Second Sight (13 page)

Not long after I turn into a dirt lot to the
side of the cemetery, and stare out amid the vast expanse of graves
around me, the stones varying in shapes and sizes. Not
surprisingly, the cemetery here reminds me of the one at Hauser’s
Landing. Maybe it’s all part of the small-town thing. At least this
time there’s nobody’s grave I’m coming to see, and these pictures
I’m planning on taking won’t remind me of the life I left behind or
people who should’ve lived longer.

Grabbing the camera from my purse, I lock the
doors and head to the gate, half expecting someone will drive up
after me. I glance at my watch and realize that it’s too early for
Jimmie to be off, and even if he were, I’m thinking he’d be
spending time with Theresa again. I used to think giving him a
distraction would be nice, but I’m starting to miss the old Jimmie.
It’s like everything keeps shifting, and I find myself freefalling
no matter how hard I try to keep my balance.

The one way this cemetery is different than
the one at Hauser’s Landing is it doesn’t have an office building,
so I guess it’s a good thing I’m not looking for a particular
grave. The rusty gate swings open at my touch, and as soon as I
enter, I start looking at a number of headstones much older than I
expected.

Ahead, I see an older man sitting on a marble
bench beside a grave. His cane rests next to him, and he stares at
a beautiful headstone with a statue of a woman nearby. She wears a
long, flowing robe with only one sleeve jetting across her
shoulder, her hands lowered in prayer. Individual curls wisp around
her face, and even her eyes seem lifelike. The old man reaches up
and touches the statue with an open palm, a gesture that seems
touching yet at the same time, out of place. Still, I can’t help
but watch through the camera lens. My finger reflexively presses
the shutter button repeatedly, forever sealing those moments into
memories for later.

It seems like I stand there forever, gleaning
peace from the way he looks, and I wonder if that statue were
carved to resemble the woman he might be mourning. His wife of
decades perhaps? Or maybe it’s just my hopelessly romantic side
wanting to believe somewhere there are people who understand love
and what it means to care about someone forever.

When I finish taking those pictures, I lower
the camera, still watching the old man as he carefully kneels
beside the grave, his wrinkled old fingers gripping the top of the
stone. The other hand grabs at a bouquet of white lilies and,
despite his shaking, carefully sets them in the vase fronting the
stone.

I step closer to him, unable to stay away,
wondering at this display of emotion and how long she has been gone
for him to seem so desolate in her absence. Even though he doesn’t
look up, I know he senses me, and I should walk away, but something
keeps me standing there, watching, wondering if that might have
been Lev at my grave one day if both of us had been normal. All at
once, pain I’m not prepared for comes at me, and I bite my lip,
trying to keep back the black hole that used to be my heart. My
camera dangles uselessly from one hand while I wipe my eyes with
the other.

“
We were married forty
years,” he croaks.

Unsure why he’s speaking to me or even how to
respond, I finally step forward. “You’ve given her a beautiful
place here,” I manage

“
It’ll never be as
beautiful as she was,” he says, his shaking hand adjusting the
petals of the lilies. “She loved flowers like these.”

More tears appear, but I’m not sure if I’m
crying for his loss or mine. Maybe both, I think, as I look at the
stone and read the name. “Bess Hudgens.” I swallow hard. “I’m sorry
for your pain. I know what it’s like to lose someone.”

Shaking my head, I realize just how true that
is. I’ve lost more people than I’ve kept in my life, and part of me
doesn’t have a clue what to do with that realization. It was one
thing with my parents. I don’t remember much about them, so
whatever I’m missing, it’s not like I know the difference, which I
guess works well as an anesthetic. But with Lev, whether he’s dead
or MIA, he’s still gone from my life, so he might as well be dead.
I still have nightmares about the night Maguire aimed for me and
got Lev.

The old man slowly turns to me, and I see the
tears streaming down his face. His shaking hand points to the
bench. “Perhaps you can humor an old man and just sit with me.” His
eyes are dulled, the way age has of lessening the fire of color
with cataracts, but I can still imagine the bright blue they must
have been when he was young.

“
Sure.” I move to the bench
and sit, and as he rises, I’m painfully aware how difficult each
step must be for him. Arthritis has found a warm host, sadly. He
sits, and I nod to him. “I’m Elizabeth Moon.” I cross my legs at
the ankles.

“
Bob Hudgens.” He looks at
the grave. “So what do you like people to call you?”

I shake my head, taken back by the question.
He’s got to be the first person who’s ever asked me that. People
just pick what to call me, and I answer. But he wanted to know what
I preferred, which is easy because only one person ever called me
Elizabeth that I didn’t mind, and I’m not so sure I’ll ever want
anyone to ever use that name again.

“
Lizzie will do,” I say.
“Thanks for asking.”

He shrugs. “A person should pick their own
nickname. I mean, you couldn’t exactly choose what your parents
called you.” A breeze picks up and lightly fans his thinning silver
hair.

“
Are you a Robert or just a
Bob?” I watch my legs start swinging back and forth.

“
A Robert. But that was my
dad’s name, and I never could live up to it, so I called myself
Bob. And that’s who I became.”

I nod, somehow comforted by that idea of
choice. “So how long ago did you lose your wife?” I glance back at
the stone his gaze has never left.

“
Two years.” His Adam’s
apple bobs with emotions I know he’s trying to hold back. “But it
seems like an eternity.”

“
Does it ever get any
easier?”

He slowly turns to me. “That’s kind of like
asking if you’ll ever love that person any less, Lizzie.” He shakes
his head. “She filled a special place in my life nobody else could.
Maybe if I were younger, I would have tried finding someone to
start over with, but at this point I’m a little too old for that,
and I’m ready to go to her.”

A lump fills my throat, and my whole body
stiffens. I just keep telling myself to blink and breathe, blink
and breathe. Grief hits like that. It’s like when you’re breathing
and your lungs fill with air but suddenly something wraps around
you, squeezing. You take in less air with each breath until
suddenly there’s nothing. That’s me. The nothing.

“
And who did you lose?” he
asks softly, his voice unsure. He brushes his hands across the
knees of his pants, and I look at those wrinkled fingers, wondering
if he at least enjoyed his life with her. Was the fleeting time
they spent worth the misery of now?

“
My boyfriend, Lev.” My
tone is clipped; I don’t know how to talk about this without
crying, and I wonder if I’ll ever be able to. Still, it feels good
being able to talk about this with a stranger. There are no
complications to add into this mix. “He was murdered six months
ago.”

He nods slowly. “Then I, too, am sorry.”

Half of me expects he’ll give me some advice,
and that something trite will come out, just like with everyone
else. Instead there’s silence, which I can’t stand.

“
Aren’t you going to tell
me this will get better?”

He shakes his head. “Why would I lie to you?
You know what you feel. There’s nothing that will change it,
especially not well-meant things like, ‘You just need to get back
to living’ or ‘Time heals everything.’ It doesn’t, you know.”

I nod. “Yeah, I figured that out.” There’s
something peaceful about sitting here amid an ocean of graves. And
Bob. For once, nobody is telling me how I should feel, and that
feels pretty good.

“
Grief isn’t like anything
else. It has its own time table, and the pain can be years old and
still hurt like the death just happened. Sometimes, if you think
too hard, it all comes back.”

Goosebumps blotch my skin as I realize this
man understands what I’m going through. “You’re the first person
who hasn’t tried to ‘therapy’ Lev away.”

“
You can’t ‘therapy’ away
pain, Lizzie.”

For a long while, we just sit there, letting
the air stir the wisps of pollen floating through the air and rub
the leaves together as sunlight streams down upon us. There are no
words for what is happening, and I sit there for a good hour before
I figure I should get home just in case Jimmie is planning to make
an appearance.

“
I should probably get
home. Do you come here every day?” I ask, reluctantly rising from
the bench.

“
Not every day, but most.”
He smiles up at me. “It’s the only place I know she’ll be.” He
looks at Bess’s stone. “And without her, I just don’t know what to
do with myself.”

Again, something I can relate to. It doesn’t
matter how I fill the hours. Without Lev, it’s all the same, and I
feel so incomplete.

“
Maybe I’ll see you soon,”
I say.

“
Maybe so. But if not,
thank you for humoring an old man.” He smiles, and once more, I try
to imagine his eyes as young and full of fire. I’d like to hope
when I reach his age I’ve made some kind of peace with myself and
life. Right now, all I see is chaos.

As I walk back to my car, I glance back at
him, watching the way he leans toward her grave, as though he’s
listening to her speak. He’s crossed one leg over the other and now
rests his hands in his lap. Part of me wonders how long he has
already been there and how long he’ll stay, but I guess it doesn’t
matter in the end. He came here encumbered with grief, and he’ll
leave the same.

Without looking at the pictures, I slide the
camera back into my purse and start the engine. Glancing at my
watch, I realize I have about fifteen minutes to get home before
Jimmie does, so I’d better hurry or I’m going to have some
explaining to do. It’s quite possible Griffin might tell, and I’ll
still have explaining to do, but at least this way I’m trying to
cover my bases. Maybe Jimmie is right about talking to someone,
just not him or Griffin or Emily. I don’t need therapy. I’m not
broken. Just my heart.

I try to open the door as quietly as
possible, hoping to just sneak inside, but Griffin is sitting in
the living room as I walk past, and I can feel him staring, so I
stop, knowing he’ll follow if I don’t, and I’d really rather
discuss this here than in my bedroom, My last sanctuary from all
this crap.

“
Where’d you go?” he asks,
muting the television.

“
Just to take some
pictures.” I pull my camera out of my bag and offer it to him. “Do
you want to check?”

Griffin shakes his head. “Lizzie, I’m not
your keeper, no matter how much it seems like I am.”

“
Oh, that’s right. If you
were, you’d have put out an APB on me, right?” I shove the camera
back into my purse.

“
Jimmie’s going to be late
again,” Griffin
calls, stilling me. “Any
idea where he’s hanging out these days?”

“
Probably Knoxville,
visiting a certain nurse he thought mighty highly of.” My voice is
terse, and I quickly realize all that relaxing energy I felt
flowing through me at the cemetery is gone--just like that. I want
it back.

I trudge to my room and shut my door, hoping
for enough silence to restore the way I felt at the cemetery. I
don’t want to talk about Jimmie because I don’t understand, either.
It makes no sense that he’s pretty much just left me to my own
devices. The Jimmie from six months ago never would have been this
easily distracted. Then again, I am a senior, and pretty soon I
won’t be living with Jimmie anymore. Maybe he’s just getting an
early start on getting his life back.

Chapter
Ten

Although I get to school twenty minutes
early, I’m not prepared for Kane to be leaning with his back to my
locker. I’m not really sure how long he’s been there. He’s wearing
a black t-shirt and jeans with that same shell necklace. His dark
hair hangs down, half in his eyes as usual. His arms are folded
across each other.

“
Finally decide to get out
of bed and get an education?”

I arch one eyebrow. “I’m a rebel, and I’ll
never be any good.” I prod his side to get him to scoot so I can
open my locker.

“
I’ll keep that in mind.”
Pulling himself from against the locker, he leans over me as I grab
my notebook and lit text from the shelf. “So, who’s the guy who
gave you a lift?” His voice is casual. His stance isn’t. Again with
the hovering.

“
Griffin is a friend,” I
say. “Came for a visit from Hauser’s Landing.”

“
Staying long?”

I close the locker. “’Fraid so.” I start to
walk to class.

“
I guess Jayzee’ll like
that.” My steps slow, and I try to ask myself why it matters. I
don’t have feelings for Griffin. He and I have never connected in
that way. But there is something that bothers me about the almost
instantaneous bonding between the two. I just wish I could figure
out what it is.

“
So what’s the story with
Jayzee?” I look up and down the hall, checking to make sure she’s
not in earshot.

“
Well, she’s kind of
different.” He shrugs.