‘Go,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fine.’
I reached behind me to untie the apron I was wearing. ‘Tell Connie I’m on my way.’
13
TAYLOR
I picked up my keys from the sideboard and tucked my phone into an inside pocket of my jacket. ‘Will you be OK on your own if I go out for a few hours?’
‘No. I’ll pine to death from loneliness.’
I stared at Ray. He stared back at me. He caved first.
‘Of course I’ll bloody be OK,’ he snapped. ‘I’ve managed ninety-four years on this planet without you mollycoddling me, I’ll be perfectly fine to manage by myself for a few hours.’
‘You’re going to feel really stupid if you die now while I’m out.’
‘As long as I can come back and haunt you, it’ll be worth it. Anyway, you’re the one going out on that bike of yours.’
‘So?’
‘So if I had to put money on which one of us would be more likely to die today, it’d be you.’
I picked up my helmet and dusted a speck of dust off the top. ‘Sorry to be the one to break it to you, but I am an excellent and very careful rider.’
We both realized we’d strayed into dangerous territory at the same moment and exchanged a look of acknowledgment, signifying a truce and an end to that conversation.
‘Just… be careful,’ he said. ‘Your mother has been through enough.’
‘Agreed. You be careful too.’
‘I don’t plan on leaving my chair. It’s not me you need to worry about.’
It felt good to be on the bike again. I took the long way to town, around the island in the opposite direction. It was a ride that would normally take about an hour, but with the conversation with Ray fresh in mind, I took my time. Enjoyed the scenery. I did love living in the city, but I’d forgotten how much being surrounded by nature could do for the soul. Blow off the cobwebs, oxygenate the blood, that sort of thing. The road took me past the mountain lake and I stopped for ten minutes, skimmed a few rocks across the mirror surface of the water. Remembered countless swims here when I was a kid, nights drinking around campfires as a teen.
It struck me that away from here I thought of this place as constricting and small, somewhere I couldn’t wait to get out of. But when I was home, I was reminded of the beauty of this place. That a small community wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I peed behind a bush and got on the road again, feeling my mood darken as I got closer to my destination. It wasn’t nerves, but something akin to that. Apprehension.
The cemetery parking lot was empty when I got there, which I was relieved about. I didn’t want anyone I knew seeing me there. It would no doubt spark a conversation I didn’t want to have. A conversation I had, in fact, actively avoided for the past fourteen years. It wasn’t the only reason I’d left Pine Harbor, but it had been a big part of it.
It wasn’t the main cemetery in town. That honor went to Whispering Pines Cemetery down on Main Street, behind the church. I had a few relatives buried there, great-grandparents, my grandparents on my mother’s side, a great-aunt who I’d never met. Ray’s sister. She had died young from pneumonia, but I knew very little else about her. Whispering Pines was a nice cemetery, as far as cemeteries go. Well maintained, with manicured lawns and hedges and a rose garden in the center with a little water fountain in the shape of an angel. Even the older graves, the hulking gray stones with the barely legible writing, were looked after by council staff. There was a group of women in town, including my mother, who unofficially placed flowers onto strangers’ graves. Flowers they had grown in their own gardens. It was a nice gesture. The local paper had even run a front-page feature on them once. My mother had clipped out the article and sent it to me.
But the cemetery on the top of the hill overlooking the Atlantic Ocean was different. Most of the graves were older, dating back to when settlers first arrived here and built the town and the shipbuilding yards. There were exceptions though, the odd newer graves dotted here and there, obvious by their modern headstones. I headed for one in the back row, closest to the top of the cliff, the spot chosen by me all those years ago. I’d been adamant that it had to be that spot, even though my mother had been less keen. I was glad, now, as I made my way through the older graves up to it, that I had stuck to my guns.
He’d always loved the ocean, had been a proper water baby. Whether it was swimming, fishing, surfing or sailing, most of the time if you needed him, that’s where you’d find him. Either in or on the water. That last summer he’d finally landed his dream job, out on one of the lobster boats. My mother had been less than thrilled; she wanted him to go to university, find a career less dangerous, less taxing. More profitable. But it was all he’d ever wanted to do. Unlike me, he never planned on leaving Pine Harbor. His dreams were simple: work his way up to owning his own boat, build himself a house on the water somewhere, marry a nice girl and have a few kids. I found his certainty in his future unnerving, but I was also jealous. Unlike him, I had no idea what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go. I loved my art, and I was good at it, but I had no idea how to turn that into an actual career. It was actually his death that had pointed me in the right direction. A few months after he died, Adam and I got matching tattoos in his honor, and watching the man use the needle to create art on my skin had been one of those defining moments in life.
My mother had been here fairly recently. The glass vase on his grave was stuffed with flowers – daylilies and lavender. I could hear bees humming as they took advantage. The day was warm and I was wearing my bike leathers, but I wasn’t uncomfortable because of that. Most of the time I could ignore the guilt that had been a permanent part of my psyche since the moment I found out he had died. The years had made it easier to live with. It was just another part of me, absorbed and acclimatized. But here in this town, and especially right here in front of his grave, it bubbled through the apathy to the surface again, making itself known, weighing me down with its unbearable weight.
‘Hey Cal,’ I said softly, my eyes tracing the white lettering of his name.
Calvin Calderwood
12/06/1993 – 12/06/2011
Loved and cherished son of Moira and John Calderwood
Adored twin brother of Taylor Calderwood
Gone but never forgotten, he rests now amongst the stars.
