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Page 4.
 An aunt, an uncle, a cousin, and a co-worker of their late father, along with the parish priest, walked with Hannah and Rob on the gravel path leading from the cemetery into a narrow street among tall hedges and weeping willow trees.
Family and friends gathered at a restaurant for a warming meal to take the chill out: onion soup, salad, beef stew with carrots and potatoes thicked with broccoli, buttered toast to dip, and several desert choices. The atmosphere, despite torn and grieving emotions, was familial and cozy. The twins had finished college in Portland, Rob in international business and Hannah in international relations, and their work lives had taken them to Europe a half dozen years ago—Rob in Germany, Hannah in France. They were fluent in their languages, and were working on dual citizenship. Comfortable would describe how they felt.
Hannah had flown in from Paris, where she worked at a large insurance firm in the western end of the city in the cleanly modernistic, industrial la Defense sector with its skyscrapers, parks (of course), and gigantic arch for the new century. Her brother, Daniel Robert, was usually called Rob to avoid confusion with their father’s name, Dan. Mom (Nancy) had called him Rob before she passed away two years ago from leukemia at age 68.
Rob had arrived from Frankfurt a day earlier; he’d picked Hannah up at the airport in his stylish dark-blue Mercedes yesterday. They’d spent their last day, each in their old bedrooms like old times—and sharing a bathroom in to yell at each other about the toothpaste and other petty issues—in the house where they had grown up. Hannah would fly out later today, while Rob would stay one or two extra days to sort out some remaining possessions and settle paperwork with the real estate agents who would put the house on the market now. They expected a quick sale, since it was a storybook little middle-earth home. The twins had family in Oregon, and planned to visit at least once a year, but for now their passions and interests lay in Europe (including a nice looking guy for Hannah in Paris, named Yves; and an attractive Luxembourg girl named Elise for Rob, working with Rob in Frankfurt, a slightly over a four-hour haul by train or car from Paris. As Rob had calculated, consider that it’s about two hours from Portland Oregon to Eugene Oregon; and four hours gets you from Seattle close to Eugene—so Europe is a small world compared to North America.
Funeral finished and forever behind them (so they thought), Rob and Hannah sat elbow to elbow and reminisced over checkered tablecloths and smeared, empty pasta dishes and vinegary-oily salad plates well-cleaned. Other family members sat around them—beloved cousins, aunts, uncles, a long-ago grammar school teacher, the priest, and other mainstays of a stable youth in a small sort of middle-earth community.
“I wish I could have been here the last week,” said Hannah. She had flown in a few months ago during Dad’s final illness, but couldn’t afford any long absence from her job as an office manager in La Défense business district just west of the city. She’d had to return to work, only to fly back again for the funeral.
Rob’s story was the same, except his work destination had been Frankfurt, Germany. “You’ve got your life to life,” Rob said comfortingly. “Dad would want you to carry on. We’ll always think of them.”
“I know,” she said with a sigh. “I miss mom too.”
“She’s been gone two years now.” Rob said it in an ironic tone, as if he couldn’t quite believe it. “Two years already.”
“Dad was talking strange stuff the last little while,” Hannah ventured.
“Yeah. He said something like the story isn’t over. Whatever he meant.”
“You think he was losing it?”
Rob shook his head. “Hard to say. Dad was a tough guy.”
She pressed: “But how did he seem the last few weeks? You were here.”
Rob thought for a moment, bit his lip. “I think he was lucid. But your’re right; he was saying some strange things.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not sure. That there was a promise, and he was ready to cash in on it at last. He’d waited a long time, paid his dues, stuff like that. I have no idea what he was talking about.”
She nodded, hurting inwardly. “He said something about mom when I last was here. Like he waited it out, whatever that means.”
“They loved each other,” Rob quickly said. Dad could not have meant it as it sounded—that he had endured his marriage and his children. He’d been too devoted and loving a man for that to be true. Waiting it out almost sounded as if he’d been waiting for some next chapter to unfold in the afterlife—totally absurd.
“They did love each other,” Hannah said, almost a tiny bit unsure. Their parents had been married nearly thirty years. They bickered their fair share, and often just seemed detached and like two lone cats prowling around in a common home. Rob and Hannah had done plenty of sibling bickering as well. The family that bickers together stays together.
Especially since Rob and Hannah had grown up, gone to college, and had gone their own separate ways. Mom was always doing things by herself or with her lady friends, and he kept busy with his activities. Almost like she and Dad just lived in the same house together, maybe were friends, but there wasn’t as much passion as Hannah might have expected. But then their parents had been married a long time, so you had to be there to understand how that worked. All you had to do was think of schoolmates whose parents had gone through (always) damaging divorces, or a parent died, that sort of thing, to realize how lucky you were. Same little house, same bushes and lantern in the driveway, same house number, for their entire lives.
Rob summed it up: “It was a loving marriage. Just sort of toned down and quiet.”
She nodded. “I was happy growing up.”
They paused a second, not meeting each other’s eye. There had always been a certain dark and uncertain thing, no bigger than a molecule, buzzing around the best of times. They knew Dad had come back from his Army tours in Germany a broken man, and had gone through a long readjustment hell before meeting Nancy.
“So was I.” He put his hand over his sister’s. “We were very fortunate. They loved us and did everything for us, and we loved them. What more can anyone ask?”
“We were very lucky,” she agreed. Even as she visited with friends and family, including her twin brother, she began packing and planning to return to Paris. Speaking of chapters: here was another chapter closed.
C’est la vie. That’s life. Nothing is perfect but…
Life goes on.
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