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“Do you work today?” she asks, crawling out of bed.
“Nope,” I reply, wiggling my eyebrows at her. She shakes her head and goes into the bathroom. I slowly get out of bed and head to the kitchen. I fill up the coffee pot and grab two cups from the cabinet when she comes in.
“I thought I smelled coffee brewing,” she says, sitting at the bar. “I was thinking,” she says with hesitation. “I would like for you to go with me to Tommy’s gravesite.”
Without a word, I go up behind her and hug her to me. “Of course I’ll go with you,” I whisper softly into her ear. She smiles and bites her bottom lip.
“Thank you. We will need to stop by a flower shop, so I can get some fresh flowers for him and pick up Ella. I’ve never taken her before.” I nod and kiss her cheek. “Oh, and I need to go look at that apartment, would you be willing to do that with me also?” she asks, her voice laced with a hopeful tone.
I just laugh. “You know I will.” We get ready to leave and I can see her filling with emotions. “So where is the cemetery?” I ask, walking her outside.
“Back in Lutown.”
I sigh. “Hell, I haven’t been back there since I left for Memphis. I had to visit my mother when I got back from the war.”
“The war, gosh, I’m an idiot. Here I am telling you all these horrible things about my life and my brother and I completely forgot that you lost Jackson.”
“He’s buried back home too,” I say with a sigh. Not that I’ve ever been to the gravesite. I couldn’t handle it.
“I want to show you something,” she says. I follow her back inside. Cami goes to the closet and pulls out a tattered old book bag and sits on the bed, patting the mattress beside her. I sit and she pulls out a handful of old pictures. The first one is a little boy with stark blue eyes, who I assume to be Tommy. As she flips through the pictures, she gives me the background for each one. Finally, she nears the bottom of the pile and shows me one I remember. A place and time that seem forgotten.
“It’s us,” I say, unable to put the memory into words.
“And Jackson.” She points to the corner of the image and he’s there, chugging a beer in the back. “Summer party before senior year.”
“The year he died. Wow, I don’t think I have any images of him from that year, he was gone so much, and then…” Forever, I think to myself, but I can’t say it aloud.
Her sweet smile and bright eyes were the same as they are now. I sit there thinking about what she was like at her younger age. Remembering the taste of her lips on my own.
She gets up and moves towards the door. “You ready?”
“Do you know how beautiful you are?” I blurt out before I can stop myself. She smiles, and her cheeks darken with the blush. “You're not accustomed to compliments, are you?”
“No,” she says, lowering her head.
I get up and walk over to her. “Don’t do that,” I say, bringing her face up to meet my eyes. “You are beautiful, regardless of some scars or your past. I've never met anyone quite like you and I don’t know what to say or do to help you overcome what you have been through. I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but I hope you’ll hang around so I can find out,” I say, pulling her to me.
Huge tears form in her eyes and she smiles, kissing me. “We better get going.” Taking her hand, I lead her outside, opening the truck door for her. We need to stop and get some flowers before we got to the cemetery, so we pull into the parking lot of a little shop, and she runs in, coming back out with a bouquet of daisies.
“Tommy liked these flowers,” she says as if she read my mind. “Did you ever do the 'she loves me, she loves me not' thing with flower petals?” she asks.
“No, I can’t recall doing that,” I reply.
“Well you pull a petal and say, 'loves me and then loves me not,' alternating with each one. Th
e last petal is the most important.” I nod and she continues. “Tommy and I did 'love you, love you more.' He always seemed to love me more and I knew he was being sneaky, but he was five when we started doing that and I'd always let him win. He liked daisies best because they had smaller petals.”
We stop at her aunt’s house to pick up Ella, and as we strap her into the back seat of my truck, I can’t help but think that this is what Sundays should look like. My family and I spending time together before I go to the clubhouse meeting later. My own kind of church. Ella sleeps in the backseat as we make the trip. I love listening to her cooing in her dreams.
The entrance to the cemetery is on a long and bumpy dirt road. The twisted branches of the trees open up into a small open space with everything overgrown and untouched, except for a small headstone near the back of the cemetery. 'Tommy Michael Garrett' Is written across the front in childlike script with an engraving of a familiar cartoon character covering the middle. There are cars and trucks lining the small filled grave square in front and a plastic butterfly sits atop the small marble structure. Ella goes stiff at the sight and shudders.
Cami sits cross legged in front of the grave, pulls Ella on her lap, and places the daisies in front of her. I feel strange, like I'm invading a private conversation, but she motions me to sit with her. Squeezing in between the two small statues on either side of the plot, I'm so close to her I can hear every breath she takes.
She pulls a letter out of her pocket and begins to read it to Tommy, as her tears begin to smear the ink. When she is finished, she moves aside some of the gravel and folds it back up, placing it in the spot she's made. Covering it up, she looks over at me with her glistening eyes.
“He would have liked you because you have a motorcycle,” she says, smiling through her tears.
As we’re leaving, she looks back and whispers, “I love you, Tommy, and you will always be with me.”
