Try to cut back at least, my mother would beg.
I will. I will.
Did someone stand smoking over my brother’s grave?
Robin would say, Look at the ground. It will tell you everything you need to know.
I search the ground around me. But whatever story it might have to tell eludes me. It’s so deserted here. Hard to imagine it any other way. I’m one of a very few left to mourn my brother and my mother, to miss them, to visit.
The last grave is the one I dread the most. Robin, just fifteen.
There’s an angel engraved on her headstone, the only flourish among the three stones. Otherwise, they’re simple—just names and dates, simple type, clean black borders. Nothing else, no words about who they were to whom. A simple stone remains the only marker of a life.
I clean up as best I can without tools, pull some weeds. Lichen has made its home in the nooks and crannies of the headstones.
When I’m done, I place orchids at each site. They’re wilting, already preparing to return to the earth.
When I’m done, I’m left with a familiar hollow feeling.
There’s a pointlessness to this errand. It’s a superficial, going-through-the-motions activity that doesn’t make me feel any closer to them. Their remains might be here but I don’t believe that their spirits are, floating above, watching. I can’t bring myself to speak—to tell them about my life, catalog all the ways I miss them, how I regret a thousand things that can’t be undone. Instead, I just stay on my knees, feeling the cold and wet soak through the fabric of my jeans as the sky grows slowly darker. Someone looking at me from a distance might think I was praying. I’m not.
A harsh, startling call carries over the air and I look up, heart jumping, to see a shiny black crow on the tilting fence. He’s huge, must be more than a foot tall, chest wide, great black claws gripping the fence.
Caw! Caw! he says. He watches me with his timeless beady black eyes. Time to go.
I rise.
“Get lost.” I don’t like crows. I move closer to him, trying to menace him into flight, but he holds his ground, unafraid. A bit cheeky, it must be said, staring boldly, offering a wing flap to show who’s boss. Some cultures see the crow as the symbol of death. Some say he carries the soul to the afterlife. Others still see the crow as a symbol of transformation. When he shows up in your life, get ready for change.
Caw! Caw! Caw! I imagine that he’s laughing at me, feel an irrational wash of anger.
That’s when I catch sight of something. A shift in the shadows between the trees that line the edge of the property.
There’s someone there. Tall. Broad. He’s watching me, takes a step forward.
“Hey,” I yell.
I should run the other way, back to the safety of my car. But I don’t; that’s not me. Instead, I move closer.
“Hey!”
Is it you, Adam? Are you following me?
A pair of headlights cut the gloaming, startling us both. A car moves slowly up the winding road in my direction. When I turn back, the shadow shifts and disappears.
Again, another moment when I should retreat, back to my car to get away from the person in the woods, whoever it is in the car winding up the drive. Instead, I follow the shadow in a run, crossing the clearing, and push through the trees and step into the dark of the forest as the white sun dips below the horizon.
twenty-three
In the game of chase, Robin always won, and I was always left breathless with a stitch in my side, calling after her, hearing the sound of her laughter growing fainter and fainter.
Wait, I’d breathe, the word disappearing into the oak and elm, the humid air.
“Wait!” I call now, my voice loud, sharp in the trees. “Stop!”
Adrenaline is rocket fuel. My heart is an engine.
He’s heavy and loud, running far ahead of me. I’m in decent shape; a fair runner these days. The Jax influence. I’m not like her; I can’t lose myself in the exertion of my body, a super miler who doesn’t ever seem to need to stop or rest. She buries me—in a sprint, over distance. Jax is a machine. But the result of our friendship is that I can run harder and faster than I ever thought possible.
I dig in deep—heedless of how far we’ve come, how I’ll get back when I’ve burned all my energy. I’m closing the distance, not asking the important question of who am I chasing—or why.
I stumble; my right knee hits the ground hard. But I get back up. Branches whip at my face. Just like my recurring nightmares, the memories I can’t release. I’ve been here before. I’ve never stopped being here.