Chapter: Echoes in the Park

"Do you want to walk for a bit?" Marcos asked as we stepped out of the library.

I nodded without thinking too much. The fresh air would do me good. We walked in silence for a few blocks, without any clear direction. Until, without meaning to, we ended up in that park. That park.

My steps froze the moment I recognized the path. The tall trees, the fountain in the center, the benches painted white. Everything looked the same. Even the bench Tom and I used to sit on, halfway down the path, beneath a huge tree that always shed leaves—even when it wasn't autumn.

Marcos noticed. He glanced at me, with the cautious look of someone who already knows what the place means.

"Did you use to come here with him?" he asked softly.

I nodded.

"Yes. This was... our escape. We'd come to talk, or say nothing at all. Sometimes we just sat and listened to the city. Tom used to say this park had the best silence in the world."

Marcos smiled faintly.

"He brought me here once. He didn't say why it was special. Just said he needed to sit in silence with someone who understood."

We sat on the bench. The same bench. The breeze stirred the leaves, and the world seemed to pause.

"It's strange," I said after a while, "being here with you. Knowing that we both knew him, loved him, in our own way."

"It's not strange," he said. "It's like he brought us together without us knowing it."

I looked down at my hands resting on my lap. I was feeling so many things at once—nostalgia, gratitude, a bit of peace.

"You know," I said, "sometimes I'm scared I'll stop missing him. Like that would be betraying him."

"I've felt that too," Marcos replied, gazing up at the sky. "But I think remembering without pain is also a kind of love."

We stayed there for a while longer. No more words. Just sharing the silence.

The best silence in the world.