Chess: The hell you don’t. He’s not the only man in the equation. You deserve someone as great as you are.
Elliot: Like you and André?
Chess: Find your own happiness. Don’t try to be anyone else but yourself.
He clicked out of the chat, uninterested in seeing any more of his friends’ online psychoanalysis. Besides, he needed a little time to prepare for the afternoon visit. The car rolled to a stop outside the gates.
“Thanks.”
The path curved at a gentle S, and Elliot walked deeper into the cemetery until he came to the headstone markedHansen. Two of the bushes planted next to it had turned brown, and Elliot winced. His mother would not be happy, and he walked around the gravesite, taking the pictures he knew they expected. Zooming in on the carved granite, he snapped several photos and sent them to his mother.
She responded immediately:Show me the whole plot.
Elliot took a minute, nibbling on his lower lip, trying to figure out how to keep the ruined bushes out of the pictures, but after taking over half a dozen unsuccessful shots, he gave up, took two, and sent them to his mother, betting against himself for the number of seconds it would take her to respond. His phone rang.
Damn. Five seconds.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Why are there two dead bushes?”
Hi, Elliot. How’re you? So glad you’re doing well.
“I don’t know. I’ll have to check with the office.”
“I can’t believe they let it happen. This is why we wanted you to go every week. Once a month isn’t enough.”
Give me strength.
“Mom. I’ll talk to them, have them replace the dead bushes, and I’ll make sure they’re on top of it so it doesn’t happen again.”
“That’s not good enough. We count on you to make sure she has a beautiful place to rest. Please, Elliot.” Her voice quivered, and he knew her tears were genuine. It broke his heart to know she couldn’t shake her grief after so many years. “It’s the least she deserves—”
“I know.” Struggling to keep his voice in check, Elliot paced on the grass. “You don’t have to tell me. But I can’t come here every week. That’s asking a lot.”
“Is it really? You work from home, so you don’t have to take off from an office. She was your sister and she loved you. I know you loved her too.”
“Of course I did. Mom, I said—”
But he spoke to dead air. She’d hung up, and Elliot knew she’d immediately called the cemetery office, ranting about their ineptitude. Elliot slumped onto the bench his parents had purchased. In the years before they moved, his mother would bring her lunch and knitting and sit there for hours. He knew it was unhealthy and tried to get them to see a psychologist, but all she did was shake her head and blink away the tears.
“I need this time with her. You wouldn’t understand because you’re not a parent.”
Feeling inexplicably guilty, Elliot squinted into the bright sunlight gleaming off the headstone. “I’m not upset with you. I’m sorry we never had a chance to get to know each other. I wish things could’ve been different. I would’ve loved a big sister.” He placed a hand on the stone, trying hard to conjure up a memory of Claire, of the two of them doing something together, but he couldn’t. She’d always been too ill.
Birds soared overhead and chirped a chorus from the tall hedges planted along the side gates. Elliot grew warm in the unrelenting sun, and though he knew his parents expected him to stay much longer, forty minutes was as long as he could take. By the time he reached the front, the car he’d called for was waiting, and he sank into its air-conditioned coolness. Traffic was the usual brutal snarl along Flatbush, and it took close to an hour to get home, thanks to the buses and double-parked cars.
A quick glance at Win’s empty driveway only exacerbated his rotten mood, and Elliot allowed the door to slam behind him. He stomped upstairs, threw off his sweaty clothes, and took a long shower. Feeling refreshed, he slipped on a pair of boxers and padded downstairs to his desk, where he sat and pounded out the final parts of his article and sent it to his editor. His stomach growled as he yawned and stretched, and he was shocked to see it was after four o’clock. Time to see what he could scrounge out of the refrigerator.
He stopped short at the sight of Win in his kitchen window across the yard. The handsome detective raised his hand in a wave and motioned for him to open the window, and did the same for his as well.
“Hey,” Win called out across the span between their houses. “What’s doing?”
“Just finished working. I didn’t realize you were home.”
“Makes sense, then, why I didn’t get an answer to my text.”
“Text?” Too late Elliot noticed he’d left his phone upstairs in the bedroom. “Sorry. I didn’t see it.”
