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He’d helped me pick a spot to plant the flower seeds – chamomile, roses, lavender, telling me that even the chamomile – which were annuals – would come back year after year so long as I let some of them go to seed, drop.
My heart warmed as we pulled up the dirt, planted the seeds, fully aware of the future we were planting together.
“Soon as they come up, you can try your hand at making soap,” he told me.
It was such a little thing, but I was so looking forward to it.
On the morning of the fateful seventh day, he’d walked me out to the pond, showed me the bench he had made for himself many years before. For fishing. For just reflecting.
We sat there, side by side, watching bubbles pop up on the surface of the water, dragonflies dip down to touch the surface, and once, for a short moment, a doe move out to take a long drink before noticing us, and running off.
I’d climbed on his lap then, making another memory right there on that bench.
We’d gone to bed early, rain making work outside impossible, sapping us of our energy.
Everything had been fine.
Good, even.
Or so I thought.
Until he had shaken me awake.
Violently, I thought, from the way my heart was pounding, my skin sweaty, adrenaline shooting through my system at the unexpected interruption of sleep.
“What?” I gasped, hand slapping down over my heart, willing it to slow, trying to re-orient myself to the unexpectedly bright room.
Not morning.
The light.
He had the light on.
Which was weird seeing as Ranger never put the light on since when he was ready for sleep, he slept. And then there was no need for it.
It maybe bothered me just the teeniest bit. The complete darkness. I usually had a TV on when I slept. Or, at the very least, a nightlight. Just a little bit of light to help me find my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night without stubbing a toe or tripping over something.
But it was a small thing, so I said nothing.
And waking up to a bright room now after getting used to the dark was unsettling, made my eyes hurt immediately.
“Ranger, what?” I asked, heart slowing down a bit at finding him sitting off the side of the bed, eyes far away. Distant, even. Something they hadn’t been in a long time.
The sight of it made my belly sink, made my skin grow cold enough to need to hug them to my chest, running my palms up my forearms to try to warm them.
I knew something was coming.
Something bad.
But I didn’t quite anticipate how bad.
“I texted Miller,” he told me as dread curled its long fingers around my organs, squeezing the life out of them.
“Why?”
“I think you need to go.”
With that, the bed depressed then bounced back up as he pushed to stand, made his way to the door. While the ground opened up, threatened to pull me in.
“What?” I shrieked, throwing my body off the side of the bed, realizing Gadget was not there. “Ranger, you can’t just say that and walk away,” I declared, following him out into the living room, hearing the grumble of the dogs as he flicked on another light.
“She’ll be here around seven a.m.,” he continued as though he hadn’t heard my objection, filling a pot with water to make coffee. Like everything was normal. Like he wasn’t just pulling all my hopes and dreams violently away.
“Ranger, you’re not making any sense,” I told him, wiping the sleep out of my eyes, wondering if maybe he was sleepwalking or something. Or having some weird turn toward darkness. Like a mental episode of some sort. That would make much more sense than him suddenly deciding he was done with me. Maybe he needed some sort of gentle reminder of how things are now. “We just planted a bunch of seeds to make soap out of later this summer, remember?” I asked, watching as he moved around, getting down the coffee grounds, seemingly ignoring me.
“You might want to pack up all your things. But put on the sneakers Finn got you, not the makeshift shoes.”
The makeshift shoes that he had made me. Like he didn’t want me taking them. Like he wanted me to leave all traces of him behind.
This really was happening.
He really was kicking me out.
“You gave me your word, Ranger,” I reminded him, my voice achingly raw even to my own ears. “You said you keep your word,” I added.
“I do,” he shot back, hands grabbing the edges of the counter, fingers going white. “But this is different. You have to go.”
“Ranger…”
“It’s settled,” he cut me off.
“W… what about Gadget?” I asked, my heart starting to crack, tiny spiderwebs arching outward until every part of it was one more hard word away from shattering to pieces, crushing to dust.
