Chapter 26
Rose
“Trader Joe’s, not even you’re worth this,” I mutter, putting my grocery bag in the trunk.
I don’t mean it, of course. Trader Joe’s is definitely worth it.
But this might be a pilgrimage I only make once or twice a year.
Better yet—next time my kids come to see me, I’ll text them a list first and make them bring me my favorite spices and sauces.
Maybe even with a refrigerated bag or cooler so they can buy some of the perishables I like.
I didn’t want to risk it today. The drive home probably isn’t long enough to make meat go bad, but long enough to make me not want to eat it.
I’m surprised to find that, after being home for so many years, Austin has the feel of a book I read cover to cover multiple times, enjoyed, and now have no desire to pick it up again.
What I really want is to be back home in Sheet Cake—and I’m thinking less about the place and more about the person of Tank.
I haven’t heard from him since I left Wolf’s bunker, which isn’t a huge thing. It’s only been a few hours, but I’m to the point where a few hours with no communication makes me feel almost bereft.
And yet, despite my desire to get back to him and out of traffic, I find myself driving by my house and the school where I taught.
The elementary school looks the same, but the house has new landscaping and a fresh coat of paint.
Both were things I always thought about but never got around to doing.
It makes me happy, especially when I notice a child’s bike in the grass next to the sidewalk.
I may not be completely sure what the future holds, but I know it’s not here, so this becomes something of a goodbye tour, even though I know I’ll be back to see my children. Maybe it’s more an official closing of the door as I move on to something newer than just a geographical move.
I’m moving on in a bigger, better way with Tank.
Which means I want to make one last stop before I head home.
When David first died, I couldn’t come to the cemetery.
It was too raw and visceral, a gut punch to see his name carved in the flat stone in the grass.
Eventually, I would come for capital-E Events: holidays, his birthday, our anniversary, the day he died.
As though in order to make the trek here, I needed a specific reason.
But after a few years, it slipped into something more casual. I’d stop by if I felt like it or if I was driving by. Though I don’t think David is in that precise location anymore, listening through the ground somehow, it made me feel better to talk to him, so I would.
I’d tell him about John getting frustrated when his Calculus teacher gave him a B+ on an exam instead of an A.
When Chelsea, who had always been boy-crazy, started having boys actually like her back, I brought a package of Reese's Pieces out there and whined about how I might not make it through raising a teenage girl alone. A few times, I came by after school, even though it wasn’t on the way home, and told him about my day.
It reminded me of our kitchen table conversations, me chatting away and his pencil scratching in answers on the crossword puzzle.
The part of the cemetery where David is buried used to be fairly open and empty, but in the last year or two, a lot of new headstones and even a small mausoleum have cropped up, making me second guess my sense of direction. Maybe it’s been longer than I realized since I came here.
After a little bit of wandering, I find David’s headstone.
I chose a gray granite because black seemed too stark, too dramatic.
I remember being bothered that the names were cheerful, like paint colors.
My choices were Georgia Gray, Barre Gray, or Super Gray.
There’s nothing super about choosing a marker for your husband’s grave, and Georgia sounded like a woman who would wear pearls, keep wine in her Stanley cup, and curse like a sailor.
So I went with Barre, which looks like newsprint and reminds me of David’s crossword puzzles.
Arms wrapped around myself, I read over the familiar words and dates, wishing I had a coat instead of a sweatshirt.
The temperature has dropped significantly in the last twenty-four hours, as though once the unseasonable heat broke, cooler weather saw its opportunity and rushed in.
It’s not cold, but when it hits fifty degrees after being in the eighties and nineties, Texans everywhere break out the parkas. If, in fact, they own parkas.
“Hi,” I say softly. “It’s me, Rose.”
I never know how I’ll feel when I come here. Sometimes, it’s nothing at all. More often, I feel an ache to varying degrees. At first, it was almost a stinging pain, now dulled to a faded bruise. Sometimes, I’m angry. At whom or for what, I’m not even sure.
Today, I wondered if standing here might make the guilt I’ve been growing multiply.
Because the thoughts I’ve had this week about my marriage and about my husband haven’t exactly been full of sunshine and rainbows.
For the first time, I think I’ve looked back with more realistic eyes.
Not that I ever romanticized my marriage—I definitely saw the flaws as well as the good things.
And overall, still, I would say I had a good, solid relationship.
But I don’t think I ever realized until now, until Tank, the ways I bent and folded myself to fit the shape of another person. Or maybe not to fit David, exactly—because it’s not like he asked this of me. I doubt he realized it was happening. I certainly didn’t.
It’s more like I shifted to become the version of me who fit into our relationship, who we were as a combined whole.
Who knows?
Maybe David shifted for me—for us—too.
But as I stand here, the guilt actually starts to ease, sand slipping from my palm as I loosen my fingers to let go. I can’t change anything about the past. And even with the epiphanies I’ve had recently, I wouldn’t change anything.
“I would marry you all over again,” I whisper, the truth of the words unlocking something in me, freeing me fully from any vestiges of guilt.
Tears prick at my eyes and I don’t try to hold them in or wipe them, letting them spill over my cheeks.
“I’m glad I married you, and I’m grateful for all the memories and especially for our children.
But I’m happy now in a different way. A new way.
And I think I might get married again. Which sounds wild to say out loud.
You’d definitely think it’s wild if you knew how quickly it happened. Remember how long you and I dated?”
I laugh, remembering the almost glacial pace of my relationship with David. Sometimes, I wanted to shake him until a proposal fell out of him like loose pocket change.
“This is fast but feels very right. I don’t know that I can say you’d like him, because that’s too weird, but he’s a good man. Anyway, I thought I should come tell you.”
My words and my tears dry up after that. I think I came looking for a sense of closure, and I have that. Even if the sun doesn’t break through the clouds as some kind of sign or anything, I feel like I’ve been set right again. Stabilized.
As I’m walking back to my car, I stop at the curb when I notice someone in the distance.
A woman with dark hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail sits on the ground beneath a maple that’s just starting to shift from green to red.
She has a blanket pulled around her shoulders and her knees pulled to her chest. There’s something familiar about her profile, and it takes just another few seconds for me to recognize that it’s Harper. At least, I’m pretty sure.
I shouldn’t be surprised, not when the skunk coincidence is much stranger, but still, I have a hard time believing she could be in the same cemetery at the same time. Which might mean that her mother is buried not far from David.
Is it possible Tank and I could have buried our spouses this close together?
I’ve closed half the distance to Harper before I falter, wondering if this is a bad idea. She may not want company. More specifically, she might not want mine.
But it’s too late. As though feeling my eyes on her, Harper turns her head to see me.
For a moment, she simply looks at me. I’m still not close enough to make out her expression, and even if I were, I noted last night that Harper is difficult to read.
I lift a hand in an awkward half wave, unsure of cemetery protocol when you happen to run into your new boyfriend’s daughter at her late mother’s grave.
Sounds like the start to a bad joke.
I’m just about to head back to the car and possibly pretend this encounter never happened when Harper waves me over.
Thankfully, she doesn’t keep watching as I approach, but rests her chin on her knees, facing a large headstone made of a pink granite.
Flowers are carved in a circle surrounding Michelle’s name.
“Hey.” I want to say something more as I reach Harper, but fancy meeting you here or come here often don’t fit the mood. Actually, I’m not quite sure what her mood is, so saying less seems like the best choice.
The wind picks up, lifting my hair from my neck and making me shiver.
Harper looks up at me, then stretches out her arm, holding open a corner of the blanket as an invitation. “Want to sit? I can’t promise you won’t get grass stains on your pants.”
“Well, when you put it that way … ”
Smiling, I sit down beside her. Close, because she seems concerned with making sure I have some of the blanket wrapped around me. After a little bit of wiggling, I manage to get it around my back. Her leg and torso are warm against me.
“I come here sometimes,” Harper says. “It feels important.”
“Did you want to tell her about the baby?” I ask.
Harper nods, then drops her chin onto her knees again. “I wanted her to know.”
“My husband is buried right over there.” I don’t point because that would require letting go of my blanket corner. “I haven’t been here in a while.”