“I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like silence, listening
To silence.”
Thomas Hood Ode: Autumn
Tracey walked slowly down the sidewalk on the outskirts of the Boston Common. The sky was leaden gray, the wind sharply tearing at her jacket, seeming intent on seeking the warmth of her body under the thick cotton weave of the trench coat. November in New England. Not quite winter, but close enough by anyone's standards.
The last of the leaves hung tenaciously to the branches which had brought them into being in Spring and sheltered them all through the exhausting heat of Summer. Autumn had come and their numbers had grown thin, as one by one they turned their coats, blazing with an inner fire of red, orange, and gold. Releasing their grasp on this world, they floated in splendid glory to the hard earth.
The fallen numbered in the thousands, scattered at her feet as she strolled without direction, the rustle and crunch beneath her boots the only sound save the intermittent noise of traffic along Beacon Street. An occasional jogger would steam past her, breath a cloud of frost in the air, but no one interrupted her thoughts.
She had come to Boston for a conference, one of those endlessly boring legal functions that left her mind numb and starved for oxygen. She had hoped that Kelly would be able to join her on the trip, but what with new cases, a backlog of old ones, and the perpetual understaffing of the D.A.'s office, it hadn't been possible for both of them to leave.
After the last two-hour long love fest between one attorney and the sound of his own voice, she had gotten out of there, stopping in her room only long enough to grab a coat. She needed air. She needed to not listen, not talk, to simply be. The gunmetal gray of the sky left the afternoon darker than she had imagined, but it suited her mood.
Tracey turned right on Park, walking along the fairly deserted sidewalk toward Tremont St. She paused outside the Park Street Church. On the chill November wind, she could almost hear that booming voice crying for freedom for all men, its echoes carried away from her on the brisk autumn breeze of the past.
The white stones of the burying grounds peeked out from between mounds of leaves. A warm blanket of reds, oranges, and golds, tossed with distracted care, lay over the graves. The land seemed to reach up and draw the blanket close, clutching the fragile fabric tightly, the fire of red, the smoldering glow of gold and orange promising warmth to sustain the slumbering earth through the long New England winter yet to come.
Her mind began to meander down dark roads, filled with the pain and the suffering she witnessed every day, the parents who abused their child, the husband who stabbed his wife, the daughter who killed for drug money. All eventually lay beneath graves just like these. Lives too short, full of too much misery and too little hope.
The crisp chill of the air sent a shiver up Tracey's spine, and suddenly she longed to have Kelly here beside her, the warmth of her arm linked through Tracey's own. The yearning for her was so intense that it knocked the breath from her, a solid blow, like falling from her bike as a child and feeling the air rush from her lungs in one harsh gasp. The melancholy of the covered graves and the stark outline of the maples, their branches bare and skeletal against the sky, settled over her.
She needed to go home. Now. Forget that the conference was not over for another two days. Forget that she had promised to have dinner with some colleagues tomorrow night. She just needed to leave, to get on the train and ride through the still northern landscape, the lights of small towns and big cities streaming by the windows like moonlight on black water. She needed to open the door of her apartment and see those tranquil blue eyes, and then, only then, would the world be right again.
Turning away from the Granary, she walked briskly up Tremont toward her hotel, and her luggage, and the train ticket that would take her home. Home to busy, overcrowded, rude city streets, void of color and the crackle of leaves. Home to Kelly.