Page 3 of Always Meant for You
A twenty-first birthday present I’ll never get to thank him for.
He left it on my chair at the kitchen table.
A little blue Tiffany & Co. box wrapped in a white satin ribbon so perfect it didn’t look real. Inside was a velvet pouch that contained a rose gold chain, so fine it looked like it could float.
And a single charm in rose gold.
The letterMshaped in flowing curves.
Six months ago, I’d pointed it out to him in a magazine.
I’d been perched on the fence in my waitressing uniform, stalling before my shift. Jamie was working on the tractor with Cal Horner, his best friend—the boy who lived on the farm next to ours.
Cal, with his reddish-brown hair always in need of a trim, a scruffed-up beard shadowing his jaw, and big, dark eyes that stayed brooding and guarded no matter what was said around him.
A scowl carved into every line of his face. Stupidly handsome in a way that only made him more impossible for me to ignore.
I was rambling on, half-hoping to get a reaction out of Cal.
Jamie looked at the photo.
Cal looked away.
Jamie listened.
Cal ignored me.
Just another afternoon in a long stretch of ordinary I thought would never run out.
I wish I’d held on tighter to that moment.
To more moments.
But that’s what grief does. It sharpens everything you thought you’d have time to revisit.
By the time I made it downstairs at eight a.m. on my birthday, Jamie was already gone.
He’d collapsed in the field.
At the hospital, they said it was a hidden heart condition.
Nothing to be done.
I loosen my grip on the M charm and breathe slow and shallow. Anything deeper might split me wide open.
None of this makes sense.
How do I go on without my brother?
And still the casseroles keep coming.
A neighbor from a few farms over slips into the kitchen, balancing a foil-covered dish. She sets it on the table without a word, barely glancing in my direction. That kind of look, like I don’t quite belong, happens to me a lot in Elverna. Then she turns and disappears into the living room.
No one knows what to say to me. Not today. Not ever.
This town makes it hard to breathe.
But I didn’t always feel that way.
