She brushes her hands over the bottles with the reverence of an artist, caressing them with her wrinkled skin. You always laughed at her as a child, silly Auntie Fay with her carefully dusted collection. As teenagers the cousins all called it the Liquor Museum; she never drank any of it. As far as you know, she still doesn't. And the bottles come from places she's never been: sunny, spicy Mexico, the wind-carved hills of Switzerland, young-old Japan. You all laugh, but after every business trip and honeymoon and vacation you pay her a visit, to deliver that bottle of something-or-other you'd smuggled through customs just for her.

She always expects you, and always has a place ready beside that tall cherry-wood cabinet of hers for your latest acquisition and a pot of your favourite tea whistling on the stove. Once, you asked your mother about that oddity, calling ahead from a static-fuzzed pay phone in Heathrow Airport; the plane had already been delayed three hours. She shrugged and smiled; you could hear it in her voice. Auntie Fay's a bit of a witch, she said, but she's outlived most of her family, husband and children alike, and is entitled to be a little eccentric.

Today you're fresh off the plane from Scotland with a bottle of Lagavullin for her; the 25-year-old amber liquid is glinting in the sunlight from its perch on the grand old dining room table. None of the cousins know why you all buy the best for her, without fail. She never touches the stuff. Somehow it would seem wrong to bring back the five-dollar wines and sampler bottles of brandy.

She turns from her bottles and sits opposite you, watching you sip your tea. You know you look like hell; when Patrick decreed that his ashes be returned to his home country, to the family he left behind, he didn't quite consider his wife's jet lag or pocketbook. His relatives were happy to put up this strange daughter-in-law, but their curious pity kept you awake the night after the funeral, the day after the wake. You took one of the first flights home, bereft of even a spousal corpse.

"How are you holding up, my dear?" she asks in her old-lady voice. She's your great aunt, in fact, but she's always been just Auntie Fay.

You shrug. What's to be expected? You were prepared for this when he went into surgery; the chances of him surviving the cancer were only about fifty percent. It probably just hasn’t hit yet. One day, next week or the week after, you know you’ll wake up bawling your eyes out. "I'm all right, I guess. Just drained."

There's a Billie Holliday record playing in the other room, something Auntie Fay forgot to turn off when you arrived three days ahead of schedule at her door. Still, she was completely prepared; your favourite tea mug, the one with the ducks on it, was freshly filled on the counter. The lady's singing the blues for you between antique static and applause, sliding down the scale as the trumpets wail. Auntie Fay brushes her hand over the new bottle of Scotch and it rattles slightly, spilling puddles of golden summer light all over the polished wood table.

She grasps the neck of the bottle in her arthritic fingers, firmly but gently, and places the other hand under the bottom as if it was a baby. "Would you maybe like something to drink?"

"I've got the tea, thanks, Auntie Fay." You squint at her as she rises and opens the cupboard, small sweater-draped back turned to you. Hopefully she's still well. Your mother took her for tests at the hospital last week, but no news yet. You make a mental note to ask if she's been forgetting things like that lately.

She pauses, turning back to you with the bottle still in hand. "No, no dear. I meant some of this, perhaps. I rarely indulge in spirits, but it seems a shame to waste. Besides, it may do you some good."

You shrug again. You've felt pretty noncommittal about everything since Patrick died. "Are you sure? I didn't think you ever opened any of them."

She sets the bottle down on the table again. "I don't, dear. But I was never one for drinking. Too many...memories."

She bustles off to the kitchen, probably to get a glass, and you pick the bottle up again. Patrick would have loved this; when he was diagnosed he inhaled his home country like a heady breeze, got back to his roots. And he always loved a good Scotch. The bottle seems to whisper to you, the glass warming to your touch. You put it down again, frowning. You've always been a little afraid of becoming an alcoholic; Dad says it's in the family on his side. Best not to tempt fate.

Auntie Fay returns with the glass, one ice cube glinting pale inside. She takes the bottle and caresses the seal like a child before twisting it open with a sharp crack. The smell of bottled time rises into the room, sweet and intoxicating all by itself.

"Now," she says as she pours a measure into the glass. "You shouldn't do this all too often. I used to after your great uncle died, and it put me in a bad way, if you know what I mean."

You raise an eyebrow. Auntie Fay, the legendary teetotaller of the family, an alcoholic? "You drank?"

She shrugs, almost embarrassed, and looks fondly at her bottles. "It wasn't the alcohol I wanted, dear. I only take care of them now." She picks up the glass and hands it to you. "But once, just once probably won't hurt. I remember what it was like to be widowed young."

The word hurts a little, but you take the glass anyways; it's warm despite the bobbing ice cube. You hold it while Auntie Fay caps the bottle again and places it in the cabinet proper, shutting the door carefully. The record skips and segues into another smoky old favourite.

She turns towards you, watching, waiting. Feeling a bit intimidated, you wet your lips with your tongue and take a sip.

The sweet, smooth liquid smells like Patrick, like his skin after making love, back when he still could make love. It tastes like that afternoon in the sunshine at Niagara Falls, back when he proposed, and it's as wet as the waterfall he almost dropped your ring into. You hold it in your mouth for a long moment, as long as you can bear, and then swallow it down inside you, feeling his fingers stroke you up and down your intestines and stomach, feeling the raw burn of his death sear the back of your throat.

You can feel him there inside you, a warmth inside your belly, a soft caress that spreads through your body quicker than light. You can smell him in your nostrils, his aftershave and his shampoo and the musky scent of just him, feel his smile rising in the back of your brain. He's pervading your very essence, absorbing into your cells, skin and muscle and bone. It feels like...it feels like coming home.

You gasp, tears springing to your eyes, and Auntie Fay nods. "Now you know why I don't indulge in spirits anymore."

You take another sip, wanting to kiss the bottle, kiss the small drops of him inside the glass, before his mind rises inside of you and you start to speak in tongues.

The End

Story copyright Leah Bobet, published by the Fortean Bureau
http://www.forteanbureau.com