Chapter 46
Brooklawn Memorial Cemetery, Portland, Maine
Two months later…
Hew zipped his leather jacket as far as it would go under his chin in an attempt to keep the cold Maine wind from tunneling down the collar of his thick, wool fisherman’s sweater.
It was only the end of October. But fall was on the way out and winter was quick on its heels. The trees were still festooned in their autumn finery, burnt orange, fiery red, and cheery goldenrod. But the branches grew barer with every gust. And soon they would be completely naked.
Stick season.
When the tourists fled to warmer climes, and the locals buckled down, hibernated, and dreamed of when the spring daisies would push through the frost in…five to six months.
“She should be here,” Sabrina said as she studied the map the cemetery manager had printed for them when they stopped in to get directions.
Hew halted his slow trudge and glanced around.
The place where his parents and grandparents were buried wasn’t like other cemeteries. There were no mausoleums or headstones. Each grave was denoted by a simple, in-ground marker, which made the whole area appear like a well-manicured park rather than a graveyard.
There was nothing to block the view of the green, rolling hills or the brightly seasoned trees.
And the hush of the wind through the dry leaves, the rustle of their boots on ground, as well as the distant cry of a gull riding the current…
it all lent the place a serene stillness. A tranquil kind of beauty.
He’d only been there once before.
He’d asked his social worker to bring him on his sixteenth birthday. After a few eye rolls and much huffing and puffing, she’d loaded him up to make the short drive.
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to find, what he’d been looking for. Connection, maybe? A sense of self and belonging?
He’d found none of that. Just cold stones and the chiseled names of people he’d never met.
Maybe that was why he’d balked when Sabrina had originally suggested they make a trip. He hadn’t wanted a repeat of the disappointment he’d felt the first time.
Although, as he watched her walk down the row of markers in her navy coat with a plaid scarf looped snug at her throat and her gloved hands clutching two riots of bright flowers that seemed to defy the gray day, he couldn’t help thinking this time might feel different.
He felt different.
Sabrina had done that. She’d changed him. Her love had changed him.
“Here she is.” She breathed reverently, staring down at the grave marker that read simply: Natasha Smith, April 2nd, 1972—May 28th, 1990. Beloved Daughter. Loving Mother.
There were tears in Sabrina’s big, brown eyes when she glanced up at Hew from where she’d crouched to lay one of the two bundles of brightly colored mums next to the marker.
Her voice sounded watery as she reached for his hand and whispered, “Her parents made sure the world knew she loved you even though she never got to meet you.”
All the emotion he hadn’t felt before, all the gratitude and love for the woman who’d harbored him safely inside her body for nine months, welled up and filled his eyes.
“Tasha…” Sabrina whispered reverently. “I promise to give him all the love you never got the chance to. I promise to spend the rest of my life making up for the time that was stolen from you.”
Hew couldn’t speak past the lump clogging his throat. And a single tear slipped from the corner of his eye, carving a cold track down his cheek. But he didn’t brush it away.
There was no reason to hide with Sabrina. No reason to tuck his feelings deep where no one could see.
With her, he was safe. Safe to feel every sharp edge of grief and every warm swell of love without judgment or ridicule.
He squeezed her hand, feeling the shape and solidity of the ring on her finger. The ring he’d placed there just last week.
Not a diamond.
Sabrina had wrinkled her nose at every clear, flashing stone they’d looked at in the high-end jewelry shop on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. Instead, she’d chosen a square-cut emerald.
“To match your eyes,” she’d said. “And it’s your birthstone. It symbolizes renewal and hope and loyalty. If that’s not you…not us…I don’t know what is.”
Now, he managed only, “I love you, Sabrina.”
She let go of his hand so she could go up on tiptoe and swipe the cold tear from his cheek. Cupping the side of his face, she pulled him down for a kiss.
Her nose was chilled from the biting wind, but her lips were warm. Her lips were always warm. Just like her heart.
He could’ve gone on kissing her all damn afternoon, losing himself in her. In them. But all-too-soon she leaned back, pulling the folded map from her coat pocket.
She squinted toward the horizon. The clouds hung heavy and low, their gray bellies threatening freezing rain later in the day. “Your dad’s over there.” She pointed. “Let’s go visit him.”
They started toward the little rolling slope. But before they’d gone two steps, she turned back and called over her shoulder, “Goodbye, Tasha. For now. We’ll be back.”
After Sabrina laid her second bundle of flowers on his father’s marker and said, “Thank you, Tommy, for giving me this man. I promise to take care of him,” they made their way across the lush green grass that was just beginning to lose its luster to the waning growing season.
As they turned down the little footpath that wound toward their rented car, Sabrina took a deep breath before she blew it out on a long sigh.
He tossed an arm over her shoulders and gave her a little squeeze. She had that look in her eye. The one she got when she was thinking of her brother.
And no wonder. Cemeteries had a way of making those who’d passed feel closer.
“Thinkin’ of Cooper?” he asked, even though he knew the answer. “We can make a trip to Charleston, too. Visit his grave.”
“I miss him at odd moments,” she admitted, twisting her gloved fingers together. “Inconvenient moments, it seems, when I least want to because I’m in a crowd of people. Or I’m here.” She splayed a gloved hand wide. “In this place where I should be focused on your family.”
“There’s no should about any of it,” he assured her. “No right or wrong when it comes to the how, why, and when of grief.”
Her smile was wobbly. “How did I get so lucky to find you?”
He snorted. “I’m the lucky one. I keep waitin’ for ya to come to your senses.”
“Never.” She vehemently shook her head. “If loving you is crazy, I don’t want to be sane.”
After bundling her into the passenger seat, he buckled himself into the driver’s seat and listened to the rental’s engine rumble to life.
They had reservations at a B&B. And tomorrow morning, he planned to take her to the local library that’d been his refuge and the lighthouse that’d been his safe place.
Before he could put the car in gear, however, she placed a gloved hand on his forearm. “I think I would like to make a trip to Charleston to visit Cooper. I want to introduce him to you. Show him he doesn’t have to worry about me anymore.”
“Ayuh.” He nodded. That pesky lump was back in his throat because neither of them had living family to visit, so it only felt right that they made the rounds with the dead.
“I want to meet him, too. Tell him how grateful I am that he rode ya to the hospital on his handlebars to get that broken arm set. It’s attached to your right hand, which is my favorite, since it’s the one that gives the best—”
She slapped his shoulder before he could finish. “Pervert,” she grumbled, but her eyes were bright and sparkling. Then, a cloud passed over her face, as dark and heavy as the ones hanging outside the windshield.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Eddy Torres and Cooper are buried in the same cemetery.” Her upper lip curled. “Maybe I’ll find his grave and spit on it.”
He tapped his finger against the steering wheel as he thought of the pudgy, dark-eyed man.
Hew had learned to identify evil by seeing past a too-slick smile or too-bright eyes.
But he hadn’t needed to use his years of experience to recognize the vileness that had lived inside Eddy Torres. It’d been obvious.
“Might I suggest ya piss on it, too?” he said flatly.
She chuckled. “As long as you promise to stand lookout while I drop trou.”
“Deal.” He jerked his chin down.
As he pulled down the little lane, headed toward the front gate, she wrinkled her nose and said, “Does it make me a terrible person to hope he was terrified in his last moments?”
Hew considered his next words carefully. He could continue to keep her in the dark. Or…
He could tell her the truth and bring into the light the only secret that still remained between them.
“No, it doesn’t. And, ayuh, he was.” He waited in the silence that filled the car’s interior as his words sank in and realization dawned.
He expected her to bombard him with questions, expected her to demand the details of the night he’d pulled Eddy Torres out of his car at gunpoint before marching him to the edge of the marsh.
She did neither.
She simply swallowed, nodded once, and then stared out the windshield as the rolling landscape of the cemetery slipped by. When she finally spoke, her voice was calm, quiet. “Thank you, Hew.”
He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath until it leaked out of him in windy relief. “I’d do anything for you, Sabrina. Surely, ya know that.”
She reached for his hand, twining her fingers through his, and squeezed. “And I’ll do anything for you. Everything for you.”
His heart swelled so big and wide he thought it a wonder his chest managed to hold it.
After a while, she laughed and said, “Graham was right. You are my lobster.”
He frowned and pictured the red stuffy that now lived on her bed along with her pile of pillows.
“Apparently, lobsters mate for life,” she explained. “And Graham says you and I will still be walking around our tank holding claws”—she made interlocking circles with her thumbs and forefingers—“even when we’re old and gray.”
He smiled at the imagery. “I like the idea of bein’ your forever lobster, stuck together until our shells are crusty and our claws are cracked. Sounds like the perfect life.”
“Spoken like a true Mainer.”
As Hew drove out of the cemetery and into his future with Sabrina, he remembered something he’d read once.
The universe has three answers to any question you might ask. The first is ‘yes.’ The second is ‘not yet.’ And the third is ‘I have something better in store for you.’
He’d spent his life asking the universe…when will I be loved?
It had answered with Sabrina.
And she was more than worth the wait.