Page 10 of Quietly Falling
Taking a deep breath, I pull open the door and reach for the small wooden box on the top shelf of the mostly empty closet.
I can’t remember the last time I did this.
Not even when I heard that Jeffers had been granted a new trial.
But today, for some a reason I can’t quite name, I need it.
Perched on the end of the bed, I let my fingers trace over the crude engraving that readsEasy and Freeacross the lid. Mason made it for me in his high school shop class years ago. One box encompassing the two most important people in my life.
My breath hitches as the lid creaks open, and Audrey’s smiling face stares back at me.
Take the picture, Bodhi! Don’t I look pretty with the flower in my hair?
She did and I’d told her that with an eyeroll like a typical ten-year-old. It felt nice to be normal in that moment. I remember chasing her through the field, the wildflowers blowing in the breeze like they were chasing us too.
She’d snapped so many pictures that day, used the whole roll if I remember right, the disposable camera something she’d come home with after school one day with the biggest grin I’d ever seen.
I found it after she went missing, stashed in our spot under the floorboard in her room, but I hadn’t told anyone—not even Mason—just went to the general store and plopped it on the counter, asking him what I could do to get it developed.
It’d taken a week of sweeping the parking lot and separating the cans and bottles in the back, but he’d smiled when he handed me the envelope.
“There’s some good ones in there, kid.” The lines on his face deepened. “Real sorry to hear Miss Audrey is missing.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He’d been so kind to us, never minding when we’d come into the store just to look around, dreaming about the candy and treats we couldn’t afford. Sometimes he’d surprise us with those treats, like when Audrey went in to tell him about the solo she’d gotten in the choir at school or when I told him I’d climbed to the top of the rope in gym class on the first try.
My eyelids flutter closed. He’d been the only one keeping us going…the only safe space we had after school. My heart squeezes in my chest as I remember back to another time, this one before we’d lost her.
“Her birthday is coming up,” I told him, pushing the small bracelet across the counter. “Do you think I can get it?”
“Come by and rake the leaves after school. I’ll wrap it up nice for her.”
He’d given me a conspiratorial wink and I’d nodded profusely, taking Mason’s hand and leading him back outside. He was our lifeline until the day he died—kind when he could have simply turned us away.
It was the first funeral I attended, a Wednesday in the fall of my sophomore year of high school. I wasn’t brave enough to go back to class, my eyes too red and puffy from mourning the loss of my friend.
So much loss.
Blowing out a breath, I force myself to push on because for some reason, I need this, and I need to see it.
The bracelet peeks out from under the picture as I gaze back down, the thin metal tarnished from years of being in this box.
She’d loved it and had wrapped me in a hug and pressed a kiss to my cheek that I’d promptly brushed off even though I’d been blushing.
She made me believe that everything would be okay.
But it wasn’t, because not long after that, she was gone.
6
BODHI
“Bodhi, hey, I’m so glad I caught you,” Rhea Mackay says as she thrusts her one-year-old son, Gage, into my arms. “Thanks, he’s getting heavy.” Gage giggles when I tickle his belly, his back bowing as he squirms in my arms, the kid more than a handful, but I’m happy to help.
Happy to give her a break.
His happiness is a balm for my tattered heart.
