Just motes of dust along a stretch of mountain road, ashes spread as if he’d mattered. And maybe he had. Not to the world at large, not to very many people in the grand scheme of things, but here, in this place? With Hugo and Mei and Apollo and Nelson? Yes, he thought maybe he mattered after all, a lesson in the unexpected. Wasn’t that the point? Wasn’t that the great answer to the mystery of life? To make the most of what you have while you have it, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. In death, Wallace had never felt more alive.
