Page 62 of Stone Rules

I let out a relieved breath. “Okay, then what is it?”

“It’s the Chinese symbol for forgiveness.”

I cock my head, staring at his profile. “Does this have anything to do with wanting to kill the person who took something from you?”

He nods. “It has everything to do with it.”

“So, you just forgave him? Or her?”

“Well, it’s not that easy, Charlie. Forgiveness is a long road.”

We’re heading back towards the city, but not into the city. He turns off the highway and we make our way through several residential areas. We pass a church. We pass a large cemetery. I’m hypnotized by watching the endless sea of headstones, but then I realize they aren’t going by as quickly. We slow down and turn, driving under a curved wrought-iron entrance sign that reads:Fairmount Memorial Gardens.

I look over at Ethan but he is stoic as we drive along the roads that weave through the maze of headstones, grave markers and crypts. The car comes to a stop and he turns off the engine.

He takes a very deep, very long calming breath. Then he reaches over me to grab a small box from the glove compartment before he gets out of the car. I let myself out and join him as he walks along a paved path. I walk next to him in silence. With every step, I know what he’s going to show me is horrible. With every step, I know he’s trusting me enough to see it.

Ethan stops walking and sits on a concrete bench. I sit down next to him.

“When I was in high school, I got a girl pregnant,” he says. “We’d only been dating for a few weeks. It was still casual. We weren’t in love or anything. But we knew we were too young to become parents. Too young to make adult choices and live adult lives.”

I nod in understanding. “I’d have done the same thing,” I tell him.

“No,” he says. “We didn’t have an abortion. It was hard. Really hard, but we went through with it.”

I gasp. “You have a child?”

He smiles a sad smile. “I do.”

Another deep breath comes from far within him and I know he’s about to tell me his darkest secrets. Just as I’ve now told him all of mine.

“My girlfriend’s name was Cara,” he says, pain evident in his voice as he speaks of her. I have the urge to look around us, look at the gravestones to find her name, but I keep my eyes focused on his.

“We tried to make a go of it as a couple, but we were just too young and we ended up fighting all the time. We had different goals. Different dreams. But what we did have in common was we both loved our daughter, so we put our differences aside so we could co-parent her. And before long we realized that although we didn’t make a good couple, we did make good friends. In fact, she became my best friend.”

He has a daughter. My eyes close as realization washes over me. It all makes sense now. His being uncomfortable giving me family information from the list. The fight with Nikki about her roommate’s daughter. How he can’t be in a relationship. Suddenly, all the pieces start coming together. He lost his best friend; the mother of his child. He has a daughter to raise. He doesn’t want anyone getting in the way of that.

I don’t know what to say to him. How do you comfort someone whose best friend died? I can’t even imagine if something happened to Piper. And what he said about wanting to kill the person who had taken something from you? She must have died in a horrible way.

I put my hand on his knee, letting him know I’m here but that I just don’t have the words.

He puts his hand on top of mine. Then he threads our fingers together and nods to the headstone to the right of us.

My heart stops beating and I die for a second. I die because what is etched into the gravestone kills me.

Catherine ‘Cat’ Grace Stone

November 2, 2006 – July 16, 2008

Beloved daughter and granddaughter.

Oh, God.His daughter died. I calculate the dates in my head. Not even two years old. I look for another headstone next to hers, one that would have Cara’s name on it, but I don’t see one.

The hand that is not entwined with his comes up to cover my sob. “Oh, Ethan,” I cry, not even being able to come close to understanding what losing a child would feel like.

“It was the day before my nineteenth birthday,” he says. “It was my day to pick her up from daycare. Cara hadn’t gone on to college like I had. In high school, she’d worked at a department store, so when she graduated, she stayed with the store, becoming an assistant manager. My schedule as a college student was more flexible, especially being summer semester, and I was glad it afforded me a lot of time with Cat.” When he says her name, he looks at the headstone lovingly.

He clears his throat and I know what he’s about to reveal will gut him.

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