“It’s quiet like the dead in there. You’re hardly one to judge a man’s hiding place.”
I stood up and wiped my hands. “So you rode all the way here on top of the car?”
He shrugged nonchalantly. “Always enjoyed a little wind in my hair.” Christian looked between the two graves and patted mine. “Your da forked over good money for these.”
“It doesn’t take much to impress you, does it?”
He looked long and hard at my grave. “A headstone does offer a peculiar sense of belonging. Perhaps you should say your farewells. You’ve been here for over an hour.”
I glanced down at my mother’s headstone and then squatted in front of it. My fingertips traced the letters that spelled outBonnie. The worst part about leaving was always remembering how she died. That kind of knowledge changes a person forever.
My lip quivered, and tears spilled down my cheeks. I collected my emotions and pressed a kiss to the cold stone. “I love you, Mama,” I whispered.
As I hugged my mother’s headstone, I felt Christian’s hands on my shoulders. When I finally stood up, I turned around and didn’t look back, each step easier than the last.
“I never understood why they put fences around cemeteries,” Christian remarked, his breath clouding the air in front of his face. “Don’t you think it’s more likely that people want out… not in?”
“The spikes on top of the wrought iron fence are a nice touch. I almost impaled myself jumping over it.”
“’Twould be a shame if I had to put you in the ground for real.”
“As long as you put fake roses on my grave.”
He clasped his hands behind his back. “Fake? I’d plant a real one covered in thorns, just as prickly as your tongue.”
“If you had to care for a living thing, it would die from neglect.”
“I’d water it myself, right after a pint of ale.”
We laughed as we followed my trail toward the back where I’d snuck in. Visiting hours were over, because apparently the dead needed a break from the living. When we neared the mausoleums, I decided to get a better view of the grounds. One of them had a flat roof, so I climbed the statue next to it and pulled myself up. Once there, I kicked the snow away while Christian climbed up behind me.
“Would you look at that,” he said. “All those fecking bodies. It just goes on forever.”
With the sun at my back, I took a seat, my legs dangling over the edge. Seeing it from this angle gave me a new perspective. It suddenly occurred to me that death wasn’t a personal thing but a practical one.
Everyone dies… eventually. That’s the one thing we all have in common.
Christian kicked more snow away until half the roof was cleared. Instead of sitting next to me, he perched on the corner like a gargoyle overlooking his domain. “I never had a grave of my own. Even if someone had pretended to bury me, there would probably be a shopping strip over my coffin by now.”
“It makes you wonder if we’ll run out of land.”
“Perhaps they should put the dead on display like the clothes at the dry cleaners. You just push a button, and the body of your loved one comes out on a hook.”
“There you go again. Saying all the right things to make me feel better.”
He cocked his head to the side when a white rabbit scurried over our tracks toward the grave.
My hands squeezed the stone ledge, and I looked up at him. “Can I ask you a question?”
“I don’t see what’s ever stopped you before.”
“This necklace isn’t a fake stone, is it?”
He scraped his teeth against his bottom lip and then stood up.
“Did you steal it?”
“I don’t know what you’re prattling on about,” he said, moving out of sight.
