Chapter 12

Chapter

Twelve

TO RECALL

Grief is not a disorder, a disease, or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical, and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure to grief is to grieve.

Earl Grollman

" O pen your eyes," Mare's soft voice purred in my ear.

I did as I was told, tears staining my cheeks. The cemetery was now littered with pumpkins and casted in an orange glow. I was dreaming, now, and he'd come for me.

Mare leaned against his gravestone and regarded me with all of his bad-boy charm. "Pretty creepy falling asleep in a cemetery."

I chuckled, as I wiped my face. "Creepier haunting one, nerd."

He smirked, helping me to stand, and cupping my jaw. "I'm not haunting the cemetery, I'm haunting you. They keep coming for me, trying to get me to go to the other side, but I keep evading them."

"You have to move on, Mare."

"Not until you do."

Sorrow pierced my soul. I couldn't believe what I was saying. I didn't want him to move on, I wanted him to stay with me, wanted him to be alive again forever. But he couldn't keep playing Phantom in my nightmares— if heaven existed, it was made for Mare, and it's where he deserved to go.

"I can't move on," I buried my face into his very real, hard, chest and cried.

His fingers tangled in my hair as he held me close. "You have to. We have to."

"How do I live without you? With this aching hole in my heart every day?"

Mare's gaze softened, and a cool October breeze swirled around us. "You live in the knowing that you'll see me again… and I want so many stories about your life when you do. Someday, baby, when you're old and gray… fall asleep and wait for me, and I'll come get you."

Tears mixed into my mouth like saltwater as he kissed me. He kissed me slow and deep, and I tasted every bit of the man I loved, the man I'd lost, the man who'd saved my life, saved my dad's life, forfeiting his own, and then came to find me in the afterlife. Mare had avoided eternal bliss just to chase me through my nightmares. How could I live without him?

Or rather, I supposed… how could I not live for him?

He cocked his head and tucked my hair behind my ears before tugging at my wrist for inspection. "I'm keeping this," he smiled, pulling off my paperclip bracelet and latching it onto his wrist. "Make more of them for when I see you next."

"Don't be late. Promise?" I asked, my chest aching from his touch.

He kissed my forehead. "Don't be early. Promise?"

I nodded as he pulled away. The orange light behind a trail of pumpkins illuminated behind him. He hesitated, eyeing me, one final look of wondering if I were okay.

"I'm going to bring you so many stories, Mare."

He smiled, and his shoulders relaxed. "I'm going to hold you to that, Lilac."

I watched as he walked the path of pumpkins, following the light, until it all went hazy, and I sat up— awake. Alone next to his grave. I pulled up my wrist— my bracelet gone.

Mare was gone.

The paranormal was a comfort— the slamming back into normal was decidedly not. I crumpled onto my dead boyfriend's grave and rested my head on my knees and sobbed. I sobbed until the tears dried out, and only my chest heaved in anguish.

Mare was gone.

Mare had stayed to haunt my nights.

And instead of holding onto his ankles and weeping, I'd let him go, I'd let him move on. He deserved to move on. But how could I?

This pain, this loss, was worse than death, and I'd wished I hadn't left my headphones in the car when a hand gripped my shoulder.

Startled, I looked up to see Sam, clutching two glass bottles of pop. "Don't be mad," she said. "I saw your location on my phone and thought… well… I thought you might want an orange soda."

I wiped my nose on my sleeve and gurgled out something like a laugh, or a sob, I wasn't sure, as I took the drink and my sister sat next to me. "Cheers," I said morbidly as I popped the bottle cap on the edge of Mare's gravestone, and the drink fizzed.

Sam gave a weak smile and did the same with her purple soda. "To Mare."

"He was the best boyfriend," I whispered, taking a sip and wishing the bubbles could burn away my pain.

My sister wrapped an arm around me. "He's still looking after you, Lucy. He would want you to be happy, he would want you to move forward."

"I know." After a few moments, I asked, "Was his service nice? You know I couldn't get out of bed to go."

Sam shrugged. "A bunch of sniffling jocks and sobbing theater kids talking about how great Mare was."

"He would have hated that," I huffed a sad laugh. "Mare hated it when anyone cried, he'd instantly want to do something goofy to make them smile."

Sam wrapped her arm around my shoulder and squeezed. "I'm glad you're out of bed now, Lucy."

Emotion gripped my throat, and though we were alone, I felt Mare with me. Felt his kind eyes, his gentle encouragement.

We sat in silence, leaning against Mare's grave as the cold air cracked through brittle tree branches.

I held out my palm. "Can I have your bottle cap?"

Sam grinned. "Going to make something?"

"Yeah," I fiddled with the ridges of the tin circle. "I think I'm going to make a lot of somethings."

My nylon duffle strap bit into my shoulder as I stood on the old porch. I rang the doorbell, something I'd never done before. The walls were so thin I could hear the game from the television shut off, the floor creak under his weight, and his cane as he opened the front door.

A little less jolly, a little more grey, a touch more wrinkled. My dad smiled down at me with a happy but confused expression. "Hello, sweetheart. Are you here to… get more of your things?"

I swallowed, unsure why I was getting emotional. The realization that in my mind, I'd killed my dad. In reality, I'd almost killed my dad. In real life, I'd made myself forget he existed so I could bury the pain of losing my boyfriend. Instead seeping into the selfishness of sleep… in all that, my dad had to deal with the accident on his own.

For once, I felt grateful for my sister, because I knew she'd taken care of him. But I should have been there, too.

I rubbed the back of my neck. "No, I thought… I don't know… that maybe I could move back in?"

Daddy, I've missed you. Daddy, I'm so sorry. Daddy, I'm so lonely. Daddy, please don't be mad. Daddy, please don't slam the door and tell me to go away.

My dad's bushy grey eyebrows furrowed, and he pinched tears from his eyes with a sniffle. "Come here and hug your old man. Of course, Lucy, you can always come home. You never have to ask. You never have to ring the doorbell."

The tears I'd hidden from him, from the world, from myself for months— splotched into my dad's cotton T-shirt. "I'm sorry," I wept into his big, bear-like chest.

My dad only held me close in that safe, nothing-else-matters way only fathers can hold their babies. And when he told me everything would be okay, I halfway believed him. Taking my duffle from my shoulder, easing the burden of the past and present with his loving arms, and he ushered me inside.

Home.

The house smelled the same. Like bacon grease and construction sheetrock and soil from my dad's day job. It was comforting, even the hum of sports on his radio was nice. I found myself no longer wanting to burn it all down.

He joined me in the living room, holding a giant bag of red licorice. "Movie night?"

A smile, a real smile, warmed my face. And I felt a pang of guilt at that moment as I remembered. Part of me wanted to force the memory away so it wouldn't hurt so much. Part of me felt like I didn't deserve to smile. The spot on the sofa was still indented from where Mare would sit, ankle over knee, ready to laugh and heckle me as I hid from the masked killer in the horror movie. Memories flooded back of Sam throwing popcorn at me and my dad and his deep laughter at our joined antics.

But instead of hating the feeling, instead of raging against it, or burying it. I let it sit with us, let the emotions chew between my teeth as I tasted strawberry licorice again. Mare could be more than a nightmare if I'd let him. Mare could be an angel of care, a legacy of love. The memories would hurt for a while, or maybe even forever, but I wanted to keep him close, somehow.

"I'll text Sam," I offered as my dad thumbed through a stack of DVDs.

He pulled one out and stopped before showing me, remembering himself. I knew what he was remembering. "It's okay," I encouraged. "I'm okay."

Was I? Would I ever be? All I wanted was to go to sleep and search for him again.

"Nightmare on Elm Street," my dad said softly. "One of Mare's favorites."

"Let's watch it with him. He's still with us, in a way, I think."

Sam was next to me ten minutes later as the film rolled.

Dad laughed, my sister and I clinked our glass soda bottles, and my boyfriend's old seat sat empty.

But I felt him there. I remembered him. I wasn't asleep, I was awake, and I remembered. And Mare was there.

And that night, I logged in my mind a story I'd tell Mare someday.

One of many bittersweet tales.

Sam tapped my wrist. "Nice bracelet. Orange soda and grape soda?"

I nodded, as Dad left to refill the popcorn. "From that day in the cemetery. I think I'll wear it forever."

Sam handed me her bottle cap and scooped mine off the coffee table. "Make me one with these?"

Something sparked inside me. Ideas maybe, the urge to create again, for the first time the desire to share my jewelry with others. "Okay, I'll make you one, too."

Mare had the other bracelet I'd made. Wherever he was, in the pumpkin maze of heaven built for him. So, I'd wear our matching bracelets until I saw him again. I'd make more of them, too.

Somewhere deep inside me, I knew he was proud.