It wasn’t so much that she didn’t need help – it was just that she didn’t want it.
Heather had been going strong for almost eighteen years – it was too little too late to ask her to patch her life up now. She had grown accustomed to the ruins. She didn’t want to rebuild her life from the ground up into something new and unfamiliar that towered so high it was all she could see. Ruin she could navigate – with all the rubble on the ground, she could at least see the stars.
She didn’t need some hyperactive therapist with painted nails and an overbite to come striding into her business and start building skyscrapers. And she really didn’t need a “good Christian boy” to follow her around at the request of his mother. What happened to shrink-patient confidentiality? Or was she just special?
Of course Doctor Tammy Hampton never said outright that she’d employed her son as a personal spy, so she hadn’t technically broken any rules, but Heather was no idiot. Tammy had been hinting at it for weeks, and then all of a sudden, a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed guy she didn’t know suddenly decided to take interest in her existence. And he just happened to be the spawn of her very own shrink.
The day she met Nathan Hampton was, in the only way it could be described, a bad day. She’d been leaving the community center after her most recent session with Tammy when he suddenly appeared by the front door. She’d seen the guy before, walking around the community center, wearing his khakis and button-ups or whatever else that kind of guy usually wore. She’d just never seen him smiling directly at her like he was about to teach a poor lonely soul about their lord and savior Jesus Christ.
He trotted up to her, blocking her way to the door. He was a good deal taller than her, and with his nonexistent appreciation for personal space, she had to arch her neck to look at him.
“Hey, you’re Heather Pierce, right?” he asked, feigning curiosity. Heather rolled her eyes.
“And you’re my ‘good Christian boy’, right?” she mimicked in a monotone, uninterested.
His cheesy salesman smile faltered for a moment before coming back full-force. “I’m not technically supposed to know what you’re talking about. But yeah. Or you could call me Nathan. That works too.” He waited for her to laugh, but her face stayed expressionless as she looked at him unflinchingly. After a short moment of awkwardness, Nathan held out his hand.
“Here, let me take your bag.”
Heather clutched the backpack (her sessions were always directly after school) tighter around her shoulders. It was heavy. The year was almost over and her teachers were starting to slack about as much as the kids had all year, assigning textbook pages instead of classwork. But Heather wasn’t about to hand some random guy her bag. She rolled her eyes at him again.
“No thanks,” she replied, attempting to walk past him, “I got it. I’ve been carrying it well enough without you – I’m sure my weak, girly bones can handle the walk home.”
To her surprise, he let her pass him, and Heather allowed herself a moment of victory, pushing open the door, before she heard his voice behind her.
“Ah…check.”
She whipped her head towards him, her good mood draining. His face was set as he nodded in affirmation about something. “What?” Heather demanded, angry that he seemed to be appraising her.
“Check,” he repeated, walking toward her. Heather immediately stormed out the door and began walking again to get away from him, but he only jogged ahead of her, walking backwards leisurely as she stomped toward home. “I kinda took you for the feminist, ‘how dare you be a gentleman’ type.” He nodded his head towards her bag, still hanging heavily on her shoulder. “Check.”
An affronted Heather resorted to her best weapon: sarcasm.
“Oh, so you have some sort of checklist. Please, tell me more, I’m so curious,” she bit out through clenched teeth, picking up her pace.
“Anger issues, for one,” he replied with a smirk. “Guess I can check that one off, too.”
Heather scoffed angrily and shook her head. “I preferred you when you looked like you were trying to sell me Jesus.”
“I can still do that if you like,” Nathan responded with a shrug. “You didn’t seem too into it, so I changed tactics.”
Heather found her sarcasm again, but the effect was slightly downgraded by how winded being simultaneously physically active and seething could make a person. “Yes, because everyone responds well to an asshole.”
“There’s a lot of assholes in the world and they do pretty well. Ever watched the news?” Nathan responded easily.
Heather realized then how close they had gotten to her house. Granted, she didn’t live far away, barely a walk with her shortcut through the woods, but she distinctly remembered the walk feeling longer. She wanted to end the conversation now before they got any closer. She stopped walking abruptly and Nathan stumbled back on his heels.
“Listen. I’m going to go home now and you’re not going to follow me today or any other day. Tell your mom I’ve made a huge breakthrough. Huzzah, I’m completely cured, praise god – or whatever the hell you want to tell her. I leave you alone and you leave me alone. Deal?”
“Huzzah?” he repeated, chuckling. “Sorry, no deal. You’re too funny.” He tilted his head to the side. “Well that, and my mom seemed pretty set on having me look out for you – though just so you know, if you try to make me admit that to anyone I’m going to lie through my teeth. My mom’s never let me have anything to do with her work until now – I’m going to figure out what it is about you that made her change her mind.”
“Maybe she thinks I’m a future serial killer and wants you to make sure I don’t stab any civilians on my way home. Still want to hang off me?” Heather asked sarcastically. “When I snap I might just attack the closest person – which, right now, seems to be you.” She finally managed to walk away, stalking towards her house with a scowl. Behind her, she heard Nathan’s low, boyish laugh. When Heather turned her head she saw that he was thankfully walking in the other direction. But he had one last thing he wanted to say. His head turned towards her just as hers whipped away.
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take!”
~~~~
The next week, Tammy was upset, masking it behind a smile in true Tammy fashion.
“So, I hear you’ve made a new friend,” she said in that faux-motherly way only therapists can. “But apparently it didn’t work out. What happened?”
“Nothing. The guy was just kind of a loser, actually,” Heather replied with a vindictive smirk, and she would be lying if she said seeing Tammy’s smile fall didn’t give her any satisfaction.
“You have to start opening yourself up, Heather,” the woman sighed. “You can’t live a happy life if you trap yourself in your own mind all the time. You need a friend or a stress-reliever, something that can help you relax instead of letting yourself think too much. How has the painting been going?”
“Terribly. I suck at it.”
“How good you are doesn’t matter, sweetheart, what matters is if it helps you to –“
“It’s not helping. Things I suck at don’t make me feel better.”
Tammy let out a hum and relaxed into her office chair, clipboard balancing on her lap.
“The journal?”
“Nope.”
“Cross-stitching?”
“Very no.”
“Baking?”
“I’m worse at that than painting.”
Tammy pulled a hand through her curly brown hair, her sleek, red painted nails catching on the knots. “Then you have got to start helping me out, Heather. I am taking shots in the dark here trying to help you. Think. What in your life makes you feel safe, happy, relaxed, whatever? Anything. Past, present, or future. Help me out.”
Heather heaved a sigh before giving in. “Okay, um…” She thought back to the earlier years, when she wore pink clothes and her room was always clean. The years when her mom would hold her and tuck her in at night and take her shopping for cheap clothes at estate sales in faraway places, far away from her dad.
“Estate sales,” she decided. “Garage sales, anything.”
“What is it about them that you like?”
“The history of them, I guess. I don’t know. My mom would take me to them when I was a kid and it was just like…being surrounded by someone else’s life. I don’t know. You wanted something and I gave you something.”
~~~
Tammy sent her an email with a list of estate sales going on in the area. There were only two happening within the week – on Tuesday, a guy selling all of his stuff before he started his life on the road; Friday, an old woman who had died earlier that month with no will or known family to pass her possessions down to. Heather replied a few minutes later, saying she’d take a look at the second one which seemed cool, but the sale was a fifteen minute drive away and she had no car. Tammy immediately responded with only the words “That won’t be a problem”.
Nathan Hampton showed up at her house Friday afternoon, sitting in a red economy car with munchies and soft drinks. As the window in Heather’s room faced the front of the house, she was thankfully able to notice him before her dad could. He had already had a few beers and there were three more six-packs in the fridge. Heather decided that leaving the house now would be best, even if it had to be with Nathan.
“Dad?” she called out hesitantly, cautiously, grabbing a jacket.
“Mmrgh?” her father gargled shortly in response.
“I’m going out, so I can’t make dinner. I don’t know when I’ll be home. There’s leftover lasagna in the fridge if you want it.”
“Will you shuddup? Imma grown-ass man, Heaver. Jus’ go alrheadeh.”
Making her way outside, choosing to go around the back way, Heather jogged to the car and climbed into the passenger’s seat.
“Well hello,” Nathan greeted, seeming surprised by how eager she appeared to be.
“Just drive,” Heather demanded.
“Jeez, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today,” he scoffed, but took her instructions regardless. “So,” he started. “Estate sales.”
“Yep,” Heather responded, looking out the window and closing any room for discussion by turning up the volume of the radio until it was blasting whatever ‘latest hits’ Nathan had been playing. Thankfully, Nathan could take a hint, and they drove in silence the whole way, the music bouncing around the car. Surprisingly, Heather kind of liked a few songs – though she’d never admit it.
The house was huge. Heather knew this lady must have been well off because the place reeked of antiquity and snooty middle-aged people. Heather hopped out of the car, not looking back at Nathan. She heard him grumble something inaudible and climb out of the car himself.
One step in the house, and Heather felt a weight fall of her shoulders. The place was beautiful. It was covered in busted-up hardwood flooring, old wallpaper and the entire place smelled like old people’s houses always did. After wandering the first floor for a while, Heather walked up to the agent by the door and asked, “Where’s the lady’s bedroom?”
The man gave her an odd look, but pointed her on her way, Nathan trailing behind her up the wooden staircase like a lost puppy.
“The bedroom?” he asked. “You do realize how creepy that is, right?”
“She was an old lady. I’m not looking for hidden porn.”
“Hey, you never know with these lonely cat-lady types,” Nathan shrugged.
“Gross,” Heather responded with a groan, turning down the hallway the man had pointed to. “The best stuff is always in the bedrooms,” she informed him, opening the door to the old lady’s room.
Painted an olive green with what the home improvement channel would call “ivory accents”, the room was pretty standard. Big bed, no television, single closet and yet still a large wardrobe with a matching dresser. And it was on this dresser that Heather saw a beautiful vase, intricately detailed but with a subtlety that Heather loved. She walked up to it and brushed her fingers along the side, feeling the dents of the carvings and gliding the tips of her fingers over the lid that covered the vase – an odd detail that Heather paid little mind. “The best stuff is always in the bedrooms,” she repeated.
“It’s pretty,” Nathan agreed.
“And only twenty dollars,” Heather said, holding up the price tag.
“I guess if you want bargains, look no further than dead people’s houses.”
That actually made Heather laugh. “Yeah.”
“Are you going to get it?”
“Yeah,” Heather said again. “I just hope your maniac driving won’t break it on the way back.”
“Hey!”
With another laugh, Heather started going through the top drawers of the dresser, where people usually kept little trinkets. Instead, she found a small book, bound in leather.
“Must be a diary,” Nathan said from over her shoulder. Heather nodded. “No price tag, though,” he continued.
“Let’s go ask the agent.”
“Wait – you actually want that?” Nathan asked, surprised as Heather started toward the door with the book and the vase in hand.
“Well, yeah. Don’t you want to find out what was so interesting about this lady that she wanted to write it down?”
“No. Not really.”
They reached the agent again, who told Heather with a shrug that if she wanted the book, she could have it for, say, five bucks. Heather handed him twenty five dollars and headed back to Nathan’s car. He jogged after her, still confused, but got back in the car nonetheless.
“You want to leave already?”
In truth, she didn’t. Part of her wanted to wander the large house for hours, but another part of her worried that no matter what her dad said, if she wasn’t home by dinner, there would be hell to pay. But she wasn’t about to tell Nathan that. “I want to read the diary. Shh.”
Nathan started driving again while Heather read silently. They continued on that way, silent, and Nathan began to think the whole trip was a waste, until Heather spoke.
“Listen,” she said, flipping through the pages. “She had a daughter…but she died when she was like one year old. Fever or something.”
“Interesting.”
“Shut up.” She leafed through page after page, before landing on another one she found interesting. “Oh look, there was a man, too - Wilson. Must have been her husband. Also dead. Jeez, this lady has no luck. She says, ‘I gave Wilson a funeral today. I felt cremation was the best way. His urn now sits beside me on the dresser. A beautiful thing, really. It suits him. I had planned to spread his ashes under Timothy Bridge, where we first met, but I’m afraid I haven’t got the heart.’ Every single thing she says just sounds so goddamned sad.”
“Wait – an urn?”
“Yeah, what?”
“On the dresser?”
“That’s what it says – oh my god.”
~~~
Nathan called Tammy and explained that they’d be later than he’d expected because they had to turn around and put the urn back. But Tammy Hampton was having none of it.
“Well you have to put them where they belong!” she said through the speakerphone of Nathan’s cell.
“Yeah, Mom,” replied Nathan, “That’s what I just said. We’re taking them back to the house.”
“No, you need to put them where they belong! Those people at the estate sale are going to toss those ashes in the garbage. You mentioned that the old woman wanted them put somewhere. Take them there. It’s spring break, you have your car, you have your credit card, you have the ashes…everything seems to have fallen into place. Maybe you’re meant to –“
“Oh my god,” Heather groaned.
“ – take this man’s ashes –“
“Mom, this place is forever away.”
“ – to their final resting place.”
Nathan sighed loudly enough for the woman on the other end to pick up. “It will take hours to get there and to get back. Like over a day. We’ll be driving overnight even if we don’t stop,” he reminded her.
“I will call Heather’s father and let him know, then. You’re eighteen, Nathan, I trust you to be able to buy a change of clothes and a hotel room if you need to. Give that man some peace, may he rest in heaven.”
~~~
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Heather said for the fifth time in an hour.
“What the boss says, goes,” Nathan replied with a shrug of his shoulders, keeping his eyes on the highway. They still had a long way to go, according to Nathan’s rinky-dink GPS.
“She’s your mom, not your boss.”
“Is there a difference?” he shot back.
“How the hell should I know,” Heather muttered in response, wiggling herself into a comfortable position on the seat and resting her head against the window.
The urn sat a seat behind them, wrapped in Nathan’s sports clothes from the back and then securely buckled into the seat like a small child. The diary still sat on Heather’s lap, but she hadn’t gone sifting through it much more since their discovery. She had been an idiot not to realize that a vase with a lid probably wasn’t a decorative flower holder.
Though in her defense, she hadn’t expected ashes to be fair game at estate sales.
They spent some time in silence, but it wasn’t long until Nathan cracked.
“Heather,” he said softly, looking at the back of her head from where it still rested on the window. “Are you asleep?”
“No.”
She turned her head to look at him, rubbing the sore spot on her forehead where it was pressed against the glass, and noticed his barely contained smile.
“Did we just buy a dead guy for twenty dollars?”
It took her a minute, but Heather, too, cracked a smile. “We just bought some old lady’s dead husband for twenty dollars.” She held up the diary. “And the rest of her for five.”
They shared their first laugh then, the both of them giddy from the shock of buying the worst thing ever bought at an estate sale.
~~~
A borderline-unsanitary burger joint and Nathan’s bag of munchies later, Heather and Nathan were halfway to their destination. Their conversations didn’t go far past idle chatter, but the ice seemed to have finally broken as they toasted cheap water bottles to long life and dead husbands.
“Can I ask you a question?” Nathan finally asked as they drove down the highway, Heather’s feet propped on the dash.
“Depends.”
“Why estate sales? Usually girls like shopping and getting their nails done or like puppies and stuff, right?”
“Oh yeah, puppies are one of my favorite hobbies,” Heather scoffed sarcastically, but her voice held less bite than it used to.
“You know what I meant.”
Heather sighed. “Okay, well, my mom used to take me to estate sales and garage sales and stuff like that. We didn’t have a ton of money and you’d be surprised by what people will sell for cheap –“
“I was pretty surprised today, yeah,” Nathan interrupted with a laugh.
“Shut up. We’d get furniture and clothes and stuff and all for like fifty dollars or less. She’d drive me to all these places, hours away, even some out of state. It was like her favorite hobby and over the years, I don’t know, I started liking it too. It’s not some big involved story.”
“Does she not go anymore or something?” Nathan asked curiously, eyes still trained on the road.
Heather was surprised. “What, you mean she didn’t tell you?”
“Who tell me what?”
“Dude,” scoffed Heather bitterly, “my mom up and left when I was seven. I haven’t seen her in ten years.”
It was Nathan’s turn to be surprised. “Oh, crap, uh, sorry, I didn’t mean to – “
“Did your mom even tell you why I go see her?” Heather cut in.
“Well…no.”
Heather laughed, shocked. “I really could have been a future psycho killer and you wouldn’t even know!”
Nathan rolled his eyes with a smirk. “Something tells me you’re not a future psycho killer.”
“Why not? Is that not on your list or something?”
Nathan looked at her, pulling his eyes away from the road for a moment. “You aren’t really still on that? Heather, I was just trying to get a rise out of you. I never had – and still don’t have – a clue about who you really are besides the fact that you just look sad all the time and you like estate sales. That feminist thing was a lucky swing.”
“I’m not some kind of crazy feminazi.”
“That’s what they all say.”
“Shut up.”
“So…why do you see my mom?”
“Nathan, now is not the time – and, I look sad all the time?”
“Yeah,” Nathan said awkwardly, regretting his choice of words. “I don’t know, you just always seem, like…down. Like life just sucks and you’re taking it like a man – sorry – woman.”
“If you haven’t noticed by now that life sucks, we’re living on different planets. Though the prospect of you being an alien is surprisingly believable.”
~~~
They stopped at a hotel for the night – two separate rooms paid for by Nathan’s handy-dandy credit card – and hit the road again in the morning.
“I’m sorry for last night,” Nathan said after a long silence. “I bought more munchies.”
Heather looked at him for a moment before huffing out a sigh. “For Pete’s sake, you’re looking at me like you stole the last cookie or something. It’s fine. Let’s go throw an old guy off a bridge.”
“No, I’m making it up to you. The map at the hotel said there was a Denny’s up ahead. I’m buying you breakfast,” Nathan said cheerfully, but his cover was blown when his stomach rumbled loudly.
Heather scoffed. “Yeah, sure, it has nothing to do with the fact that you haven’t eaten anything since we finished off the snacks you bought yesterday. Now drive, I want pancakes.”
True to her word, Heather bought a mound of pancakes that she promptly drowned in hot maple syrup, much to Nathan’s amusement.
“You can eat a lot for someone who looks like a twig.”
Heather only smirked around another bite of pancake.
They ate quietly, the clinking of plates the only noise between them, before Heather made a decision.
“Dysthymia,” she blurted suddenly, catching Nathan off guard.
“Um…what?” He asked.
“The reason I go see your mom. It’s called dysthymia. Chronic depression. It used to be worse before, but I’ve kinda gotten a grip on it now.”
“Hey, Heather, you don’t have to – I shouldn’t have pried in the first place, I –“
“No, it’s fine.” She was quiet for a moment, figuring out what she wanted to tell him and how to tell it. The floodgates had seemed to open now that someone actually wanted to know, and she was riding the waves without a life vest. “My dad…well my dad’s always been a piece of crap. My mom and him had me when they were in college and their parents persuaded them to marry to keep it pure or whatever. He never really got to have that whole rebellious, out of control frat boy thing, so he’s kinda stuck in that phase even now I guess. He goes to work, gets drunk, passes out, and does it again the next day. He’s always been like that, even when Mom was around.
“He was terrible to her. Dad’s always been an angry drunk. The type that gets into those big bar fights in movies, you know? Well, Dad didn’t go to bars. He stayed at home, so there weren’t many options for him by way of a punching bag. But…there were two options. You know what I mean?”
Nathan nodded, his breakfast forgotten as he gave her his full attention. “You and your mom.”
“You catch on quick. Congrats, I’ve officially told you more than I’ve told your mom.”
“She doesn’t know?”
“Nope,” Heather said, popping the ‘p’. “Anyway, when I was seven, Mom was fed up. I don’t know why, but one day she just dragged these massive suitcases down the stairs and said she was leaving. Walked out the door like it was nothing. Never saw her again.
“That’s when it got bad. Dad got more drunk more often and more angry when he did. At me. If I’d never come along, he’d say, he never would have lost his job, he’d never have had such a crappy job in the first place, he’d be playing golf with the CEO of some big company, he’d be married to a woman he actually loved with a kid he actually wanted, blah blah blah. All this stuff. The guidance counselor at my school back then said they’d noticed my bad moods and my declining grades and thought it was worth looking into. Dad obviously didn’t do anything about it.
“Eighth grade was probably the worst. Some days I just didn’t want to get out of bed at all. I didn’t want to eat, I didn’t want to sleep, I didn’t want to be awake; I just didn’t want to do anything. The middle school counselor ‘strongly suggested’ I see a doctor because he had ‘reason to believe’ I had Major Depressive Disorder. I didn’t. Turns out people with dysthymia can have major depressive episodes – explains eighth grade anyway. I didn’t end up going to the doctor until this past year, though. I shook off the worst of it on my own over time – I mean at least I can get up in the morning now. One of our neighbors had called in a report to the police about a ‘disturbance’ at my house on one of Dad’s angrier nights. He yells, you know? He played off the report by saying I must have somehow lied to the neighbor into thinking there was something going on and that I had this terrible mental disorder and he was going to see about getting me some help. I started seeing your mom a month later.”
Realizing she’d drawn to a close, Heather heaved a sigh. “So there you go, the long and involved story,” she concluded. “Dysthymia. That’s why I see your mom.”
Nathan was silent for a long moment before a look of epiphany took over his features. “I think I get it now,” he said eventually.
That’s all he has to say? Heather thought to herself, but what came out of her mouth was, “Get what?”
“Why my mom cares so much about having someone watch out for you. Mom’s always said that my aunt Meredith is the reason she became a therapist. Has she ever told you about her?”
“No,” Heather drew out, confused.
“She…well, killed herself when my mom was a teenager. She was bipolar and it got pretty bad. My mom says when she was having a good day, she was bouncing off the walls, acting like she was high or something. Then all of a sudden, after a while she’d just drop off this cliff and she’d be cynical and snappy or crying and not eating and muttering about how she didn’t want to exist anymore. Then one day, my mom got home from school and…well she found…Meredith. She overdosed on her medication – swallowed the entire bottle of pills. She doesn’t like to talk about it much. Most of what I know is stuff my dad has told me. They were dating when it happened.” Nathan suddenly realized the implications of what he’d just said. “I don’t mean you remind her of Meredith like you want to kill yourself, but – “
“But I probably do,” Heather cut in, and Nathan was silent.
Their food was long since cold, and suddenly the chatter around them seemed very loud. Heather was the first to speak.
“We should go dump a dead guy over a bridge.”
~~~
It was only a few more hours of driving silently until they traced the highlighted route on the GPS to a large park. Children were flying kites in the spring winds, and elderly couples were walking slowly along a winding path through the trees. Nathan and Heather, the dead man’s ashes released from their seat in Nathan’s car, took some time trying to figure out which of the three bridges running over the stream was Timothy Bridge. Thankfully, an old man passing by was able to point the two lost teenagers in the right direction.
Timothy Bridge, named in memoriam of a small boy who had died – or so the sign beside the bridge proclaimed – was nothing special. Standing atop it, Nathan and Heather wondered how something so ordinary could possibly be worth the trip.
“Wait,” Heather said with a start, not waiting for Nathan to follow before racing back to the car. She returned minutes later, the old woman’s diary in hand.
“I figured we should dump this, too, you know?”
“Good idea,” Nathan smiled in the gentler, more knowing way he had been since they’d eaten breakfast. Heather, however, preferred to pretend nothing had happened, so Nathan didn’t mention it again, instead focusing on the full urn he held in his arms.
“Should we say something?” he asked. Heather thought for a moment.
“Wilson,” she started, “we have no idea who you were. So I can’t say any funny stories about you or anything like that. But I guess…your wife really must have loved you. Couldn’t even do this herself before she followed you out. She said she wanted you put here, so…this is us…doing that.”
“Beautifully put,” Nathan said with feigned sincerity, and Heather nudged his shoulder. “What she said,” he addressed the urn.
He had the great honor, as Heather had called it, of pouring the ashes into the water. Scrunching his nose and popping the lid, he tipped the urn over itself and they both watched as the brownish-grey contents scattered themselves to disappear within the gentle waves. They watched them in complete silence until they were all gone. Beside her, Nathan took a deep breath and leaned against the bridge’s railing.
Heather took one last look at the diary before tossing it in after the ashes. It floated downstream for a few moments before sinking down out of sight. Another beat of silence passed.
“Done,” Nathan eventually sighed. “Hope Wilson can swim,” he joked, but his heart didn’t seem into it.
Heather chuckled halfheartedly, still looking at the spot where the diary had sunk, before something occurred to her.
“I didn’t even figure out what her name was.”
“Who?” Nathan asked.
“The old lady,” she said in realization. “All that, and I never figured out what her name was. She never said it in the diary.”
She thought about the forever nameless old woman and her daughter and her husband and remembered that they were all dead. These two dumb teenagers had just had an unceremonious ceremony for this guy that never got a proper funeral because of his dead wife that was so alone, she couldn’t let him go. The entire time they’d been driving, and she hadn’t once really given thought to the fact that she was doing some sad, dead old woman a favor by putting the ashes of her loved one where she would have wanted them.
Nathan broke her out of her reverie. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“This, look,” he said, reaching down to pick something up beside Heather’s feet. “Must have fallen out of the diary before you threw it in.”
“I doubt it, I went through all of those pages,” Heather said, “I didn’t find any pictures.”
“No look, it says ‘Wilson and I, 1963’ on the back. Wow, she was attractive when she was younger,” Nathan commented.
“Now who’s being creepy?” Heather responded, thinking back to his comments at the estate sale. She snatched the photo from Nathan’s fingers and studied the couple in the picture. “This is a wedding photo,” she realized, taking in the couple’s attire. “And there’s good old Wilson.”
The woman in the photo was radiant. Her arm was slung happily over her partner’s shoulders as she beamed at the camera with a toothy smile. Beside her, a young man, his head seemingly unconsciously tilting towards his bride, clutched her waist, holding her to his side. His smile was directed not at the camera, but at the woman beside him, his smile much smaller and so intimate Heather almost felt she was intruding on them somehow by looking at it.
“Should we toss it in the water?” Nathan asked, watching Heather continue to stare at the photograph.
Heather took a long pause before responding distantly: “No…I think I wanna keep it. Call it a souvenir.”
Nathan didn’t argue, but offered her a small smile. “Okay.”
He let the silence drag on for a minute longer before popping the bubble of privacy they’d been standing in – just Nathan, Heather, and the couple. “Should we start heading back?”
“No,” Heather responded quickly, before explaining, “I don’t want to go back yet. Can we just stay at the park for a while?”
Nathan nodded, fitting his hand in hers in what he hoped was a comforting gesture. Surprisingly, Heather didn’t try move away. Taking a deep, purifying breath, she tucked the photo in her pocket and wordlessly squeezed Nathan’s hand. With a smile, he led her off the bridge, walking away from the path that would take them back to his car.
They walked in a comfortable silence, interrupted occasionally by Nathan’s comments about the beauty of the park and Heather’s murmured agreements until they found an empty park bench to sit on. Somehow Nathan’s arm found its way over her shoulders, and somehow Heather’s head found itself resting against his chest.
Nathan Hampton had come into her ruins without her consent and started building. He built brick by brick, panel by panel, and wall by wall. He didn’t hand her a hammer and demand that she raise up a city from the ashes, taller than she would ever be. Nathan Hampton was slowly building her a small, little house. Nothing fancy, nothing large, but a place for her to rest her head, light a warming fire, and perhaps frame a picture of a couple, young and in love, from 1963.
And the best part was, she could still see the stars.