Page 128 of Here We Go Again

She laughs again, and the sound settles in her chest. “Thanks, Dad.”

He reaches up and gives her a noogie, like they’re both twelve. She shoves him away and sloshes a bit of her beer onto the patio. “Oh, I see. My childish behavior comes fromyou.”

“Oh yes. You’ve always beenexactlylike your dad.”

“Dinner’s ready,” Rosemary says, poking her head out the sliding door. She hasn’t cried in seven hours. Logan is keeping track.

Rosemary smiles wanly at Logan, then pops back inside.

“You love her? Like, for realsies?” Antonio gestures to Rosemary’s receding figure through the glass.

Logan sighs. “For realsies.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

ROSEMARY

On a Thursday, they have a funeral.

They don’t call it that, though.

No, Joe left clear instructions for his “Death Party,” just like he always had a clear vision for his death trip. Rosemary doesn’t fight this one.

Logan carries camp chairs and a portable speaker, and Rosemary has a bag of s’mores fixings in one arm and his ashes in the other, as they walk down the trail to the beach.

Antonio builds up a bonfire, and Remy makes sure everyone has a whiskey-seven for the toast. Nurse Addison is there too, with Guillermo. Logan holds her whiskey-seven the highest as she says, “To Joe’s next great adventure.”

She starts crying, and then they’re all crying around a bonfire on the beach.

“Some party,” Antonio announces after honking his nose into a handkerchief.

For a long time, the six of them sit in silence, staring at the flames. Sipping their cheap beers. Thinking about Joe. Rosemary thinks about how only Joe could bring together such an odd assortment of people.

That’s what he did. He brought people together.

Only Rosemary and Logan spread his ashes. They wade out into the water, hands linked, the ashes inside the wooden box from the funeral home. The waves lap against her calves, then her knees, until she’s submerged all the way up to her waist. Everything goes numb from the cold, but Joe wanted to swim in the Atlantic one last time. Logan’s hand is still in hers.

Logan extends the box toward Rosemary and she pulls off the lid. It’s so strange to think a man like Joe could be reduced to nothing more than a pile of dust inside a plastic bag. But he’s more than his remains. He’s in every mile they drove to get here, in every word Rosemary writes, every click of her typewriter keys. In the cottage Logan is fixing up with her own restless hands.

Joe lives in every student he’s ever taught. As expansive and incontrovertible as the ocean.

Rosemary lets go of Logan’s hand long enough to reach for a pinch of ashes. She feels the legacy of Joe against her palm before she sprinkles the ashes into the water. Logan does the same. Just a pinch, taken away by the waves.

Tears blur her vision as bit by bit she releases him.

“This isn’t Joe,” Logan says, staring at the ashes swirling around their legs. Rosemary knows she’s crying too.

“It isn’tallof Joe,” Rosemary corrects. Because it is part of him. The part of him who wanted to return to this place where he lived with the love of his life. The part of Joe who loved this cottage and these trees. The Joe who loved Rosemary and Logan best of all and wanted them to be as happy here as he was once.

Rosemary takes the plastic bag—just a trace of ashes circling the bottom remains—and tips it over, the rest spilling out in a streaming ribbon.

It doesn’t feel like an ending. It feels like a middle, continuous and unending, like the crash of these waves. Again and again, they pound against the shore.

“Goodbye, Joe,” Logan says quietly. Dipping her hands into the water, she washes the last of him from her fingers. The final ashes dissolve and float away and are carried out with the tide. Again, and again.

Logan takes a deep breath, and Rosemary watches her lungs expand with air through her tropical shirt. The one with flamingos on it. She wades closer, and when Rosemary kisses her, Logan tastes like tears and sunlight and salt water. Part of Joe will always live in Logan, too. In the way she teaches and touches the lives of her students. In how much she cares. In her fight and in her compassion. Rosemary kisses her as the waves lap around her thighs.

“I love you,” Rosemary whispers against Logan’s wet throat.