Secret Admirer
Igave little thought to Regina’s gift. She had made me something odd, but all her gifts to me over the years had been strange. There should be no surprise that of all the things Regina might give me, she chose a white mohair pot holder.
It was that morning’s other offering that occupied my mind. Then it came to me as I was pedaling up the hill, the truth that Hayward’s sickening collage revealed.
All those weeks I’d been finding little presents next to my cereal bowl.
Heart-shaped rocks. Flowers. The tiny beautiful body of the dead hummingbird.
All that time I’d believed it was Forrest who’d left them for me, and that they served as proof that in spite of everything, Forrest still thought about me. Forrest still held me in his heart.
Now I knew: It wasn’t Forrest who’d been thinking about me on all those mornings, or Forrest who’d left me the strange little gifts.
It was Hayward. The heart-shaped rock, the butterfly wing, the shell, the dead hummingbird; they weren’t love offerings after all, or if they were, the love was being offered by a person whose interest and affection I considered completely unwelcome.
Those gifts weren’t a testament to anyone’s love for me.
Maybe it was more accurate to say that those little gifts I’d looked forward to—and found—over most of the summer were just evidence of a sick obsession.
Nobody needed to explain to me what an obsession looked like, or the things it made a person do.