Sure, there were photos, but they didn’t do him justice.
Luke is holding two to-go cups of coffee, but instead of coming in, he stands on the porch.
“Let’s go,” he says.
“Where?”
“You’ll see.”
Quickly, I run and tell Mom that we’re going to the mall—hey, it could be true—then grab my jacket, cell, and wallet. I return to find Luke gazing out toward the street. He hears my footsteps and turns to face me, eyes bright and beautiful.
“Ready?”
“Yep,” I say, bounding out of the house and taking the coffee from his outstretched hand. He kisses me lightly on the cheek and whispers, “Did you get my note?”
“Yes,” I say, and it comes out more intimate than I meant, but it feels just fine.
“Good,” he says, in a way that makes me squirm. We walk to the van, buckle up, and pull out of the driveway, headed to who knows where.
And, honestly, I don’t care.
Coffee in hand, highway before me, gorgeous boyfriend to my left, this day is bound to be good.
33
Eight hours later, under the setting sun, I’m standing at the cemetery entrance wondering how it came to this. The chill shooting down my spine makes me rethink my decision to head in alone. I gesture to Luke in the van, and he quickly kills the engine and appears at my side.
I grab his hand and it gives me the will to move.
The scene before me reminds me too much of the funeral in my notes and emblazoned in my brain, a vision now so confusing it hurts.
It was sweet of Luke to take me there, to Lingering Pines Retirement Community. He had read all about it last night and explained on the way that meeting my grandmother in person would be best. He had printed a map, and he bought travel snacks when he left my house. He’d also gone home to shower and change his clothes so that his parents wouldn’t worry.
During the drive, Luke talked through every giggle-inducing, glow-generating, lust-inspiring detail of the night before. At times, I wanted to tell him to pull off the road so that I could jump across the center divider and have my way with him.
He told me about me: all the notes he’d read and thoughts he had about what my life must be like.
Luke talked about us meeting as kids, about being drawn to me from childhood. About the shoe game.
We chatted and sipped lattes and ate M&M’s and peanut butter crackers, and I was calm and happy and loved.
But then we arrived.
What I saw of Lingering Pines was the reception desk, where a fat young nurse checked a computer and called her supervisor before pulling me aside to whisper in my face with onion breath that Jo Lane had in fact lived there for five years until she moved on.
“Where did she go?” I asked innocently, not getting it.
“I’m so sorry to be the one telling you this, but Jo passed last winter,” the young nurse said. “She died,” she added, probably because of my dazed look.
That’s about the point when I felt myself being strapped onto a roller-coaster ride that I didn’t stand in line for. After having the wherewithal to glean as much additional information as possible, Luke guided my stupefied self back to the van and drove me far away from Lingering Pines, never pressing too hard but letting me know he was there.
“I’m so sorry, London,” he said.
“I didn’t know her,” I said back, my mind reeling. The miles flew by then. We were headed home, and I was not only empty-handed but downright mystified as well.
The questions in my mind were the same then and now.
How can she be dead? She’s in my future. Am I wrong about the woman at the child’s funeral? Is it someone who just looks like my grandma? I need to check that photo again. Maybe I should show it to my mom. Maybe my grandma has a sister. A twin sister.
Each thought stands in turn in front of my mind’s eye for a mental audition, but no one gets the part. No thought is just right.
“Thanks for bringing me here,” I say quietly, cutting through the silence as Luke and I move straight down the center aisle of the graveyard.
“No problem,” Luke says softly. He keeps his eyes on the sea of stone going by. Our feet crunch on dirt and rocks as we walk, and I’m desperately trying to remain rational, to not picture zombies digging themselves up from underground or ghosts whispering in my ear.
Unsure of exactly what I’m looking for, my eyes instinctively seek the familiar: the groundskeeper’s shack disguised as a mausoleum.
Tracking my gaze, Luke squeezes the hand he holds tight.
“That’s where the smoking guy will be, right?” he asks. His simple question gives me a strange sense of calm. Belonging, even. From reading my life, Luke not only understands me, but he remembers, too. In a way, he has become the closest thing to a memory I might ever have.
“Yes,” I say with a nod, keeping my eyes focused there.
I’m so absorbed that I see the movement from inside that anyone else might have missed in the dying light. “Let’s go over,” I say, pulling Luke off the main path and onto a smaller branch cutting through graves toward the shed. I lift my hand to knock, but the door opens before I get the chance.
“Good evening,” says a cherub-faced man with a beard like Santa Claus’s. “How can I help you kids?”
“Hi,” I begin timidly, trying to find my words. “We’re looking for a grave. My grandmother’s grave, actually. I didn’t know her, and we were wondering whether there’s some sort of directory.”
“A directory, huh? The only directory you’ll find here is locked in my noggin,” the man says with a kind smile and a tap, forefinger to temple. “My mind is like a steel trap: it never lets anything out. What was your grandmother’s name?”
I glance at Luke before turning back to Santa.
“Jo Lane,” I say.
“She died last winter,” Luke offers.
Santa scratches his head, muttering, “Lane… Lane, hmm…” I watch; the caretaker seems familiar to me. Maybe it’s just that he looks like Santa Claus.
Luke and I catch gazes again, and just as I’m wondering whether Santa’s brain isn’t as advertised, his weathered face brightens.
“I’ve got it. Aisle thirteen, plot two hundred forty-seven. Or is it two hundred forty-eight? Follow me, please.” He steps onto the path and leads us in the opposite direction from which we came. We follow, farther away from the safety of the main walkway, right into the thick of death.
As Luke and I gingerly step behind the crunch, crunch, crunch of Santa’s work boots, at least one of us wonders about the sanity of someone who chooses to work at a cemetery. As he moves, Santa mutters under his breath about Jo Lane’s funeral.
“Sad turnout, that one. Only just the man and the priest. Poor woman.”
Blameless, I’m guilty just the same.
I’m preoccupied by the eeriness of the passing graves, now that it’s officially dark outside. Low-hanging trees make it even darker. It feels like the dead of night, even though it’s barely six thirty.
Abruptly, the caretaker stops moving, and Luke grabs my waist to keep me from running into the old man.
“Here she is, two hundred thirty-seven,” Santa says, gesturing to the simple rectangular granite grave marker at his feet. I can’t help but think that he’s standing on my grandmother.