She walked in behind the others, silently acknowledging her removal from the family. Her eyes were trained on her bother's heels, following until they stopped at a pew and stepped inside. Silently, she slid in next to him, resisting the urge to run outside under the lowering sky.

The words of the ceremony slid in and out of her consciousness as she disappeared into memories. Swing sets and car-rides wove in between birthdays and high school dances. It was the rising of her brother from his seat that cued her to the end of the service. Quickly walking down the aisle and out of the church, she stopped for a moment to inhale the smell of autumn around her before she stepped into the car.

Graveside, a light snowfall began to lie upon her hair and shoulders. Reaching out a gloved hand, she watched the flakes land and melt, transitory and fleeting. The grey monuments seemed to reach out to the falling snow, claiming their early winter blanket eagerly. She tried to follow the path of single flakes, but lost them in the dizzying dance of white.

Her sister handed her a rose and for a moment, as their eyes met, she thought she saw compassion. A bond that hadn't existed between them prior to this meeting on a snowy October day. But as quickly as it appeared, it vanished, and her sister turned away.

Lowering her head, she mourned another loss. It had been a year of losses for her. Falling like a line of toy soldiers, each took one more spot of sunshine from her life until she found herself standing in a cemetery in the snow.

She walked up to the casket and stood silently for a moment. She had not prepared a farewell. Were there words to express a lifetime of love? If so, she didn't possess them. Not here, not now. Perhaps one day, she could find a way to show him that he was the one for whom she would have done anything asked. But he never asked, allowing instead, for her to find her own way. He had given her no greater gift.

Laying one hand on the casket, she gently laid the rose on the lid and then turned away. Walking past her family, she set out through the cemetery, without a destination but knowing she needed to be away from the sympathies and platitudes that would flow like oil from the collected mourners. She was not prepared for that – for words of compassion from people she did not know. Such an endeavor required more of her than she was willing to give.

Stopping under a tree, she looked out into the stillness, the flakes of snow falling heavier from their heavenly birth. They seemed to form a curtain between her and the rest of the world and she felt, for the first time in months, safely sheltered from everything around her.

A hand touched her arm and she turned, expecting to find an angry sibling, or worse, a disappointed mother. Instead, she looked up into soft brown eyes.

"Hey," he said quietly.

"Hey," she replied, feeling her balance falter as the albatross pulled her down.

"Will told me." He said the words in an apologetic tone, but his eyes asked what his mouth would not.

"I couldn't..." she started and then looked over his shoulder to the thinning crowd. She was on a precipice and knew that she could walk away. She could disappear into that crowd and he wouldn't follow. She could lock the colored glasses away forever if she took a single step.

She felt his hand on her face, turning her toward him so that he could look upon her.

"You always can. Nothing has changed that." His words were firm, but the compassion in his eyes was genuine. There was nothing in them but concern, fear, and an unnamed emotion she had witnessed upon occasion over the years. When it appeared, she had been frightened and alone, much like now. She knew it to be the truth. She felt herself begin to falter.

"Please believe me when I say that."

Suddenly, the weight around her neck slipped away and she felt, for the first time, the salt of her own tears as they slid down her face. It was this that she had so desperately desired these last few days. The gentle comfort, the unspoken words, the simple kindness that only the love of greatest sincerity could give. She had buried such love today and that loss, on top of all the others, had truly been reason to grieve.

"Oh, God," she sobbed. "I miss him."

Wiping away a tear, he whispered, "I know."

As his arms slipped around her, she felt a sudden sense of peace, as if the disjointed view through which she had been gazing upon the world had suddenly come into focus. The "what-ifs" had not disappeared. They lingered on the periphery of her vision and she could see them in the distance. But for now, they had been calmed by the blanket of snow.