Amy woke early the next morning after a restless night’s sleep with one steadying thought. She needed to get the arrowhead from the Hearth, and she needed to give it to Gabe. As soon as she dressed, she drove over to Tess’s. The graveled driveway gave way to packed dirt, which eventually turned into a barely discernible lane along the edges of the wood. Her BMW bounced and jerked, but she maneuvered it around and through the ruts and weeds until she could go no farther.
She walked across the long, weathered boards bridging the stream and entered the woods with a brief prayer she could find the Hearth. The path was obscure in places, and a couple of times she had to double back, but eventually she found the split-trunked tree that sheltered the ruined fireplace.
Its stone remains were caught in a tangle of vines and fragrant wild roses. Over the years, more of the stones had fallen, but the interior corner was still intact.
When Amy and Gabe had found this place, they imagined stories about the people who had built the fireplace and about the house that must have stood there at one time. Sometimes the stories were realistic, plausible. Other times they pretended the fireplace was a portal into another world.
It had been their secret place and hallowed by love’s first kiss.
Amy carefully parted the long grass, keeping a wary eye out for snakes, then knelt before the ruins.
“I should have brought gloves,” she muttered as she brushed away cobwebs with a squeamish gesture. She reached within the stones of the crumbling chimney. Relief flooded through her as her fingers touched the tin canister hiding within the recess.
She carried the box to the split-trunked tree and perched in a nook created by two of its lower branches. Breathing a prayer of thanks, she ran her fingers across the dirt-encrusted lid. About ten years had passed since she’d last held this box, but she remembered the moment as if it had just happened.
She’d come here shortly before moving to a private liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. On that day, she had placed the arrowhead inside the box for safekeeping. It was only an artifact from a long-ago civilization, not that rare in these central Ohio fields and pastures. But this one was special because she and Gabe had found it together while watering their horses in the springs branching off the southern branch of Glade Creek.
The arrowhead symbolized the summer of their youth, their token of future dreams. She never wanted to lose it, never wanted anyone else to find it. So she’d left it here.
She’d also left a letter for Gabe, though she was sure he would never read it.
Another moment passed and another while Amy relived her memories of that sad and glorious summer. Sad because Gabe was mourning the loss of his mom. Glorious because the two of them together had made it so.
And because it was the last happy summer Amy ever had.
She pressed her palm against the lid, then gripped an edge with her fingernails and pried it off.
Instead of her letter to Gabe, the box contained two envelopes. Her name, written in Gabe’s distinctive handwriting, appeared on each. The arrowhead lay beneath them.
Gabe had been back. He’d taken her letter and left the arrowhead behind.
She paused to remember what she had written.
Only a short note saying she needed to leave, that she wanted to find her own way instead of following AJ and Brett to OSU. She told him the box was the safest place she knew to keep their arrowhead. Someday, when the time was right, she’d come back for it.
She tucked the arrowhead into her hand, holding it like she had the day Gabe slipped it to her, the day when neither of them could speak for the emotion clogging their throats.
The day of her parents’ memorial.
The last time she’d seen him until he found her at the engagement tree.
While holding on to the arrowhead, Amy opened both of Gabe’s envelopes, scanned the dates, and read the earlier one first. It had been typed and printed, probably so he could revise as he wrote. The message was brief, a spilling of his heart.
Dear Amy,
I ship out next week to an undisclosed location. Hint: it’s hot there.
So why am I writing to you? Because I have to write to someone, and who better than the girl who took away my heart on a hot summer day? We rode out here to the Hearth, you and me, and we placed our summer finds in a tin and hid it within a chimney. A kind of time capsule of a year bookmarked by grief. First the loss of my mom, and then the loss of your parents.
The last time I was here I came for the arrowhead. It was stupid, but I wanted to give you something to hold on to. That’s why I handed it to you at the memorial.
I’ll never forget your face—so sad, so broken. You have no idea how much I wanted to kiss away all your tears right there in front of everybody.
What a scandal that would have been. Your grandfather would have tanned my hide, but I like to think your gran would have found it secretly funny.
I just want you to know, my sweet Amy, that no matter where in the world I am, no matter where you are, I will always love you.
My heart is yours,
Gabe
Beneath the signature were handwritten lines.
Come back for the arrowhead, Amy. Come back for it soon. When the time is right, place it in my hand. I’ll be waiting.
Amy sat in the tree nook, her back against a rough branch, and let Gabe’s words flow through her. He’d written the letter years ago. Could he still be waiting for her to place the arrowhead in his hand?
It was as if their minds were in sync with one another, that his plan had somehow, all these years later, become her plan.
Or was this God’s plan? Did he care enough about two broken people to use an arrowhead—a lost relic from another time—to bring them together again? To help them become whole?
She read the second letter, penned in ink.
My dearest Amy,
I don’t know what I hoped to find when I pulled out our box. Until I opened it and found my last letter to you. Untouched. Unopened. The disappointment was so keen that then I knew. I had hoped to find you had been here. I had hoped to find a letter from you.
I need you, Amy. I need you now, today, when the finest man I’ve ever known has been laid to rest. Rusty’s gone, and I feel lost.
Where are you, Amy? Why aren’t you here?
I think I’d rather have found a letter telling me to get lost, that anything I thought we had was puppy love, a first crush, a summer fling. I’d rather have had that than nothing at all.
Maybe that’s all it was to you. But not to me.
When I saw the arrowhead, I wanted to throw it as far away from here as I could. But something stopped me. As strange as it sounds, I felt like God stayed my hand.
If you ever come back, I want you to find our arrowhead here. So I’m leaving it in the box. I’m leaving the box in the chimney. And I’m praying that someday you’ll come here again. And you’ll know that, wherever I am, I’m still waiting for you.
With all my love,
Gabe
Amy read the letters again, hearing Gabe’s voice whispering his words in her ear.
She wished he had said something about the letters. About how he felt. Why hadn’t he?
The answer was hurtful but plain.
He didn’t say anything because all along he knew she was lying about not remembering him. He knew she had returned to the Hearth and hidden the arrowhead in the only place that mattered.
That was one reason, but the ugly voices in her head gave her another. After they’d met again, someone must have told Gabe what kind of person she’d become. He was content to be friends, to hang out together, go on a date now and then. But he was no longer waiting.
He no longer wanted her.
How could she blame him?
“Is it too late?” she whispered. “God, please don’t let it be too late for Gabe and me.”