Goodbye Earl(110)

“I did not run away from you and I love you too! You know how much I love you!”

“Do I?”

“Yes! You do!”

“Enough to marry me?”

“Yes!” Kasey said. Yes. She loved Devon enough to marry him. That was the plan.

*



Devon had shown up on the farmhouse porch and they’d talked and kissed and had sex in Kasey’s old bedroom. After she told Devon the full, truthful history of the house and why it was so hard for her to come back, he chilled out. After she talked some more about what had happened to Caro and told him that she and Rosemarie and Ada were trying to help her get out of her marriage, he chilled out even more. But when she couldn’t tell him exactly when she’d be coming back to New York, he got upset and confused, and nothing she said could make him feel better.

Kasey explained to him that her friends were really busy, and Caro was still in the hospital and everything was weird. She and Devon had gone for one walk through the town square, and Kasey showed him the diner and Plum everything and Goldie High and her other high school haunts. She distracted him when he got too close to the copies of the Goldie Gazette in the newspaper box so he wouldn’t see Trey’s face splashed on the front page. She didn’t want Devon asking questions; she didn’t want to talk to him about it yet. Instead, they went to the dog park and peeked at the puppies. They got japchae and triangle kimbap from Korean Gold and ate on the back porch of the farmhouse, looking out at the water. Having Devon in Goldie was jarring, but no more jarring than killing your best friend’s husband or finding out that your other best friend was dying of cancer.

And fast-forwarded: definitely not more jarring than the Goldie police deciding that the coroner’s report was complete, the murder investigation was closed, and no crime had been committed. Trey Foxberry had drowned, plain and simple, and RACK had been so overjoyed about it they were speechless. They’d gathered at Leo’s and sat in silence, holding hands while Leo softly played George Harrison on the guitar and Esme made holy basil tea in the kitchen.

Before Kasey knew that relief, she and Devon had talked and eaten and reconnected in that bed in her old bedroom a lot. It’d only been a couple of weeks, but she missed his kisses and tried her best not to think about the Silas kisses on the couch. She missed sex with Devon and eating with Devon and laughing with Devon, but she also asked Devon to please go back to New York so she could figure Goldie out on her own, and he agreed to that.



“I’m going to my mom’s grave today. I’ve never been,” Kasey said to Devon on the phone after they’d talked some more.

“Will you call me later?”

“I will. I promise,” she said.

*



Kasey went to Roy’s grave first. It wasn’t right next to her mom’s, but it was too close and she hated that, but also, anywhere on the planet would’ve been too close.

Kasey hated spit—even the word saliva grossed her out—but she spit on Roy’s grave because she’d been wanting to do it since she was in high school, and it was one thing she could do now as an adult that she couldn’t make happen when she was a kid.

Her mom was closer to her dad’s grave, where she belonged. She walked over to her dad’s and sat there for a bit, looking at his name. Isaiah William Fritz. She got up and sat in front of her mom’s headstone and cried. Grandma Mimi and Duke had helped her pick out the headstone, and Duke had paid for it, promising Kasey he would take care of everything. When she’d gone to Duke and Cherry’s for pie, Duke had let her know he kept an eye on Angie’s grave and made sure it always looked as pretty as possible.

And it did look pretty.

The grass was cut short, but there were some pokes of violets and clovers and a tight bunch of wildflowers growing up behind it. When Kasey got up the courage, she touched the ANGELINA JOSEPHINE FRITZ carved into the stone. She was wearing a crescent moon necklace she’d brought with her to town but hadn’t put on until that morning. She pulled another like it out of her bag and draped it over the headstone. She got a jingle bell necklace out of her bag too and put it there with the enamel snack food pins she’d ordered. She lined them up in a neat row on top of the stone—a tiny MoonPie and a tiny Twinkie. A little pickle and a translucent glass strawberry that caught the sunlight. She kissed the headstone and told her mama she loved her. She left flowers in the grass—red roses for Rosemarie, pink ones for Ada, sunflowers for Caroline, white peonies for herself.

She went back to her dad’s grave and left him the third moon necklace she’d brought with her, kissed his headstone too. Kasey wasn’t a cemetery person and neither was her mom when she was alive, but being there brought Kasey an unexpected peace in the middle of the raging storm of emotions inside of her.

Moonshadow.

Kasey imagined both of her parents looking down on her, knowing what she’d done for Caroline, knowing what she wished she could’ve done for her mom, and she didn’t feel condemned. She sat there for a long time, waiting for it, but it never came.

*



On the way home from the cemetery, she called Devon and told him about the moon necklaces and attempted to soothe him as much as she could, promising she’d talk again soon. When she spotted Paula Foxberry on her phone in front of the courthouse, Kasey walked right up to her.