“I’ll take the one that looks like Madame Leota,” I replied, pointing to one of the older ones that had at least a century of dirt caked on it. Those were more delicate work. I liked that kind of work. The meticulousness of it.
Carver, Nicki, and I grabbed the scrapers out of the bucket, sudsed our sponges, and went to work. I took the scraper and scraped off all of the grime and moss, and soaked it down with the pressure sprayer. After a while, when I’d finally gotten back into the groove, I’d cleaned it well enough to make out the delicate insets of the face’s eyes.
“Remember when you and Alice were playing tag and accidentally broke a headstone and Dad had to glue it back together with Gorilla Glue?” Carver asked, wiping his forehead with the back of his arm.
I laughed at the memory. “Dad was beside himself.”
“You could barely tell it was broken. I was more worried about your head. You cracked it good against the headstone.”
“Alice was so worried,” I mused, scrubbing at the name and dates. Elizabeth Fowl. “She stayed up all night in my room to make sure I didn’t die or something. She was always like that. Looking after me.”
“She picked fights for you in high school,” Carver added. “Remember when that girl, Heather, tried to cyberbully you, and Al confronted her in the courtyard?”
“Well, I do now,” I replied wryly. I hadn’t thought about Heather in a long, long time.
“She punched Heather so hard that she ended up getting a nose job.”
“I thought Alice was for sure going to get suspended for that,” I laughed.
Alice had always been like that. Quick to come to my rescue, quicker to throw a punch. I never liked confrontation, but Alice loved me, and she hated seeing me bullied. We’d been inseparable for years, but then I left the first chance I got. I didn’t stay.
And that was something I just didn’t know how to talk about with her.
“I kind of feel sorry for this Heather girl,” Nicki mused.
“Don’t be, babe, she’s doing quite well,” Carver said dismissively. “Still in town, too.”
“Hope I don’t run into her,” I said, and sat back on the grass as Carver stood, taking the pressure sprayer, and washed down both his stones and mine. They looked a good century younger. “I would have to eventually if I moved back here.”
Carver gave me a sidelong look. “You’re thinking about it?”
“I mean—I do miss everyone,” I admitted.
New York was a great place to live if you had roots there. If you were part of it. But some people weren’t born for steel jungles and the fast-paced lifestyle and—let’s face it—the cost of living. I used to love that I blended in with the crowd, that I was another face among faces, another writer chasing their dreams in the neighborhood coffee shop. But the longer I lived there, the more gum littered the sidewalk and rust crept in.
I didn’t imagine being there forever, but I didn’t know where I wanted to go, or what felt like home. Nowhere really did, if I was honest with myself. Dad always said it was never about the place, but the people you shared it with. In New York, I had Rose—and for a while I had Lee, and for a while it felt like I finally had found home.
Somewhere permanent. Somewhere safe.
Then, in the blink of an eye, I was on the sidewalk with my suitcase in the rain, and Lee was closing the door.
And despite what I told him, if Lee had come to me, asking for a second chance, begging to try again—
I would’ve said yes.
But I wasn’t sure why anymore.
A quiet wind whispered through the dogwood trees. I’d gotten so used to cars and construction and the sounds of people living so close together, I forgot what true silence sounded like. It wasn’t silence at all, but a soft sigh between the gravestones. The steady creak of an old and endless house.