End of Story

by A.J. Finn

For Nicky, who is not a flyer born, it’s always a miracle when she touches down.

Ink sinks into stationery, indelible as a scar; email is breath on glass, an instant dissolve.

“Young Hunter,” he says, “there is one pursuit, and one alone, that engages a man who has lost his wife and son in a single night, and that is resisting the almighty urge to blow his brains out.”

And there it is again! That dark voltage in his eyes, in his voice. The bared tooth. The power, too. He’s a dangerous substance.

“People your age—young people, I mean—you treat your lives like galleries, for public display, open to all. My life is no gallery. It’s a vault, a black box, and—I’m sorry I can’t put this more elegantly—it’s nobody’s damn business.”

“As Simon St. John tells us, the past is a poison. Tolerable only in trace amounts.” “I remember. But the past is gone.” “Oh, no.” Now he turns to her, and his smile is so sad she could cry. “The past isn’t gone. It’s just waiting.”

A woman who doesn’t lie,’” she replies, “‘is a woman without imagination and without sympathy.’”

All human wisdom,’” says Sebastian, “‘is summed up in these two words: wait and hope.’ Monte Cristo.

“Gossips everywhere. There is an expression: moral indignation is envy with a halo.”

‘To say goodbye is to die a little.’”

“Proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem laeseris.”

“I don’t think I can imagine wanting to die,” she says, slowly. “But I guess I can imagine not wanting to live.”

“Questions now?” Simone nearly splutters. “While we’re in shock?” “Relax, Mrs. Trapp, you won’t feel a thing. What time—”

It’s a comfort, knowing that Diana has an afterlife in her hardware, a ghost in the machine.

A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world,’” he says. “‘It knows no law, no pity, it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.’”

“We’re all in that story. Life is a thriller. The ending is fatal and the conclusion is final.”

“Some stories, they just end without you finding out what happened. You know?” “I know,” says Nicky. “I don’t like those stories.”

Perhaps time isn’t the best killer. Perhaps grief is.

“Grief feels like fear.

“Grief might feel like fear, but it also feels like memory, and with memory, there’s no—a story doesn’t end.”

“Men.” He snorts. “Men are where evolution backed itself into a corner.”