The old man started up again, now close enough that I could hear the age in his voice. And when he spoke, I was surprised it was in English. “Welcome,” he said, spreading his arms wide. “We are here, on this final evening of Obon, to honor the loved ones we’ve lost and the ancestors who came before us.” He paused and swept his eyes over the ocean. “Our tradition tells us that humans come from the water, and so tonight, we will return the spirits of our families to the sea. Each lantern we set afloat will carry a departed spirit from our shore, where they passed their lives, to the horizon of peace and redemption, where they will rest.” He turned toward the real horizon, then back to the people gathered around him and bowed. “The sun has set. Let us begin.”
A tiny woman, bent over from age, stepped from the crowd and began to sing, soft words I didn’t understand, but the feeling behind them was something I did. Rusty and I watched quietly as the first person, a middle-aged man, stepped forward to the priest. He lit the candle inside the man’s lantern, then spoke a name before bending gently to the water with it. When he opened his hands, the lantern trembled a tiny bit before it caught the edge of the current and drifted placidly toward the ocean. The priest repeated the same motions for each lantern, lighting the candle, speaking the name, and setting the lantern adrift down the creek and out to sea.
It was beautiful, and as I watched, I wished Finn’s memorial had felt this way, so much more soft and peaceful than the sternness of his military funeral. The rifle shots and the trumpet, the general’s words and the flag—all those things were meant to honor and pay tribute to him and his service. But they didn’t bring the sort of peace that this seemed to bring the people who set the little lights afloat. The lanterns spread out, flickering over the water in the calm of the evening, and it seemed like the way saying good-bye to someone ought to feel—like you were setting them free so they could always be out there somewhere. It was a wholly different feeling than watching the shiny black casket be lowered slowly into the ground. My eyes swept the sky like a reflex.
Rusty and I sat and watched for who knows how long as each individual lantern was lit, then set free. We watched until the very last person stepped up to the priest. She was a little girl, maybe six years old, and he had to bend low to light her candle. She bowed her head solemnly as he did, but when he reached for her lantern, she shook her head and hugged it tighter. Carefully, she knelt down and set it in the sand, then reached into her pocket and brought out a rolled-up piece of paper tied with a string. She gave it a kiss, looped the end of the string around the corner of the lantern, and stood slowly with it. But she didn’t give it to the priest then. Instead, she held up her chin and stepped toward the edge of the creek, and in a small, quavery voice, spoke the name of her person before she set the lantern into the current herself.
It got very quiet as we all watched it drift down to the ocean to join the others floating peacefully out to sea, their tiny lights shimmering into the night. I watched hers for as long as I could, wishing I’d had the courage and grace to stand up at Finn’s funeral and send him off in my own way, with a speech or a letter or some tiny gesture that was as sweet and earnest as what she’d just done.
After a while, the breeze picked up and the air got so cool I had to wrap my arms around my knees to stay warm. Slowly, in twos and threes, the crowd of people separated and drifted back up the beach, stopping every so often to point out to the ocean, where the tiny lights were now spread far and wide like constellations over the water. And the whole time, Rusty didn’t move or speak. He just sat back next to me in the sand, and I wished I knew what he was thinking about. Asking him wouldn’t do anything but ruin it, so I didn’t say anything either.
It wasn’t until the little girl and her family left that he finally sat up and looked over at me. “You hungry or cold? You wanna go back up to the car?”
I shook my head, scared that if I tried to talk, something in me might come unhinged.
“Okay,” he said like he understood. “We’ll stay a while longer then.”
He took my hand and held it in both of his, and we sat there that way on the dark beach until the last tiny twinkle of the lanterns was just a golden speck. By the time we made it back up the stairs to the Pala, we were both worn out and spent from the day, so when Rusty pulled us into an empty lot along the bluff and parked next to the little kiosk, I didn’t argue. Wordlessly, we climbed into the back and arranged our clothes and the one sleeping bag I’d brought into a decent enough bed for us to sleep on. Any other day, I probably would’ve made a big deal about sending him to sleep in the front seat, far away from me.
But tonight I didn’t care about any of that. Tonight I wanted to be close to him—not in that kind of way, but in the kind of way that made me feel less alone and less sad. The kind of way I hoped could help him, too. So when he slid under the sleeping bag, near enough for me to feel the warmth coming off his skin, I moved near enough to cuddle up and hoped he would understand. He shifted and brought his arm around my shoulders, pulling me in even closer, and I laid my head down on his chest and closed my eyes to everything but the steady rise and fall of his chest and the solid thump of his heart.
28
The first knock on the window woke me up enough to realize it was morning. At the second knock, I rolled over and figured out that the heavy weight across my chest was Rusty’s arm, which was enough to startle me upright just in time to see the officer lean down and peer in the window before knocking on it again. Oh, god. He saw me see him and said, from the other side of the glass, “Miss, would you please step out of the car?”