She warmed her hands at a fire that seemed lonely without Tom Kindle. She hadn’t wanted him to go. But things change whether you want them to or not.
“Things change,” she said, needing to communicate the thought but daunted by the lonely sound the words made on this vacant plain. Wasn’t that what everyone was afraid of? Things change. The past drifts off until it’s irrecoverable and strange. And the future is a mystery. And nothing stands still. Not for us, not for those people in the sky. Nothing is solid. Not even trees or mountains or planets or stars. Look long enough and they all boil away, boil away. She had seen it as long ago as Contact. She had seen it in her mind’s eye. “It’s a dance,” she said. You can’t cling to what you love because it’s all a dance, love and friendship and men and molecules, all dancing in a brief light.
She looked helplessly at Matt. Did he understand?
But he seemed to. She thought perhaps he had known it all along.
She looked east, where the stars were rising in a dark sky. “It’s been getting greener as we go,” Beth said. “And warmer.”
These nights weren’t as cold as they had been. Matt said, “Maybe it’ll be a gentle summer.”
Gentler in Ohio? Greener, warmer?
“I think so,” Matt said.
“I would like that,” Beth said, wanting to cry for no particular reason. “I think that would be good.”