Slivers of daylight penetrated the bottom of the bandana tied around Peter’s eyes. Enough light to tease, not enough to tell him where he was. Instead, he tracked the turns Lia’s Volvo made as it twisted and looped, sloping gently up and down and up again.
There was only one place in Northside with roads this convoluted, where cars drove half the speed of your average turtle. The lack of traffic noise was another tip-off. Peter said nothing, not wanting to spoil Lia’s surprise, whatever it was.
The Volvo pulled to the side and the motor died.
“We’re here,” she said.
“Can I take my blindfold off?”
“Not yet.”
The driver’s side door opened, then closed with its usual screech and thunk. His door opened. Her hand, warm and firm, took his.
“Please tell me this isn’t some kind of touchy-feely trust exercise.”
“Not in the usual sense. There are steps, and they’re uneven. Take it slow. I’ll tell you when.”
He let her guide him out of the car, across a soft expanse of grass, then onto the crunch of a gravel path. Around him, wind whispered through trees. The top of his head cooled as the sliver of light at the bottom of the bandana dimmed. Shade, no doubt from the shushing trees.
Lia ushered him up several steps, then turned right onto a curving path that climbed a slope. Between Peter’s blindness and the uneven ground, it took ten minutes to travel what he estimated as less than a hundred feet.
Lia halted. “Here.” Her hands on his shoulders urged him to turn ninety degrees to the right. “You can take the blindfold off now.”
They were in a familiar slice of faux forest, with small boulders peppering the hillside among the wildflowers and ferns. Each had a bronze plaque. He dropped his eyes.
A white rock the size of an ottoman sat in front of him. The bronze plaque read:
___________
Aurelia Amaryllis Anderson - Peter David Dourson
An oak, a cypress, and the moving sea
___________
“Aurelia?”
“I thought if we were going to spend eternity together, maybe you should know.”
Peter took her hand, chafed the back with his thumb. “I’ve never had a girl give me a cemetery plot. I don’t know what to say.”
Lia rubbed the lump under her T-shirt, the necklace he’d given her that always rested against her heart. “You gave me a rock. I want to give you one. Do you like it? We’re not stuck with that epitaph. We can come up with something together.”
Peter pulled Lia into his arms, rested his chin on her head. “Aurelia: golden. Amaryllis: a strong, confident, and very beautiful woman.”
“How on earth do you know that?”
“I ran you when Luthor died. I’ve known who you are for a long time, Aurelia.”
“Don’t start.”
“Why? It’s a lovely name.”
“And the source of childhood trauma. If you ever call me Triple A, I will hurt you. Bad.”
“Duly noted. Is it Aw-rel-y-uh or Aw-reel-ya?”
“Aw-rel-y-uh.”
“Thus, the derivative.”
“Yeah. Thus.”
“Why the urge to see to our eternal rest?”
Lia was silent for a moment. She pulled back in his arms and looked up at him, her moss green eyes serious. “When I lost Honey, I realized, unless we died together in a freak highway pile-up, one of us will eventually leave the other. I don’t believe in marriage—”
“With good reason, considering your upbringing.”
“Marriage is ‘till death do you part.’ I don’t want to let you off the hook that easy. Will you be my eternity?”
He pulled her back to his chest, shaking his head as he huffed a quiet laugh. “Mom will never understand.”
“Ever since Sarah’s funeral, I’ve thought you would enjoy becoming one with the woods.”
Peter glanced across the rows of boulders under the canopy of trees. Spring Grove Cemetery’s Woodland Walkway, not quite woods, not exactly. But it was a peaceful place. Sarah’s ashes, interred in a biodegradable urn, had no doubt achieved new life in the young maple behind her marker.
“I do like it. Very much.”
She handed him a wedge of white rock, no bigger than a half-dollar. He held it, his thumb rubbing the edges.
“I chipped it from the base. I thought you could use it as a worry stone.”
Peter liked the idea of carrying his forever around with him. “It will make a great keychain.”