I’d beaten cancer for the second time, watched two men integral to my life die right in front of me, and married a thirty-six-year-old MC biker Prez. Graduating seemed like small peanuts compared to all of that but I was the only one who thought so.
Everyone in my family was in the crowd watching for me to walk across the stage. King and Cress were up from UBC where they were taking summer classes, Harleigh Rose sat beside my sister Bea and beside her, somewhat miraculously, my mother and my grandpa, and the rest of The Fallen brothers filled out the three rows around them. They all sat in their cuts, some of them hungover as fuck, some of them looking bored to tears, but they were all there to see their Fox graduate.
It made me want to cry but I was doing a lot of that these days.
I wasn’t over Mute’s death and I knew I never would be.
He’d been in my life only half a year but he’d given me what only one other person ever had, unconditional love right from the start.
I felt his absence like partial deafness, as if my ears were always straining for the quiet sounds of him in my life, the steady whoosh of his deep breaths as he piggy backed me, the gentle huff of his exhale when he thought something was funny. He’d been such a quiet man that I’d learned to listen harder to the silence and find treasures of sound in it. And now he was gone and that awareness remained as a constant reminder of his nonexistence.
“Louise Lafayette Garro,” Headmaster Adams called out from the podium.
I swallowed hard, tossed my hair over my shoulder and strode across the stage in my gold gown and combat boots.
“Congratulations, Louise,” Headmaster Adams said with a sour smile. “I’m surprised you actually made it to graduation given the company you keep.”
I smiled back. “I made it to graduation because of the company I keep, but thank you.”
Then with my rolled-up diploma in one hand and my stupid graduation cap in the other, I faced the audience, lifted my arms and shouted, “Fuck yeah!”
The audience’s nervous giggles were drowned out by the roar of The Fallen brothers yelling, “Fuck yeah!” right back at me.
“Way to go, Mrs. Garro!” Zeus yelled loudest of all, standing so tall above everyone else, his hand up in the “rock on” symbol as he yelled for me.
I shed my gown as I ran down the stairs, revealing the little denim skirt and green tube top I wore, which was totally not appropriate graduation wear. I didn’t give a fuck. My family was celebrating at the clubhouse and I was beyond ready to blow this popsicle stand.
I didn’t stop running until I hit Zeus’s chest and he yanked me up into his arms. He planted a deep wet kiss on me, doing it so long and so well I was dizzy by the time we broke apart. There was a smattering of awed, nervous applause but I didn’t notice it because Zeus Garro was looking at me with pride in his silver-grey gaze.
“My wife is a high school graduate now.”
I threw my head back and laughed.
Zeus.
Three years later.
It was a brutally cold day, snowin’ like it never did in Entrance, but Lou wouldn’t be fuckin’ deterred. So, we’d bundled up and headed out to First Light Church graveyard to visit Mute as we did every year on the anniversary of his passin’.
We stood in front of his gravestone, starin’ at the epitaph I’d had carved into the black stone.
Mute Garro (Walker Michael Nixon) 1999-2018
Cherished Brother, Silent Hero, Eternal Friend
The Fallen remembers.
R.I.P.
Lou was cryin’ but she always cried when we visited and I’d grown as used to it as any man whose mission in life was to kill off any reason for his wife’s tears could be with it. That was to say, I curled her under my arm and tried not to give in to the crater of tears in my chest too.
When she was done, she placed the model Empire State Building beside the other Lego buildings we’d left on other visits. Sammy made them for Lou whenever she visited.
“Ready to go?” I asked her, wantin’ out of the cemetery ’cause it gave me bad vibes though I’d never say it out loud.
Besides, it was Sunday and we were havin’ family dinner in a few hours, which gave me just enough time to bed my hot young wife ’fore they arrived.
“Not quite yet,” she surprised me by sayin’, then bizarrely she added, “If it’s a boy, I want to name him Walker.”
I blinked at her. “You want a dog or somethin’?”
She smiled through her tears and the weak grey light shone down on her face like a haloed fuckin’ spotlight. “A dog would be nice but we might be busy for a while so a dog’s not the best idea.”