The good news is, the farther we walk from the town square, the fewer people there are to stare.
Map in hand, we turn left on Willow, toward the old lumber mill, and the last thing we expect to find is a golf cart veered off the road.
It’s wedged deep into the manicured hedges of someone’s front yard, with an old woman hunched over on the front seat.
“Oh, hell,” Asher mutters. “That can’t be good.”
“No, it can’t.”
The two of us rush forward, my stomach twisting.
Please don’t be dead. Please, please don’t be dead.
The woman is slumped to the side, her purple pillbox hat slightly askew. Her mouth is open, and I’m about to reach for her pulse when she lets off a loud snore.
Asher jumps and lets out a little yip that makes me giggle. “Frickety frack, she scared me.”
“Me too.”
Another long, low vibration rumbles out of the old girl, and Asher laughs. “Wow, she’s really going for it.”
I gently shake the woman’s shoulder. “Miss?”
The old girl blinks awake, her eyes glassed over with a fog of confusion. She glances around, sits up, and runs a hand down the front of her camel coat as if steadying herself. “What on earth? What do you two think you’re up to?”
“Uh, checking on you?” Asher says, as if that was beyond obvious.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
“Of course I’m all right!” she huffs, though the way she rubs at her temples suggests otherwise.
Asher gathers the woman’s bag from where it flopped onto the ground. Once he corrals her little spiral notebook, a couple of pens, and what looks like a handful of peppermint candies scattered in the leaves, he shoves them back into the oversized purse and sets it on the front seat.
“Are you all right to get home?” I ask.
She straightens in her seat and gives me an imperious look. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, you kind of crashed into a bush.” Asher points at the hedge as if she couldn’t see it bristling up over the hood of her cart.
The woman scoffs, waving a dismissive hand. “Pfft. I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. Children today. So dramatic. Such active imaginations.”
Then, with all the dignity of a queen, she grips her tiny steering wheel, shifts into reverse, and—with a crunching of branches and a tinnybeep, beep, beep—backs right over a peony bush before puttering off down the street.
Asher and I watch her go, silent for a beat before he turns to me. “Did she imply we imagined her getting into a wreck with those boxwoods?”
I snort and pull us back into motion. “Yes, yes she did.”
Tanner’s map is perfect, and twenty minutes later, Asher and I are standing outside the iron gates of Emberwood’s Evergreen Cemetery. “This isn’t how I imagined reconnecting with my parents. I had a whole scene in my head… how I’d find them one day… and they’d be so excited and relieved that I’m okay… and they’d run over and hug me…”
My laugh comes out thin, hollow. “It seems so stupid now.”
Asher laces his fingers with mine and squeezes. “It’s not stupid. My parents have been dead for almost fifteen years, and I still make up scenes in my head. I imagine how proud they would’ve been at my graduation. What they would’ve said when I brought my fiancé home to meet them…”
“Is he super-hot and rich?”
“Oh, yeah.” He flashes me a smile. “And he plays the guitar on the back deck of our lakefront cottage.”
“I love that for you.” I lean to the side and rest my cheek against his shoulder. My chest is tight, and I breathe deep, pulling much-needed oxygen into my lungs. “Thanks for being here.”
