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Just Ethan’s name on the headstone with no date of death. Because we don’t know if he’s alive or dead, but we decided to honor him anyway.
Like that’ll satisfy his ghost, or at least that haunted feeling hanging over us.
Like everyone just wanted to bury their old pains when we couldn’t find a body.
Shockingly, it doesn’t hurt so much tonight.
With Grant’s hand in mine and his silent presence at my side, his warmth, his steadiness, it feels like something else.
Maybe like a duty that needs to be done.
Like something I need to really, truly come home.
Most people find graveyards pretty spooky at night. But the Redhaven Cemetery is a quiet place full of old bones, old roots, old history.
Serenity lives here.
Old spirits sleep like they should without any disturbance.
The only sounds are a few owls calling through the night. The faint scratchy whisper of naked tree branches rubbing together. Our feet on the grass, moving together at a steady pace.
The moon looms over us, huge and autumn-orange, and the stars are so bright in the clear sky I can see the Milky Way sprawling across the nightscape.
It’s a refreshing sight.
In Miami, the only stars I could ever see were the shooting meteors of taillights moving by the thousands on broad highways.
Maybe there’s something to love about this place, after all.
I look at Grant.
He hasn’t said a word, but there’s a certain gravity in the air. I wonder if he’s talking to Ethan in the back of his mind.
I know I am.
My big brother, forever alive in my heart, wherever he is.
And our feet lead us automatically to the quiet corner plot beneath an old satsuma tree with low-hanging branches.
Ethan’s plot is right next to his father’s. The headstone looks newer, but it’s more worn than I remember. Moss has started growing into the inscription.
ETHAN SANDERSON
Baby, come home.
God.
I remember my mother crying while she worked out what to write. And then bawling her eyes out even more when she finally found the right words.
Not that anything will ever soundrightwhen you had to bury a son with no body and no answers.
A son who may be alive out there somewhere, no matter how slim the odds.
We stop together, though, standing peacefully side by side.
His hand tightens in mine and I smile, my mouth aching with a sweet pain.
“Hi, Ethan,” I whisper. “Long time no see.”
