Page 43 of Come Back To Me
I consider his words for a moment and then shake my head. “I can’t leave. My friends are here. So is my job and this house we built together. Your gravesite, which I keep forgetting to ask about by the way.”
“What about it?” He gathers all his trash into a pile, separating the needle from everything else.
“How has no one contacted me about your body being missing or the casket being disturbed?”
“There’s nothing to contact you about,” he says, eyes holding onto mine.
“What do you mean?” I lift myself on my elbows.
“I covered all my tracks. Nothing looks tampered with in any way . . . except maybe the dirt is a little lumpy in areas, but I was able to cover most of it with all the gifts you left me.”
“What gifts?” I sit up higher, my face wrinkling when I accidentally move my leg too much.
“I need to get you some painkillers. Nothing too strong, though. I don’t want you falling all over the place at the pumpkin patch, or your friends assuming you’re developing a drug addiction.”
“Gareth.” My gaze calls to his. “What gifts? I haven’t been there to visit you since the ritual? Did I leave candles or your hoodie behind?”
“No. It was nothing like that. A white stuffed bear, pink roses, and a snow globe.”
My heart kicks. “What kind of snow globe?”
“It said . . . wait . . .”
“What is it?”
“It’s strange. It had a white building and said “Little Rock, Arkansas.”
My breaths skip. “You’re sure?”
“Yeah.”
“I have to show you something.” I clumsily climb off the bed, and he follows closely behind me, grabbing my hip as I start to sway.
“Easy, sweetheart. You shouldn’t be getting up so fast.”
“I’m fine.” I swat him away, darting out to the garage door. Pain has my leg shaking with each step, but I bear my way through it, not stopping until I’m standing in front of the shelf where the remnants of the snow globe are. This one’s different than he described. It has two people in front of the state’s shape and flag.
“What’s that?” He looks at me and then the shattered pieces in my hand when I carry it closer to him.
“A gift for someone else. From you. There’s lyrics to a song engraved on the bottom. It’s this thing only you did.”
“You mean like the music box?”
My eyes are stuck on his for a long time. “Yeah. Like the music box.” I flip the bottom piece of the snow globe over, running my fingers over the words.
“Hmm. I didn’t do this.”
“How would you know when you can’t even recall everything from before?”
“I just do,” he says firmly. “How do you know the gift was from me?”
“Because of the song.”
“You said he knew both of us, right? Maybe he knew this was something I’d done for you and thought he’d reach me by doing it for me.”
His words strike me like a bolt of lightning. I didn’t think of that. “This could have been from him,” I hear myself say.
“Yeah. The one he left in front of my gravestone might have words on the bottom too.”
