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I arrived at Ash’s door, knowing he should be home. The man had no life that I knew of, and since it was the weekend, he should be working on his car, right?
Wrong.
Nobody answered the door when I knocked.
And knocked.
Where was he?
Frustrated, I backed up and looked at the pretty little Firebird with the baby blue paint sitting in the driveway, just waiting for someone to get inside of it. On the driver’s side window, visible from where I was standing on the porch, I saw a sticky note pressed to the inside of the window. Getting closer, I dipped down and peered in to read it.
Freya,
Keys are with your mom. Take care of her for me.
And that was it.
My heart dropped in dread. Complete, overwhelming dread because I knew what those words meant.
My hands shook as I pulled out my phone and pushed my finger down on my ‘Mom’ contact.
It rang for a whole five seconds before she answered, voice low and tentative.
“Hi, honey,” she said, obviously aware of why I was calling.
“He left his keys with you?” I wheezed, feeling my chest tightening with each breath I attempted to take.
She sniffled over the line.
“He left an envelope with your name on it this morning and asked me to give it to you when you came around for it.”
“So he’s sending me on a wild fucking goosechase,” I rasped, eyes closing as tears started to burn down my cheeks.
“I’m sorry, honey. He asked me not to say anything until you asked about the keys.”
I hung up the phone and shrieked, angry and heartbroken and gutted.
How could he do this?
How could he do this to me?
Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Maybe the keys would have an answer to the jagged hole in my chest.
It better.
I got back into my car and drove back home; back to Mom and Dad’s house. It wasn't home anymore.
Mom met me at the door, a folded over yellow bubble mailer in her hands.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Mom said, looking just as drawn thin as I felt.
I nodded, heading back to my car where I slowly, but deliberately opened that envelope. Sure enough, it had the keys to the Firebird, but also another sticky note. Actually, three notes stacked on top of each other. It had his inelegant scrawl on it, and I fucking cried all over again.
The keys, the note, it all felt like a goodbye.
It took me a full four or five minutes before I got the courage to pull out the little yellow squares, but once I did, I was greedy for it. I needed to know what he’d said. I needed to read the words he'd written and meant just for me.
Freya,
