The sky was gray in Manhattan the day she died, and most days after that. Sometimes the sun would shine and she would take Anthony to a flat expanse of rock in the park. There she would sit him down and lie on the rock and look up at the sky until the stars came out. Shrouding them both in the same blanket, she would tell him stories that no other little boy on Earth had heard. Not tales of girls in red hoods or silly talking pigs, but of a man who took her to see the stars. And when Anthony was old enough, she told him the story of how she died.
Sometimes when her husband took Anthony out for man to man bonding time, she would drag a chair out to the garden and sit staring into the distance until the doorbell rang. A daft part of her – probably her heart, since it never had been too good at making decisions – listened for a blue box. She knew, of course, that his coming would destroy the universe, but the little girl who had fallen asleep in the garden still hoped. She had in her possession the book she was meant to publish – it had arrived on their doorstep the same day they brought Anthony home. River's spiky handwriting with the instructions to write an afterword had adorned the first page.
She was putting off the task. Her last task. The letters for Brian were already sealed and locked away, the albums still in progress. But the letter for the paper remained fed into the typewriter, blank and cold. How could you sum up your entire life in a page and a half? How to convince her best friend that she did not blame him?
She is so old now. Her hair is white and her clothes are black, and she hobbles along, grasping her son for support. The funeral was short. Her time with him had seemed even shorter. She had always known, of course. She had watched her husband die more times than she wished to recall, but this time it was final. There were no reboots, no paradoxes, just him lying cold in a box in the ground. She makes Anthony take her to the rock in the park. She knows he will not come, but she hopes. Because she is an old woman with very little hope left. If he was coming, today would have been the day.
He didn't come, of course. But she sat with her suitcase in the yard all night after Anthony insisted she leave the park. Her last time waiting for him in a garden. In the morning, Anthony brings her coffee, and she tells him everything. He knows most of the stories, but she tells him the ones she has kept to herself and repeats the old ones just for good measure. And she lives. She lives for five years without really living, just going through the motions. Her last task is complete. The morning after waiting in the garden, she went inside and wrote pages upon pages to him. She blamed him and loved him and missed him in those many sheets of paper. Then she threw them in the fire and wrote him a page that, in comparison, seemed horribly pale and hollow. But she was finished.
Five years after the death of her husband, she died. Her son attended the funeral and the people he saw there were familiar enough. Friends with comforting American accents and vaguely familiar smiles. But one couple seemed out of place. There was a woman, striking in every way, who stood tall and sad, her wild curls twitching in a slight breeze. Her companion was equal in height but bent with the sorrow of an old man. He clung to her throughout the service, crying silently and messing with the buttons on his black suit. They watched uncertainly as Anthony approached them. The woman placed a hand on the man's shoulder, smiled sadly at him, fixed his bow tie. Met Anthony halfway before he could reach where they stood. The man hung back, staring at the tips of his boots. The woman said nothing, just embraced Anthony shortly before turning back to her companion. Entwined her hand with his and pressed something on a contraption on her wrist. And disappeared.
That is the story of how the Doctor and River Song met Anthony Williams at the worst place in the cosmos:
The gravestone of Amelia Pond, sitting under a gray Manhattan sky.