"Huh?" Maria shook herself out of her reverie and turned to her best friend. "Oh, yeah, I'm fine. I was just remembering the day I found this," she said, pointing to the picture.

Liz nodded and grasped Maria's hand. "I remember that day."

"A hard one to forget," she responded, looking back at the yearbook. "Do you remember this day?"

Liz ran a finger over the picture, shaking her head. "No, I don't. I wish I did."

"Me too."

They hadn't known the picture was being taken, which probably made it all the better. The six of them, together, on a rare day of peace and normality. Alex had his guitar out, his eyes closed and his lips pursed over-dramatically as if singing with great emotion, with Isabel sitting next to him, wearing a smile that was about to turn into laughter. Max and Liz were seated next to each other with books in their laps, Liz describing something to Max, one hand raised in the air as if to draw a picture and the other one captured in his. And Michael sitting against a tree, staring out into nothingness, Maria's head in his lap, his fingers running through her hair, both wearing quiet smiles.

Maria unclipped her hair and ran a hand through it, closing her eyes. Sometimes she could almost remember the way his hands felt, the way his fingers touched. Always almost, always not quite. Never the same.

"He loved you so much."

Maria's eyes snapped open and locked on Liz's, then looked away.

"He did. He used to watch you when you weren't looking. It seemed like his eyes were going to burn right through you, like he had so much passion for you he could barely hold it back. Even when you weren't together, it was still there. It always amazed me. It was like he burned for you or something, like he had been looking for something for his entire life, and had finally found it -- you."

"She's right." Alex said, shaking water from his hair and shrugging his windbreaker off, kicking the apartment door shut behind him. "It's raining cats and dogs out there, as my mother would say. Anyway, Maria, Liz is right. Michael loved you, Max loved Liz, and Isabel loved me. And now we're sad loveless sacks left to rot in misery as we attempt, but fail, to move on with our lives. Did I miss anything?"

"Alex, how dare you trod on the beauty of our Kodak moment?"

"Ha-ha, DeLuca. Anyway, let the emotional upheaval begin. Or, let me guess, you started without me?"

"Sorry, Alex. Tried to wait, but it's hard to schedule emotional breakdowns," Maria responded.

"Okay, I'll forgive you. This time," he said, shaking a finger at them, and then came to kneel in front of the pair. "Seriously, though. How are you guys doing? You okay?"

Maria and Liz glanced at each other before Maria spoke. "We're all right. Had a couple sob fests, but trust me, there'll be more. You didn't miss much. We're okay."

Alex nodded, satisfied. "Good. I'm sorry I wasn't here before. I woke up and just had to get out of the house, felt like I was suffocating. Anyway, I saw a lot of the city." His voice carried a forced light-heartedness with the last comment. He paused, and continued, subdued again. "It's funny, I still find myself marking things for Isabel. It's not like before, you know, when it first happened, when I'd forget she was gone. I'd see something great and think, "Man, I've gotta tell Izzy about that when I get home only to realize that I couldn't. I still see things, though, and want to show her. Like today I saw this absolutely beautiful painting, and I just wished she was there to look at it with me." His eyes were distant, lost, and his face looked tired. Maria wondered if he had slept at all.

"A lot of times at school I'll wish Max was there with me. And not just because I want him there to be with me, to talk with, though I do wish for that every moment of every day. A lot of times it's just because I'll look around and think of all that Max could have done, all that he could have been. He was so brilliant, he could have changed the world -- cured cancer, or ALS. He could have done so much," Liz said, shaking her head in anger.

"Max probably would have changed the world," Maria said. "Just like you're going to, Liz. Michael, though . . . who knows what Michael would've done. Would he have ended up in the state penitentiary?" She asked, raising one hand palm up, and then raising the other, continued, "Or in the state Senate? I guess that's what really bothers me. It would've been nice to find out, you know? To find out along with him."

There was a long silence as the three friends lost themselves in their thoughts. After a few minutes, Alex spoke up. "Well, I'd like to introspect some more, but I'm ravenous."

"That's something we can fix," Liz said with a wan smile, hauling herself up off the couch and into the kitchen, her two friends on her heels.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She had first visited the cemetery alone, she remembered, on a Tuesday. The names had been placed alongside each other, which satisfied her -- Michael belonged with them. Jim and Diane Evans had bought the two spots under the name Evans years before, expecting it to be for them, but instead found themselves using them for the names of their two children. There was something simply and powerfully wrong with that -- her mother had said that over and over when she first heard the news. No parent should have to bury a child.

The third name, she remembered, had also been paid for by the Evanses. Otherwise no one knew where Michael would have ended up; ever since the incident with his last foster father, he had belonged to no one in name.

The headstone, she remembered, was white marble. The names stood out in stark contrast, bold black letters on the pale surface, cutting into the stone. Maxwell Evans. Isabel Evans. Michael Guerin.

The finality of it, she remembered, had been terrifying.

The ground, she remembered, had been undisturbed. The grass still lay flat, no mounds of dirt marred its evenness. For, truth be told, there was very little to be buried after the accident. Ashes and dust and little more. The logical part of her mind had tried to tell her that it was probably the best way, since it left no evidence of The Truth they had hidden for so long. They had been cremated, their dust scattered over the desert that they had emerged from all those years before. All trace of them gone.

She had wondered, she remembered, why she had been drawn to the cemetery. But something had drawn her there. Perhaps it was the need to see the finality of the names etched on the stone. Perhaps it was simply the need to be somewhere quiet and alone.

Regardless, she remembered, she had found herself there on a warm early-May day, a day of clear blue skies and gentle breezes. A beautiful day.

She had sat, she remembered, Indian-style before the stone, her hand tracing out the letters in his name, tears running unchecked down her cheeks. Not caring. His name. Where had he gotten his name? He didn't even know, truth be told. No family bestowed it on him, as the Evanses had on Isabel and Max, but instead a harried Social Services worker tired of scrambling for ways to refer to him. No thought given, no care.

No nicknames, she remembered, never any nicknames. Always Michael. Never Mike. Never with a family kind enough or long enough for a loving nickname to be bestowed. And never able to get close enough to people to have it shortened. Maxwell was Max, Isabel became Izzy when relaxed, Alexander would never answer to anything but Alex, Elizabeth always insisted on Liz, and even she of the short name was almost always called 'DeLuca' by Alex instead of Maria. Michael never got a nickname.

Hank, she remembered, had called him Mickey on occasion, but never out of affection or kindness. Instead, sarcasm and disdain. Not fun and laughs, instead pain and anger. Not support, instead ridicule. Not safety but danger.

She cried, she remembered, for a long time. For her love that had lived a life so full of darkness and so empty of light. Who had had a life ended before it could discover that life could, and should, exist the other way around -- light instead of darkness, happiness instead of sorrow, contentedness instead of fear.