“Okay, okay, I get it.”
“But you also just... sigh out of nowhere sometimes. I’ll walk by the library and hear you sighing at your laptop.”
“Well, that’s because my computer isn’t working correctly. Apparently, it won’t write my screenplay for me. I should call Geek Squad or go to the Genius Bar or something.”
“And then sometimes you even sigh in your sleep.”
“You watch me while I’m sleeping? How very Edward Cullen of you.”
“Who texted you?” he asked, not willing to expound upon his habit of watching me sleep.
I turned to look out the window as we veered off the main drag and toward the outskirts of town, where I could see the sign for the North Pole, which was the greatest name for a strip club of all time. “No one,” I told him. “It was no one.”
Isaac didn’t prod, and I supposed that was the good thing about him being a professional Sad Boy. He knew when exactly to push and when to just let something be. He was comfortable with the uncomfortable, which wasn’t something I could say about myself. But it did make it easy to let him see both sides ofme. The woman who bubbled with joy and possibility and the girl who’d lived with grief for so long it had become a part of her and who had been alienated by the only family she had left. Most people hated witnessing other people’s sadness, because it reminded them of their own. For Isaac, sadness was an old, familiar friend.
We drove through a snowy valley just a few miles south of town until Isaac turned onto a narrow road with an arched wrought iron sign overhead, readingsaint nicholas’s cemetery.
The grounds were covered in a fresh dusting of snow, and even though I wanted to be cremated and have my cremains spread at my favorite pupusa place in East LA, I could settle for being buried here under the snow of Christmas Notch. The grave markers were scattered across a rolling hill, and near the small mausoleum, I could see the hologram of Santa Claus that the visitor center proudly boasted about.
Isaac parked near the entrance, since the road winding through the cemetery hadn’t been plowed. I zipped my sad excuse for a winter coat up to my chin before hopping out of the truck and slamming the rickety door shut behind me.
“So what do we do? Just scan the headstones until we find his name?”
Isaac nodded as he stepped into the fresh snow and held his arm out for me to take. “The ladies couldn’t find a picture online, but this place isn’t so big. We just need to look for James Dugan.”
I followed him, immediately thankful I’d laced up my Doc Martens today.
The sun began to creep through the clouds, alleviating the chill in the air a bit as we took our time weaving through headstones. We started out in the older part of the cemetery, which was less planned and symmetrical. The dates were allover the place and most were long before my mailman would have died, but I didn’t want to chance missing a clue, so we soaked in the sun and took our time.
“I think I’ve been in a cemetery only a handful of times,” I said.
“Do you ever visit your parents?” Isaac’s voice was soft, our arms still looped together.
“They’re at the house,” I said. “Which my brother lives in with his family now.”
“Doesn’t it belong to you too?”
I thought about that for a moment. “I guess so. But I left, and he didn’t.”
Isaac pressed his lips together, like he had something to say about that, but thought better of it. “So their urns are there then?”
I shook my head. “Mom and Dad chose to naturally decompose. Their remains turned to soil and were used to plant two magnolia trees on the property.”
Isaac looked at me. “I think I would like to be a tree. Losing leaves. Growing new ones. Sun, rain, wind... I think a lot about if we feel anything after, and if we do, I think I’d like that.”
“I miss the trees,” I said.
He nodded, like of course it was normal to miss trees.
“I mean, I missthemtoo, of course. But I think about the magnolias sometimes and wonder if they’re bigger than I remember or if one of them has a bird’s nest or something. Isn’t that sort of ridiculous? They’re just trees.”
He crossed his arm over his chest and gripped my hand where it sat draped through his other arm. “It’s the least ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard and I’ve heard you baby talk to Mr.Tumnus.”
I let my head loll onto his shoulder for a brief second.
We looked at every headstone for any sign of James Dugan, but after hundreds of names, we came up empty.
“Now it feels like the universe is playing a joke on us,” he said after we circled back to the front, pointing to a faded marble headstone with an envelope with angel wings engraved above the nameJames Dugan.It was literally the first headstone we’d passed.
