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“Where does your sister live?” I asked Gunner.
“Outside Atlanta. Why?”
The images faded, and the house was dark again. “Nothing. Just curious.”
Inside, the little touches that made the house my home had been cleaned up during the search, and it looked weirdly similar to how it was the first time I saw it in the daylight. There were enough ghosts and memories here now that it would never be the same. The Lace Elm house had seen enough gloom to last a lifetime.
We didn’t flip on any lights, making our way through the foyer and living room by the anemic natural light pouring in from the windows. We were hopeful, but solemn, and the reason why still lay unspoken between us.
Soon, I would be opening my ex-fiancé’s urn, and digging the effigy out. From his ashes, I would lift the thing that had been his downfall, and would now be my salvation.
The idea made me feel ill. There were a pair of latex gloves in my pocket, but they were only an afterthought. That thin layer would still put me too close to what was left.
It had to be me, though. Trevor had been a man with no family, no real friends, no connections in his life at all. In his words, he loved me in his own way, and I had loved who I thought he was. I had been the closest thing to a connection he had in his entire life, even if the connection was warped and distorted.
Gunner had his hand on the small of my back as we walked, and I felt the heat of his large palm through my shirt. It radiated outward, a small comfort and a touchstone to steady me for what was about to come.
When we entered the office. It was almost sterile compared to how it had been. Everything was organized now, cardboard document boxes full of books, papers, jewelry, electronics, and office supplies. There was still so much, but now that it was all boxed up and lined against the wall, it seemed less.
With the desks, tables, and bookshelves bare, the urn was impossible to miss, looming over the room like a black and gold raven perched on the desk. It was huge and hulking. Looking up at it now, the angle made it seem even larger than before, maybe even the size of a man. As if Trevor, whole and unburnt, could be kneeling inside.
The visual made me retch, and I slapped the back of my hand over my mouth. Gunner looked distraught, scrubbing his hand over his hair again and again in that nervous gesture of his, until the words finally exploded out of him.
“For fuck’s sake, Rachel, let me do it! You don’t owe this bastard anything, alive or dead. You dig this fucking statue out, scarring yourself for life because it’s buried in these cremains, it will mean he has managed to hurt you one more time.”
“I was his—”
“Whose!?” Gunner boomed, the volume of it born from his chest. “Trevor’s? Because from what I read, that wasn’t even his fucking first name, it was his middle name. His first name was Mark. He wasn’t even a real person.” Without warning, Gunner’s tone softened and quieted, and he cupped my face in one of his hands. “He wasn’t even his real self with you. You were nothing to him, no one was, but you damn sure mean something to me. Let me get the statue out.”
It was the truth. Gunner was telling me the honest truth, and while it sucked to hear, it also released me from the responsibility of fishing out Trevor’s last hidden treasure. Heart in my throat, I nodded, and Gunner kissed me gently before pulling back.
“Go sit in the living room,” he told me as he dug through the office supplies, eventually pulling out a pair of Trevor’s old art handling gloves. They were too small, but not nearly as small as the gloves in my pocket.
“No way. We’ve been looking for this thing together, and we’re going to find it together. This is my moment, too.”
“It’s going to be covered in … you know …” Gunner blew a slow breath out. “It will be covered in his ashes, and I don’t want you to have to see that.”
“It’s fine. It will be worth knowing we succeeded. But let’s get on with it.”
Gunner pulled the urn down, displaying less than half the cautiousness he had used when placing it on the desk for me. Something told me that if I wasn’t here he would have shattered the gaudy thing like a kid breaking open a piggy bank. The image in my head was dark, but funny.
It wasn’t anything like the way I felt walking into the home knowing that I was about to be wrist deep in someone's ashes, but Gunner was still visibly uneasy. He’d never tell me, though, out of fear that I would change my mind and force myself to go through with it alone. I watched him suck in air through his nose and exhale slowly through his mouth, wiggling his fingers and clenching his fists like he was about to play a piano recital.
Once he talked himself into it, Gunner moved quickly, undoing the hinges and pulling the lid, rocking it side to side as the rubber seal tried to keep it attached. Finally, it gave way with a sickening pop, and then the lid rolled across the floor, discarded.
Gunner, after a moment's hesitation, shone his flashlight down into the urn. It was horrifying to realize that he’d have to put nearly his whole arms in to get the statue from the bottom, but there was no use worrying about it now, no matter how green around the gills Gunner was looking.
But then he frowned, putting a hand in the mouth of the urn and shaking it back and forth. The sound of ceramic-on-ceramic, like nails on a chalkboard, came from inside the urn. Invigorated, Gunner grabbed the lip of the urn and put torsion on, and to my shock it rotated.
The inside of the urn rotated.
“There’s no fucking way,” Gunner muttered in amazement, hooking his fingers underneath the inside of the lid and pulling upward.
I was pretty sure both of our jaws were on the ground as Gunner lifted, from the inside of the urn, a smaller identical black and gold urn, stacked inside like a Russian doll, with a flat metal lid sealed on. He sat it on the desk and we both looked at it uncomfortably, the unexpectedness of this turn of events rendering us silent for a minute.
“So that’s the real one?” I asked, voice thin.
“I guess so, but it shouldn’t be big enough for the statue.”
