The Gathering to mark the first anniversary of Kelly’s death brings Ava and Kelly’s family together at MacGreggor Park to remember Kelly through stories rather than only through the fact of her death. Recalled by Ava on a later walk past the park, the gathering holds grief and celebration together, while Lincoln’s embrace reveals the unsettled bond that survives between him and Ava.

Background and Setting

Six months after Kelly’s death, Ava feels time has slowed with her loss and believes that other people are already impatient with her grief. She cannot imagine simply getting over what happened. That sense of suspended time gives the anniversary gathering particular weight: it arrives not as proof that sorrow has ended, but as a day on which Ava and Kelly’s family can speak about Kelly together.

The gathering takes place beneath the rotunda in the park, a spot Ava passes again on her way home months later. She remembers standing there with Kelly’s family, telling stories about Kelly’s unconventional antics. The setting becomes a point of return in Ava’s everyday route, linking the shared remembrance to the life she continues to live afterward.

The Gathering

Ava and Kelly’s family remember Kelly aloud, laughing at the things she used to do and crying happy tears. The two responses are not treated as opposites: laughter belongs to the stories being shared, while tears accompany the affection and loss those stories carry. Their meeting is described as a celebration of Kelly’s life, giving the anniversary a communal form rather than making it solely an occasion of private mourning.

The gathering also lets Ava encounter memories as something that can be shared. Earlier, she had been turning over details of Kelly’s life and trying to understand the pain behind her death. At the rotunda, remembrance includes the vivid, funny person her family and friend knew; Kelly is not reduced to the circumstances of her absence.

Ava and Lincoln

As Ava and her father walk toward Kelly’s family, Lincoln comes over and hugs her so tightly that her feet lift off the ground. Ava experiences the embrace as awkward, normal, and different all at once. Its mixture of familiarity and strangeness reflects the complicated connection between them: their history is present, but the hug does not resolve it into an uncomplicated friendship or erase what has happened between them.

In the months after the gathering, Ava and Lincoln do not talk much. They occasionally exchange texts, usually when he sends a stupid joke and she replies. Ava understands their bond as something that does not fit neatly into either friendship or family. She does not regret their past involvement, but neither is she proud of it; by the time she recalls the anniversary, she can regard it as part of their complicated relationship without pretending it was simple.

Meaning and Aftermath

On the later walk past the rotunda, Ava notices that she feels calm, though sadness, hurt, anger, confusion, grief, and love remain. Her regular therapy with Nola has helped her understand that there is no single correct way to feel, and that choices made under the force of those feelings can have consequences. The anniversary gathering is one part of that continuing process, not a final turning point that leaves grief behind.

Ava continues to resist the idea that love for Kelly can be left behind. Instead, she distinguishes moving forward from moving on: Kelly’s death will continue to shape her, but Ava believes she owes it to Kelly to keep living. In that light, the gathering’s laughter and happy tears do not signal forgetting. They show how remembrance can make room for the life Kelly shared with others, even as Ava carries her loss into what comes next.