My gaze moved up to his. “When you leave, wear a new pair of shoes. Don’t walk away in these.”
He froze, but his hand never wavered. “I promise.”
My fingers met his palm, and he pulled me effortlessly to my feet, his shoulder supporting me. In retrospect, Heathcliff was always offering me his hand, his fingers pulling me from the darkness. Death was making me poetic, opening my eyes to things I wasn’t sure I would have noticed before.
Heathcliff stayed with me, helping as I changed clothes before walking with me to the stairs and the cars beyond the house. His family waited on us, their vehicles following us to the wake.
There wasn’t much that could be said about my uncle’s viewing, the funeral that followed, and the procession to the cemetery. There was an incredible show of support, most of the town coming out to wish me well, some of them following us to his gravesite while the rest either went home or to the plantation to set up a small meal.
To be honest, I kept searching the crowd. It would have been a dramatic occurrence, an interesting story to tell I suppose, if my eyes had fallen on the two people I was looking for. But, despite the faint hope and fear, I never saw my parents. They wouldn’t have known to come, and in truth, I would have hated to see them there. Maybe I hoped they loved Gregor more than they’d cared to stay with me.
In the end, when the day was finished, I found myself grabbing Heathcliff’s hand, my fingers squeezing so hard I was sure my nails left impressions in his skin.
“Don’t go,” I whispered.
“I won’t,” he promised.
Outside, it started to rain.
Chapter 19
My love story sort of ended with Gregor’s death. I remained at the plantation, and I returned to school, finishing out my senior year the way my uncle had wanted me to. Heathcliff often spent the night with me, coming in after working with a duffel bag slung over his shoulders. I’d have supper ready because cooking was something I was used to doing, something I’d always done for Gregor and me.
Every night, Heathcliff and I would sit at the table and eat before doing school work and heading to bed. There was a distance growing between us. It was natural I guess, and I think in many ways, I’d always known it was coming.
Life had a funny way of separating people. Uncle Gregor’s death had changed me, and Heathcliff’s dream for the future was building a wall between us. People change. Relationships change. We were changing, and our relationship wasn’t moving forward with those changes.
I was learning something about being broken. Like a shattered dish being glued back together, I didn’t look or feel the same way I had before I’d fallen apart.
In a weird way, mine and Heathcliff’s relationship ended a lot like it began. In silence. We drifted apart, and one day he just quit coming to the plantation. The only thing keeping us together were our shoes and last period English class. Our feet often touched in the aisle, even after our relationship ended. It was as if we’d never quit being a couple, we’d just returned to that beautiful, quiet place where we’d first met.
There was no animosity between us. The truth was, he was leaving, and we both knew it. He didn’t want to hurt me, and I didn’t want to hold him back, so the only place we could go from there was back to the beginning. To silence and touching shoes.
Graduation day loomed. I learned through Rebecca, who’d started staying with me not long after Heathcliff quit coming, that Max Vincent had enlisted in the military. It should have surprised me, considering Heathcliff’s love for working with metal and parts, but it didn’t. It made sense actually. He liked saving things, he liked piecing stuff together, and he’d always wanted to see the world. He also looked up to the grandfather he’d lost as a child. I’d discovered that while spending time with him in the building in the woods, and his grandfather had quite the military career.
I was proud of him.
Two weeks before school ended, Mrs. Callahan’s mirror assignment was due, and I spent the night before its deadline sitting on my bed, my hair pulled up and a notebook splayed open before me. My mirror sat next to it.
Heathcliff and I had spent a lot of evenings talking about Mrs. Callahan’s assignment, even writing pieces of it for each other, but tonight it was just me. Me and a piece of paper, the empty blue lines staring at me with bated breath.