“There are whole lives here,” she murmured, leaning forward. “Just left behind.” She turned to me suddenly. “Can you imagine that no one at all is left to care for”—she turned, picking up a photo of young girl—“her?”
“Care for?” I asked. It was a photograph.
She shrugged, turning away and putting the picture down. “Appreciate. Remember. Tell stories about.” She turned back toward me as quickly as she’d turned away, holding up a different photo. “I’m going to buy this,” she declared. “What do you think?”
My gaze moved to the picture in her hand, an old black-and-white of an ancient-looking woman with dark hair and pale eyes. “I think it’s the thing horror movies are made of.”
She laughed. It was sweet. She was sweet. Her laugh dwindled. “And no one wants her,” she said softly.
“Because she might snatch their soul in the middle of the night.”
She laughed again. “Stop.” She held the photo up again, her eyes softening as she gazed at the old woman. “Left behind,” she murmured.
“Until now.”
“Until now,” she confirmed.
I raised my chin at the booth’s vendor who came over and accepted my dollar bill for the singular photo.
“Thank you,” Haven breathed, bringing the photo to her chest, grinning up at me, and officially making that dollar the best dollar I’d ever spent in my entire life, even surpassing the one I’d spent on Blueberry the dog.
We started strolling again, down the row of booths. “I’m going to put her up on my dresser and ask her advice,” she said, tilting her head as she studied the old woman.
“This gets creepier by the minute,” I said.
She laughed. “She’d give great advice though, don’t you think?”
“What would she tell you? About me, for instance?”
Haven glanced at me, her expression thoughtful. I realized I was holding my breath and let it out in a slow, quiet exhale. “She says you’re much more than adequate,” she said softly, her cheeks flushing lightly.
“I’ll take it,” I said, giving one nod to the picture. “Thank you, Grandma.” My brows rose in unison. “You do realize, you have me talking to plants and pictures of make-believe grandmas.”
“Promise me you’ll always do it, even when I’m gone. It will be my legacy.”
Even when I’m gone. Even when I’m gone. It echoed. I didn’t like it.
She walked over to a table of odds and ends, perusing them with some amount of disinterest. This booth didn’t offer old photos.
I watched her again, thinking about the night of the Buchanans’ fundraiser. I’d hemmed and hawed about getting her flowers for our “date,” ultimately deciding that cut flowers would wound her somehow. The thought had felt melodramatic at the time, but in that moment, I realized it was not. I’d been right to read her that way. Roots were very, very important to Haven Torres, coveted even. Because she didn’t have any of her own, and whether she realized it or not, she longed for them.
No wonder she loved planting things so much.
Needed it maybe.
Do you fear you’ll be nothing but a forgotten photo someday that everyone left behind? My chest ached, a need rising up to dispel that fear, to take it from her even if it meant suffering myself.
The noise faded, blood whooshing in my ears. She said something to the vendor and he laughed, pointing at various objects.
The world tilted and I reached my hand out blindly, grasping at nothing.
Time slowed, everything fading except for her. She turned her head very slightly, and in my mind’s eye, a dock that overlooked the water appeared beneath her feet, a house with a porch shining in the sunlight, rising above the trees behind her. I swallowed. It was so clear.
The vision crashed over me like a dizzying wave. It was my dock, my house, the picture I’d tried so hard to insert Phoebe into and come up short.
But the image of Haven standing in the spot that was mine, the blue ripples of Pelion Lake fanning out around her, was luminous and blindingly bright. I couldn’t blink it away. And it was wonderful and it was awful, because she didn’t want that with me.
We were friends. With benefits, but still just friends.
She was leaving, just passing through town.
And somehow, none of those things dimmed the picture in my mind.
I wanted to laugh and fall to my knees. It was hilarious. And completely tragic.
She turned toward me, flashing her dazzling smile, those wild curls bouncing around her face. My heart squeezed and then dipped, then soared, and seemed to bounce off the walls of my chest. My brain felt funny too, both cloudy and clanging. Maybe I didn’t picture a future with Haven so much as I was suffering from a cerebral hemorrhage. Perhaps apoplexy was imminent.
I waited to keel over.
No such luck.
She smiled again and my heart did the same dip and soar, the same vision blossoming, brighter than before, dispelling the mist that had begun to creep around the edges of my mind. Oh God. No.
I stared, feeling almost…baffled. How did this happen? I didn’t ask for this.
She tilted her head, concern filling her face, and the world rushed back in an onslaught of sound and light. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yes.” I let out a long, slow breath, picking up a trinket from the table and pretending to study it intently.
“You seem very interested in that.”
“Hmm,” I hummed, attempting to get my heart rate under control. I felt sweaty and mildly ill. “Yes. I…collect them,” I said, bringing it closer. I couldn’t look at her. Not right then. Not yet.
“It’s a thimble,” she said. “With the picture of a…donkey on it. It’s a donkey thimble.”
The thing came into focus. I didn’t even know what a thimble was but it appeared to be a miniature, upside-down cup. And yes, with the picture of a donkey on it.
It wasn’t even a very attractive donkey.
Frankly, it was downright ugly.
Haven took it gently from my fingers. “I’ll take this,” she said to the booth vendor, handing him the fifty cents he quoted her and holding the thimble out to me again. “My gift to you.”
I swallowed, taking the thimble and putting it in my pocket. “Thank you,” I said, finally meeting her eyes.
She gave me a searching look. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Well, I’d live. Apparently. I nodded. Yes. No. I don’t know.
What I did know—suddenly and unmistakably—was that she was capable of shattering my heart. And if she was going to, all I could do was let her.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Travis
I’d eventually reclaimed my equilibrium, and we’d spent the remainder of the antique fair sampling snacks from the food trucks on the outer perimeter and digging through what might be treasure or junk depending on the individual.
It was the best day of my life.
And the worst.
I was still mildly shaken, even sitting in my room after having returned hours before. We hadn’t made any plans and though I longed to go to her, I kind of wanted to wallow too.
There was this distant feeling of happy satisfaction, combined with confusion and discombobulation, similar to the way I’d felt the morning after I’d gotten really drunk at the annual Cinco de Mayo taco-and-tequila crawl on Main Street. I’d thrown my back out doing the limbo at the lakeshore and passed out in the sun.