Keeping such a secret was hard. The decision had been made; there was no walking it back now. There had been a window of time after I had found Marissa that I could have come forward with the note, could have let my parents know the truth about what had happened, but that window had closed, and now, this was just one more secret I had to keep.
I considered it a fair trade, though. I wasn’t supposed to know that my mother was on antidepressants—she had never told me—but my father had let me in on it. Yet, even the best antidepressants could not always keep the sadness at bay, and that was very much the case for my mother.
I put the letter away. Perhaps someday I would throw it away—was there really a point in keeping it?
I went downstairs and was standing at the sink, washing dishes, when I heard a knock at the door. I turned the water off and went to answer it, expecting it to be Ben. Allie stood there, a small bouquet of yellow and white flowers in her hands.
“Hey,” she said. “I know it’s late, but I wanted to drop these by.”
“Come on in,” I said, stepping back so she could come in.
She handed me the flowers. “These are for you. I know that today must be hard, and that flowers aren’t going to make it any easier, but... I guess I just wanted you to know that I’m thinking about you.”
“That’s really sweet of you,” I said. “Thank you.”
I found a vase for the flowers and filled it with water and put them in. There was a tightness in my throat, and for a second, I thought that I was going to actually cry. But I took a deep breath and felt that ache in my throat ease.
“I’m not going to stay long,” Allie said. “I just wanted to give you those.”
But she took a step closer to me, and I went over to her, my arms going around her waist, pulling her toward me. She hugged me, and I closed my eyes and let out a long exhale. I felt exhausted, frankly, and though there was that part of me that was very much sexually attracted to her, right now, just standing there, her arms around me, felt as good as anything I could remember. I don’t know how long we stood there like that, but it was a while. When we finally pulled back, she had a slight smile on her face.
“I’m going to go,” she said. “I don’t want to, but I’m going to.”
“Then I’d at least like to do this before you do so.” And I leaned down and kissed her, lightly, once on the lips. She kissed me back, and though it didn’t involve any tongue like it had the first time, it was just as nice, and I knew that even though it wasn’t going to happen tonight, soon, soon we would sleep together.
Now that the date had come and gone, I felt as though a bit of a weight had been lifted off my shoulders, at least until next June. Would it be like this forever? I certainly wasn’t expecting my mother to ever forget about Marissa, but it seemed as though the pain of her death was as fresh to my mother as it had been when it first happened.
“This is looking better,” I said, standing up to survey the garden area that Allie had been working on. The previous neighbor, a woman named Bette, had kept the garden in good order for the first year we’d been here, but then her health started to decline, and as that happened, so did the state of the garden. I thought it was admirable that Allie was trying to get it going again, even though it was clear she didn’t really have a clue what she was doing.
“Look, I found a worm!” Declan said, proudly showing us the pale, wriggling thing held between his fingertips.
“That’s a good sign,” I said. “Worms are good for the soil, so if there’s worms in here, that means the soil is good.”
“He’s slimy.”
I kneeled back down and yanked out a few more weeds that were trying to push through the chicken wire surrounding the plot.
“Any idea what you’re going to plant in here?” I asked.
Allie, who was a few feet away from me, also on her knees, her back to me and giving me a nice view, shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I know I’m pretty late in the game here. When I drive to work, I’m always seeing people’s beautiful gardens, and they’re definitely bountiful and flourishing, and while in my head I think that’s what I’d like, I know the reality is probably going to be quite different. What’s something I can plant now in the middle of summer?”
“Hmm,” I said. “I’m not so sure about flowers, but I know there are some vegetables you could do, like peppers or green beans.”
“Maybe I should do that. You know what flower I really like though? Asters. I wonder if I could get some of those.”
“Sounds like a trip to the garden center is in your near future.”
“Can we go with you?” Declan asked immediately. “I like the big room with the glass and all the flowers. It feels like a tropical jungle!”
“That’s the atrium,” I said. “It’s pretty cool, if you haven’t seen something like that before.”
“You know what I’d like to do?” Allie said. “I’d like to have a cookout. Do you guys have plans tomorrow?”
“Nothing in particular,” I said.
“Then why don’t you guys come on over tomorrow afternoon? That grill has been sitting there on the deck, looking a little neglected.”
“That sounds great.”