Three days later. The funeral home.
Noah knelt at the door. He begged Mara to let him see me one last time. He knocked his head against the cold concrete floor over and over. Blood appeared. He didn't seem to feel it. "Mara, please. Please let me send her off. Just let me see her one last time..."
Mara walked straight past him, holding the urn in her arms. She didn't even look at him. "No need. Elena wanted to see the ocean. I'll take her myself. As for you—she doesn't want to see you."
Noah crumpled to the ground.
Mara left. There was a photo of me on the urn, taken when I was twenty. I was smiling without a care in the world.
Mara kept her promise. She really did take me to see the ocean. She took me to Kunming, too—the city of eternal spring, the city of flowers.
Time passed—a lon
