“Are you sure about this?” Ashley asked.
“No.” Logan bit her lip. “But I don’t know what else to do.”
They went to work. There was a strange hum on the wind, low and quiet like at the cabin, but now it was everywhere. The earth in Pioneer Cemetery was drier than the soil on top of the hill. It was caked together and hardened like brick. The hillside echoed with roiling thunder and the clang of metal against stone, but slowly, they made progress. Eventually, a layer of the dusty earth fell away, revealing a small wooden box in the grave. It took a moment for the strange object to register—Ashley had expected to find bones or nothing at all. The box wasn’t big enough or buried deep enough to be a casket.
Logan didn’t hesitate. The rain graduated from droplets to thick splatters of warm water bursting over the grave, swirling the dirt into a paste. Logan plucked the wooden box from the grave and pulled open the lid. Inside was a folded piece of paper.
Logan looked at Ashley. Ashley looked back. A truck whirred past on the highway behind them and Ashley was suddenly reminded that there was a world beyond this moment. She held her hands over Logan’s piece of paper to protect it from the rain.
“There’s writing on it,” Logan said.
“Can you read it?”
Logan’s hands shook but she nodded. She brushed dirt from the paper, crumpling its edges in her grip. “It’s … to me.”
She scanned the paper again and again, and each time her tear-rimmed eyes widened. She exhaled and pressed her wrist to her eyes. The damp wind through the cemetery was colder than it had any right to be. Whatever was on the paper, it was unspooling Logan from the inside.
“I don’t get it…” she breathed.
Tenderly, she handed the paper to Ashley. The writing was brief, scrawled as if it’d been written quickly. It read:
Logan,
I tried everything. I tried to live quietly, but that was too loud. I tried to raise a family right, but I lost it. I tried to live without you, but I couldn’t. I tried to save you, but I lost myself. Maybe this was all a mistake and things won’t ever be the same.
I’m happy I got to see you again.
Love,
B
Ashley shook her head. She read it over again but the words swam without meaning. She turned the paper over but the other side was blank, dotted with bits of dirt and rain. There was nothing else in the box, nothing else in the grave, nothing else at all.
“What does it mean?” Ashley asked.
Logan snatched the letter back and read it again.
“It’s from Brandon.” Logan took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “I think this grave was mine.”
30
Game Over
Elexis Carrillo was lonelier than he’d ever been.
It’d been a month since Nick’s funeral. A month since Logan dropped off the face of the earth. A month since his nana started acting like going outside was suicide. It’d been a month since his world was flipped upside down and shaken until all the good fell from its pockets.
“It stinks in here, Nana,” Elexis said. He shut off his PS4 and leaned across the doorway into Gracia’s room. “I’m gonna take out the trash.”
Gracia spun her recliner away from the TV screen and fixed him with one of her looks. She narrowed her eyes and the wrinkles at the corners bunched up like a thousand tiny frowns. Her room reeked of cigarette smoke and honey-lemon cough drops. “We took out the garbage yesterday. It doesn’t stink so bad.”
“It does in my room,” Elexis groaned. “And I want some fresh air.”