The Last Call

The iphone sat between us on the café table like a small black monument to everything we'd lost. Maya hadn't touched her coffee in twenty minutes. Outside, autumn rain streaked the windowpane, blurring the world beyond our small booth.

"I'm sorry about your mother," she said, finally breaking the silence.

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. My mother had died two weeks ago, and the grief sat in my chest like something alive, something breathing and waiting. Maya had been her best friend for thirty years. Now she sat across from me, a stranger wearing familiar features.

"She left you something," Maya said, sliding a small velvet box across the table. Inside lay a silver fox brooch, its ruby eyes catching the dim light. "Your grandmother's. She wanted you to have it."

I remembered my mother wearing it to my college graduation, how the fox's silver tail had caught the sun as she embraced me, proud and beaming. That version of her felt like a different lifetime now.

"I can't believe she's gone," I whispered.

Maya reached across the table, her hand covering mine. "I know. But you don't have to bear this alone. That's what she told me, you know. When she was dying, she made me promise. She said, 'Maya, look after her. She doesn't let people in, but she needs someone.'"

My iphone vibrated with another work email, but I ignored it. For the first time in years, I didn't care about the urgent demands, the endless expectations.

"I haven't been the best friend," I admitted. "I've been distant."

"We've both been busy," Maya said. "Life happens. But she loved you. Even when you were impossible, even when you disappeared for months, she never stopped believing you'd come back around."

Tears spilled over, hot and sudden. I hadn't cried since the funeral, hadn't let myself. But here, in this quiet café with rain drumming against the glass and my mother's oldest friend holding my hand, the dam finally broke.

"Stay," I said when I could speak again. "Please. Just for a while."

Maya smiled, and for the first time that morning, the fox's ruby eyes didn't seem so sorrowful. "I'm not going anywhere."