Page 66 of The Parkers' Handsome Holiday
Maybe that was all he wanted to begin with.
None of those thoughts led to anything productive, so when I got out of the car, I forced myself to stop thinking them. I knew Cal. Well, I was pretty sure I knew him. He wasn’t the sort of man to think any of those things, and I wouldn’t have been so close to him before my accident if he was.
Right?
I wrapped my jacket tighter around myself as a cold wind whipped around my legs and at my exposed neck. Cal got out of the car and waited for me as I walked around the hood. He had parked at the end of the lane. The cemetery fanned out on either side of us, and he seemed to know where he was going when he offered me his arm and began guiding me through the rows of headstones.
They were all quite beautiful. So was the cemetery itself.
And it was old. Very old. The trees on the property looked like they had stood there for at least a hundred years, and some of the tombstones were so worn that the engraved letters had nearly faded away entirely. Remnants of names and dates lingered on the cool stone like memories, fading more and more with each passing day.
We walked a decent distance until we were almost at the edge of the cemetery where the grass gave way to hedge rows. On the other side were old heritage homes. All I could see over the hedges were the rooftops.
Cal tugged me to the right, and we walked between a row. He drew to a stop when we were about ten headstones down, and he turned me toward two flat plaques set in the grass. The stone was engraved with gold-dipped letters that read:
“Here lies Aleena Nelson, loving mother and wife, and Grant Nelson, adoring father and husband”.
I swallowed.
Cal wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “Would you prefer to be alone, Lina?”
I shook my head. No, I did not want to be alone.
Even though I didn’t know them, I still felt the grief of knowing I was a daughter who had lost both of her parents. I still felt that sense of loneliness like a pit in the very bottom of my stomach. It felt like it kept growing and expanding the longer I stared at those little gold letters.
“They don’t have tombstones,” I whispered.
Cal nodded. “They didn’t have a ton of money. And they weren’t the sort of folks to like something as big and gaudy as a headstone anyway. This was more their style. Elegant and simple. Clean.”
I nodded like I knew what he was saying was true, but I didn’t because no memory of my parents was coming back to me as I stared at their names. “Aleena and Grant.”
“You were named after her,” Cal said. “Your mother.”
I smiled a bit at that. “Whose idea was it?”
Cal nodded at my father’s plaque. “Your dad. You told me the story once. All throughout your mother’s pregnancy, they argued over what to call you. When your mother went into labor, they still didn’t have a name. Your birth was complicated. They had to rush your mom in for an emergency C-section. Your dad told me that when they put you in his arms for the first time, he was sitting beside your mother’s head as they stitched her up. And he said that he would call you Lina, after his Aleena. He said it was the happiest moment of his life.”
I felt like I should be crying. Surely, I should be. But the tears wouldn’t come. They were as absent as my memories.
“Lina?” Cal asked, turning me toward him a bit. “Is any of this helping?”
I bit my tongue and shook my head. “No, I don’t remember them.”
“You will,” he said.
I shook my head. “I’m starting to wonder if that’s true. What if this is my life now? What if I never remember where I came from or who I was?”
Cal’s jaw flexed, and his eyebrows drew together, leaving creases in his forehead. “You’re still the same woman I knew, still the same person. And Lina, I swear. You will remember. It hasn’t been all that much time. I know it’s hard, but you can’t give up.”
He was too kind to me. I forced myself to smile. “Thank you.”
He pulled me back to his side and rested his cheek on top of my head. It felt good to be in his arms like this. It felt like I was where I belonged.
I thought back to the dream I had of my mother when I was in the hospital—the dream where she told me to go with Cal. That he was my flower. I didn’t know what it meant, not really, but in that moment, I couldn’t help but feel that it was true. That my mother had guided me from beyond the grave somehow, like she knew that when I woke, I wouldn’t remember her.
My eyes slid to the brown, crispy bouquet of flowers between the two name plaques on the frozen grass. I couldn’t tell what they had been. Roses, maybe. I licked my lips, and the cold air nipped at the moisture. “Why haven’t I been here?”
“What do you mean?”
