Maren Cross ran a transparency nonprofit • She built her life on the principle that everything should be seen • Now everyone on Earth is slowly becoming invisible and blind—they call it the Fading—and Maren is fading faster than most • She is finally coming to grips with her fate…
NADIA CROSS CAME HOME at six the next evening. Later than she had in months. Maren heard the door…the backpack dropping by the hook…the shoes.
“Hey,” Nadia said.
“Hey.” The word came out soft.
“Did you eat?” Nadia asked.
“Not yet.”
Nadia went to the kitchen. Maren heard cabinets opening, the faucet, a pan on the stove. The rhythm of dinner being made. It was six and—like clockwork—that was when dinner happened.
After a while the apartment smelled like garlic and oil and something Maren wasn’t familiar enough with to identify.
They ate at the table. Just mother and daughter. Nadia told Maren about a substitute teacher who’d mispronounced everyone’s name. Maren asked which class. Nadia said history. The conversation was simple. And ordinary. Neither of them treated it as anything else.
The home-cooked meal was excellent, as always.
Their time together was even better.
When they finished, Nadia washed the dishes, the pots, the pans. Maren offered to help, but Nadia insisted. “Next time,” she said and—as Maren heard the water and sponge work—she told her daughter she would hold her to that.
LATER, THEY WERE ON THE COUCH.
Maren didn’t recall deciding to sit there. She’d been standing in the kitchen; then she was on the couch. Nadia at the other end, with the television on but neither of them paying attention to it.
Maren could tell the room was getting dark. Nobody reached for the lamp.
The television glowed. In its light, Maren’s hands were barely there.
She could feel Nadia at the other end of the couch. The cushion held her weight. The couch shifted ever so slightly when she moved.
Then Nadia moved closer.
Not all the way.
A pause, the length of a breath.
Then she laid her head on Maren’s shoulder.
The weight of it. Maren felt the relaxed weight of her daughter’s head on her shoulder.
Nadia’s hair lying gently against her mother’s neck. A scent Maren knew from Nadia’s youth. When she was born. When she was 1. From toddler to teen, still the same.
The warmth. Her daughter calmly letting her weight fall where it wanted. Not leaning. Not thinking. Just being.
Maren didn’t say anything.
She sat with Nadia resting against her, the dark room around them, the television talking to no one.
Maren leaned her head against Nadia’s.
In the faraway kitchen, the faucet dripped.
Nadia breathed...
Maren breathed...
Together...
…they simply…
...stayed.
PRINT VERSION releases Sept on Amazon
COMING SOON a two-part Alt History tale
