30
FINN
Easton had askedif I wanted to grab dinner with him, but I’d refused. I had my secret project to complete, plus my mind was too jumbled to be around anyone.
Once I finished up, I headed into town. The streetlights flickered on as the sun set, and I wandered aimlessly until I found myself in front of the Starlight Grove cemetery. I hadn’t been here since the day we buried my grandparents. I barely remembered that day. Just the smell of the wet earth, the feel of the sun shining down, and Lars and Easton refusing to leave my side.
I opened the metal gate now and wound through the gravestones until I found the one I was looking for.
Fredrik and Carina West.
They were buried together. They’d barely spent a day apart when they were alive.
Beloved grandparents and parents.
The grave was bare, and I hated that. I should have brought them flowers. I would tomorrow.
My eyes trailed down to the poem they’d included on the stone, one by Federico García Lorca.
Ay, the pain it costs me
to love you as I love you!
For love of you, the air, it hurts,
and my heart,
and my hat, they hurt me.
Who would buy it from me,
this ribbon I am holding,
and this sadness of cotton,
white, for making handkerchiefs with?
Ay, the pain it costs me
to love you as I love you!
I hadn’t understood it when my grandpa had chosen it after my grandma died, but reading the poem now, I thought I understood. My grandparents had experienced a lot of loss in love, but they had chosen it anyway.
They knew it would hurt, and they chose it anyway.
I leaned against the headstone and cried.
31
FINN
I walkedthe path from the lighthouse down to the beach, hoping I would find Olive there. Lars texted us earlier that she was eating dinner at his house before heading back home. I’d knocked on the cottage door, but she hadn’t answered.
My feet hit the sand, and there she was, sitting on a large, flat rock.
Anxiety surged through every part of my body as I approached her. She glanced up at me and then looked back at the horizon.
“Can I join you?” My voice was like gravel.
