Marley gasps, and I witness what I can only define as an out-of-body experience, sheer cuteness overload.
She runs over, and the employee comes to unlock the door and get the small puppy out of its cage. “This one just got here last night. We found her abandoned by that pond over on Hickory Street.”
The dog launches herself into Marley’s hands, and she cuddles her sweetly, almost reverently. She grabs a tiny ball from the front of the cage, and the two of them begin to play with it, the puppy’s little paws attacking Marley’s fingers as she rolls the ball back and forth.
“This is exactly like the puppy I’ve always wanted,” she says, looking up at me, her eyes glistening.
“I think we found a winner,” I say, watching as Marley holds the pup up, staring at it lovingly.
After she fills out the application and pays the adoption fee, we run around on the grass by the parking lot, the puppy’s tiny silver head popping up in between the flower bushes while she crashes through them, petals clinging to her ears and nose.
Soon she collapses in front of Marley, huffing and puffing from all the exercise. “Someone’s sleepy,” Marley murmurs as she scoops her up, giving me a kiss on the cheek.
“Her name is Georgia,” she says, holding the puppy up to me. Georgia mimics Marley’s kiss, licking my cheek with her tiny tongue, her fluffy fur tickling my skin.
“Nice to meet you, Georgia,” I say, patting the pup’s little head as she yips a response.
Yep. Way better than a duck.
“We should take a picture,” Marley says, excited. She pulls her phone out of her pocket and holds it out to take a photo of us.
I smile as there’s a quick flash, and then another, and a surprising jolt of pain slices through my head. For a moment I see my mom standing in front of my eyes in the same white floral dress that she had on the night of the accident, her phone in her hand.
Fuck.
My first vision in well over a month. Every time I think they’re gone for good… something happens.
I collect myself, pulling Marley closer as she takes one more, the two of us peering at her phone to see the result.
It’s a cute picture. Marley looks beautiful. Happy. Her nose and cheeks are flushed from all the running, the green in her eyes standing out against the grass all around us. We both look so different than we did when we met all those months ago at the cemetery, the weight of our grief lifting slowly off our shoulders, pain no longer shadowing our faces. In her arms, there’s tiny Georgia, miraculously looking in the direction of the camera.
“Send that to me,” I say to her as we walk back to the car, the feeling of her hand in mine outweighing the pain in my head and the uneasy feeling in my chest.
24
I hold Marley’s hand as we walk down Main Street a month later, the sky above us dark and ominous. The humid summer air clings to my arms and legs as Georgia stops to sniff at a patch of grass next to the sidewalk, giving me time to turn and look up at the clouds, the wind tugging at my hair.
“I think it might—”
There’s a clap of thunder, and the sound drowns out the rest of my sentence as rain begins to fall all around us.
Marley squeals and grabs ahold of Georgia, pressing close to me as we duck under an overhang to keep dry.
I rest my chin against her head, tensing when I see a car whiz past us. A silver Toyota. Identical to the one I was driving the night of the accident.
The car that Kim died in.
Sometimes it feels like forever ago. Sometimes just a minute.
Marley takes my hand as she studies my face. “What’s wrong?”
“That car,” I say, a shiver running through my body. “It’s just like the one I was driving when…”
I pull away, staring at the curve the car disappeared around, my vision blurring as I see windshield wipers trying desperately to push away the rain, Kim in the passenger seat. “I… I drove past here. On a rainy night like this.”
There’s another boom of thunder, and I flinch at the noise, lightning splitting the sky in two. “Just like this.”
Wait.
I pull out my phone, and the screen lights up, the date appearing in white letters. June 7. “A year ago today,” I whisper.
A year. It’s been a whole year since that night.
“Let’s go home,” I say, my eyes focusing on Marley, Georgia clutched to her chest, raindrops clinging to her cheeks.
The second our eyes meet, I feel calmer. Safe.
Our fingers twine together and we make a run for it, ducking between awnings and overhangs until we get to the path leading to my house. When we arrive, we head straight for the basement, and I move to start a fire in the fireplace, the flame catching almost instantly, white and yellow and orange eating away at the wood, warming us.
I lean forward to stoke the fire as it grows across the log, swallowing it whole. There’s a clap of thunder outside, and at the same time a quick, sharp pain streaks across my forehead. The fire poker clatters noisily from my hand.
Ow. Holy shit.
I pick up the fire poker and put it back on its stand as I keep my eyes focused on the fire. That was—
An ember pops, a flash of red. For a split second I see the flare of red emergency lights on wet asphalt, a dizzying pain.
No. I’m not going through this again. I stand up, shaking it off as the room comes back into view.
I run my fingers through my hair and let out a long sigh. All these months later and I still don’t like storms. I don’t know why this one is triggering my head pain like this. It must just be the anniversary.
“You feel it too, don’t you?”
I turn to look at Marley on the couch, her long hair still damp from our run through the rain. Her face is aglow in the light of the fire, but her eyes are focused outside, staring at the storm through the French doors. Georgia is wrapped in a towel in her arms.
I sit down beside her, studying her face. There’s a distant, haunted look in her eyes. One that hasn’t been there for months.
One I thought we’d gotten rid of.