O joy! That in our embers Is something that doth live, That Nature yet remembers, What was so fugitive.
Reading it, Kirsten wiped a hand across her eyes.
"I remember, too, Max," she said. "I remember."
Behind her, Pete Nimec waited quietly, standing in the shade of the Japanese maples that grew where Blackburn had been laid to rest, his body flown back from Malaysia soon after his identity was confirmed.
Kirsten knelt over the soil that filled the grave, still loose under her fingers.
"Atman and Brahman," she said. "Sometimes, Max, we need illusion to show us the truth in ways we can manage… and though I can't be sure, I sometimes think you didn't understand that, and sold yourself short because you didn't. That you felt guilty about asking me to make difficult choices, and let that guilt get in the way of your opening up to me." She felt moisture on her cheeks. "The thing is, Max, I believe Roger Gordian is right. That you were really showing me the way to my own conscience. To my own heart."
She tasted salt, touched her fingers to her lips, touched the place where Max's name was carved on the gravestone.
"You… what we had… it was Brahman, my sweet love," she whispered. "It was truth."
Kirsten lingered there a moment, her eyes closed as if in prayer or repose.
Then she rose, turned from the grave, and strode slowly to where Pete Nimec was waiting.
"You okay?" he asked softly.
She looked at him, smiled a little.
"I will be," she said.