Hearts Read online

  “Sorry?” I said, startled mostly at hearing my name fall from his lips. When I saw his piercing, questioning gaze, I stared at the cupboard over the fridge.

  He tried again, “I mean, what happened to... it’s Sam, right? Did he die?”

  I shook my head. “No; he wasn’t the one to die. He left me.”

  “Oh.” Toby went back to slicing the potatoes. Then, after a minute, he added quietly, “How did you cope?”

  I opened a pack of eggs and cracked two into the bowl. “I don’t.”

  “Dammit!” Toby dropped the knife and cursed, sucking on a bleeding finger.

  “You okay?” I asked, snatching his hand to check how bad the cut was. “Put pressure on it.” I went to the bathroom and came back with some Band-Aids.

  “It hurts,” he said.

  I peeled one open and tightened it around his finger.

  “Not the finger,” he added, quietly. “Kyle. He met someone else. He said he loves us both, but he had to think long-term. Apparently this other guy has more to offer.”

  I rested a soothing hand on his shoulder and in a second he had me in a tight hold; I could feel him straining against the urge to sob, and I patted his back. It’s okay to cry. I know I did.

  “It’s for him, you know. All for him. He said he’d always wanted a Kowhai tree....”

  He sucked in a deep breath and pushed back from me, blinking rapidly.

  “Why don’t you get out of the city? Go to him?” I suggested, wishing—hoping—he would listen. Just this once.

  But his next words crushed my hope—sentenced him to the same fate as mine, truly welcoming him to Ghost Heart City. “No, he’ll be back in a few days, to collect his stuff. I’m going to show him he needs me, tell him my love will last. I know it will.”

  I HEARD the fight—the slamming of the front door, the screech of tires on the road. I peered out through the gap in the curtains. The porch light outlined Toby’s slumped figure as he watched his love leave him.

  The moment the car couldn’t be heard any longer and the porch lights timed out, I knew his heart was flatlining.

  IT WAS autumn, and the stubborn begonia continued to bloom, despite the strangling weeds. I glanced over the hedge. Toby knelt next to the tree in his front yard like he did every evening, loosening the soil with his hands.

  Three times a week, I made him dinner, unsure he ate anything else. He murmured conversation from time to time, but he was never really there.

  That was okay; I was used to the silence.

  I moved over the yard, cracking twigs underfoot. Toby pushed up from the ground where he lay staring up, blankly, at the sky. When he noticed me, he pushed himself with a heavy groan to his feet. The vague incline of his head said yes to my silent offer of dinner.

  Inside, I set to preparing fish and a salad. Toby came in, shucked off his shoes and immediately set the table.

  He barely touched his fish and the salad he pushed around with his fork. “We bought the house a year today,” he said suddenly, then dropped the fork to rub his forehead with the heel of his hand.

  I wanted to hold him. Rub away the sad frown cutting into his brow. “Sorry.”

  “I can’t sell it. I just....”

  “I get it. I couldn’t sell this place either.” It would feel like a true end, and that was all too devastating.

  He looked at me across the table. “What happened with you and Sam? Was it... was it really because the city is cursed?”

  I held his gaze level. “Twelve years ago, I had my fortune told. My heart would die searching for my lover in the green glow of spring. He left me in spring. My heart died.”

  We said nothing for a bit, until more words tumbled, unbidden, from my mouth. “Sometimes, I wish I’d listened and run the hell away. But that didn’t happen, and now... now my heart haunts me.”

  He picked up his fork again, staring at the rocket on his plate, and then stabbed a tomato.

  My appetite vanished and I got up and dumped the rest into the bin.

  “Sorry,” Toby said, a soft whisper across the room.

  “You know,” I said, still staring at the bin, “I used to wonder how he could be okay, while I’m stuck here feeling like this. I wondered why he couldn’t grieve the years we had together. It never made sense. That’s why I re-read his books. I’m looking for clues. Trying to understand.” I dropped my plate into the sink. “And a few months ago, the truth hit me. He did grieve. He just did it in silence while we were still together.”

  “It’s still unfair he didn’t tell you. It might have saved you a lot of misery.”

  I looked at him, at his hollow gaze, his dead heart. “Or not.”

  TOBY watered the Kowhai tree, the hose spraying over my sandaled feet. I shifted my feet to the left and rested back on my elbows in the shade of the porch. Over the winter, spring and summer, we’d taken to hanging out at each other’s place. I’d read or wrap up files for work, sitting in his garden, or he’d lounge in the cool refuge of my dining room, watching sport.

  More water hit my toes and I looked up to see, just for a second, a smirking Toby. Too quickly, the smile faded. I wanted it back. I swung my legs in his direction, daring him to spray me again, but the moment—whatever it had been—was lost.

  I pushed myself up.

  “Are you leaving, already?” Toby asked.

  “Nah, I feel like some lemonade. I’ll be back soon.”

  Half an hour later, I trudged back over to his place, a carafe and two paper cups in hand. I poured him a drink.

  “Did you just make this?”

  I nodded, diverting my gaze when he peeled off his T-shirt and wiped his face with it. “I just felt like making us something. And you are obviously all hot there, working in this heat.”

  His answer was to toss the T-shirt onto the porch and down the drink I’d given him. “That’s good.” He gave me a sideways glance, and added, “Thanks.”

  I shrugged, dipping my eyes toward his flat stomach, the whisper of hair trailing down. “No prob.”

  Toby glanced over my shoulder, toward my yard. “I’m gonna mow the back lawn,” he said. Then, in an uncertain voice, he asked, “You want me to cut yours, too?”

  “No, I—I can do it myself.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t.”

  “I—” I didn’t know what to say. He was right. I turned and stared at my front lawn; weeds strangled the plants, and the sun had sucked the soil dry and burned the foliage. It was a mess. It needed to be tended. It needed Sam. It’d needed Sam for a long time now. He’s not coming back. I forced up my next words through a tight throat. “You’re right. I have to cut it.”

  “Need a hand?”

  I shook my head, and said, “Yes, I really do.”

  “THAT’S how you prune the bushes so they grow better,” Toby said, handing me the garden scissors.

  I did as he’d done, clipping the dead and diseased wood. Over the months, I’d let him show me how to take care of my garden. With every new week, I noticed more and more life pushing through. Dwarf wallflowers even lined the veranda, gifting the garden color.

  “See these green canes here,” Toby said, “they’re attached to old wood; they need to be removed.”

  I cut farther down. “That right?”

  Toby nodded and I wished he didn’t look so sad; every time he worked in the garden, he looked like he struggled with his pain.

  I took the garden gear back to the shed and then walked up the de-weeded path back to him. He stood there, gaze cast down on the rose bushes we’d just pruned. I slipped to his side and stared with him. “Thank you,” I said.

  “Don’t thank me.”

  “I don’t think you know how much you’ve—”

  “Don’t thank me!” he snapped, and strode toward the gate.

  “Let me make you dinner?” I called after him, and he stopped turned around and shook his head.

  “I don’t deserve it.”

  What the—? “You helped m
e all day, it’s the least—”

  He cut me off, his voice snapping goose bumps to my skin. “Look, I didn’t do it for you, okay? So don’t thank me. I’m a prick. I did it for Kyle. He hated this mess next door to us. He’d never say it, but I knew. I knew him!”

  He gulped in a large breath of air and repeated his last words, his eyes tearing and his voice straining. “I thought I knew him.”

  I slowly unfroze. Taking a tentative step forward, I wrapped him in my arms. His hair brushed at the side of my face and I blew it out of my eyes, squeezing him tighter. He pushed against me, but he didn’t fight long. A soft sob tickled my neck and he let his weight sink onto me.

  “Why doesn’t he come back?”

  THAT night a storm whipped through the city, tugging at the last leaves of autumn. Reds and browns carpeted the streets and gardens. Toby lay sprawled on my couch, sleeping, where he’d been since yesterday, a cold cup of tea untouched by his side.

  I picked it up and drained it. Why doesn’t he come back? I wished I could answer for him, but I couldn’t. I could only answer for Sam and me.

  After cleaning the cup, I opened the cupboard above the fridge and pulled out the Ginger Nuts.

  “I played a role in it, didn’t I?” I murmured. They just stared at me through a film of dust.

  With a sigh, I went outside, yanked the lid off the garbage can and trashed them. They barely made a sound as they landed on all the grass, leaves and dead plants. I covered the bin and dug a hand in my pocket for the shed key I’d put in there this morning, ever since I’d seen the leaves and decided I needed to rake them up.

  I finished both our gardens just as the early morning sun peeked its way over the hedge. I stepped toward it, closing my eyes and feeling the warmth soak into my skin.

  “Daniel?”

  I opened my eyes and turned towards Toby’s voice. He sat on the garden bench, watching me.

  I walked back to my place, seating myself next to him. “Yeah?”

  He attempted a smile; it didn’t reach his eyes. “Thank you for listening to me last night.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m sorry about what I said.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  We sat, staring at a hedgehog creeping across the garden. Toby leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs.

  “Is it really the city, Daniel?”

  I looked at my garden, willful to survive, willful to become something beautiful once more. And then I looked at Toby, who mirrored it all. “I don’t know. Shall we...” I swallowed and bumped the back of my hand against his. “Shall we investigate?”

  WE BEGAN our investigation on the outskirts of the city; more precisely, the hills that overlooked it. Down below us, rooftops and church steeples peeked out through thick fog. For a few minutes it was just us, the view and our clouding breath... and then—

  “What does this magic look like?” Toby shifted, loose rock scuttling over my hiking boots and down the path where we’d come.

  I looked from his pensive face to the church steeple, the one close to our street. “I don’t know. An odd sheen, perhaps?”

  “Or the fog?”

  Snuggled into the hill was a bench dedicated to one special Beth Hannigan. I sat on it and scrubbed my face with my hands. I had no idea what we were looking for. All I knew was we had to look, because if we didn’t... it felt like the end of something.

  Toby’s boots crunched over the stones as he moved in front of me. He crouched, resting warm hands on my knees. His gaze hit mine softly and he rubbed his thumbs up and down on the outsides of my legs. “I don’t know what it is,” I said to him, “but something is tugging inside me to find it.”

  He nodded and pressed against my legs to push himself back up. “I like the sound of that. And if you find it... that will give me hope I might too.” He plucked a leaf off a tree at our side. “These remind me of my childhood.” He twisted the stalk sharply and the leaf whirled around and around. “Looks like a helicopter.”

  I picked one off the tree and tried it, laughing when it hit Toby’s nose.

  “Keep practicing,” he said dryly.

  I did. The fourth one flew, propelling itself to the side and off the path, over the hill and toward the city.

  STREET by street, we spent our winter weekends mapping the city. I took a pen and a notebook—the untouched notebook I’d given Sam to use for his novel ideas. Toby packed picnics.

  We drew the large streets we walked as well as the narrow, maze-like ones in the town center.

  By the end of spring, the map was stuffed with symbols, large Ms for the museums we went to, P for the parks where we picnicked, G for the mini golf we sucked at, crosses for the churches we went into, musical notes for the choirs and orchestras we heard, T for the theaters we tried, film strips for the movies we watched.

  We didn’t see any magic, and the harder we searched for broken hearts, the harder they were to find.

  I led Toby up a narrow set of stairs and onto the roof of an old monastery. His breath caught with a gasp when he stepped out. Up here, we were flanked on all sides by tiled slates. There was only a small square of space to move and Toby pressed his arm against mine.

  “What is this place?” he asked, scanning the city roofs that stretched before us, like a path toward the mountains in the distance.

  It’d taken me a long time to bring him here. I shifted my weight from foot to foot, staring at the red and grey tiles around us. “This used to be my favorite spot in the city,” I said, shoving my hands in my pockets.

  It’d been where I’d imagined I would ask the love of my life to marry me. I’d been planning to take Sam here the day he’d left. I hadn’t been back since.

  Sunlight glittered over the tiles as it chased the few clouds left in the sky.

  Toby stretched his fingers, his knuckles bumping against mine. I liked the comfort of that. The little touches we shared that said “thanks” and “I like this” or simply “I’m here”.

  I gently knocked back against him and we peered at each other from the corners of our eyes.

  “It’s beautiful up here,” he said, his words brushing against the side of my face.

  I swallowed and twisted to face him. “Yes, it is.”

  Our gazes held for a long moment and then Toby glanced down to the bag he’d trudged up. “Can’t think of a better place to have our picnic....”

  SUMMER took us to the winding stream that ran through the woods. There, Toby taught me to skim stones.

  With the heat of the sun beating down on the riverside clearing, I dug my fingers into the pebbles. Sifting through a handful, I found the flattest ones.

  Toby whipped two stones over the water, both skipping over the surface. “It’s all in the throw.”

  I mimicked him. My first one landed with a thudding splash, sinking immediately. The second bounced twice. “Sweet.”

  The third one I overdid, throwing with so much enthusiasm my foot slid on the pebbles and I landed on my ass.

  A burst of laughter hit my ears, melodic, and as bouncy as my stones should have been.

  Toby.

  His face morphed when he laughed, the skin at his eyes crinkling, his cheeks lifting, his lips stretched wide. His torso shuddered as the laugh pushed out of him. A couple of nearby birds flew away.

  The sun shone brighter.

  My lips twitched at the corners. The situation should have had me dumping the stones still gripped in my hand and giving up, but that laugh....

  I picked myself up and threw again. “Thanks for the sympathy,” I said, rubbing my ass.

  My stone bounced twice.

  A shadow crossed my face and there was Toby in front of me, biting his bottom lip, hands deep in his short pockets. “Sympathy is the last thing either of us needs.”

  He withdrew one of his hands and picked up mine with the stones in it. Peeling open my fingers, he sorted through the stones. “This one’s the best,” he said, scraping my pa
lm as he picked it up. “Now, you want to hold it like this.”

  I flustered as I took back the stone, about to throw it when he stopped me. “Wait, Daniel.” He took my hand and repositioned my fingers, then took me through the swing. He looked up and started. Had he not expected me to be looking at him? “Like that,” he said, and dropped my hand. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple jutting.

  “Like this?” I said, moving around him. I threw the stone to the water. One bounce... two... three... four! “Shit, I did it!” I punched the air and laughed.

  WE ALWAYS failed at mini golf. Neither of us could get the damn ball in the hole without using a foot. Or a hand.

  Nevertheless, we made it a habit to go to the course tucked into a small corner of Garrick Park.

  “Okay,” I said as we reached the first hole. “This time let’s try it for real. No cheating.”

  Toby snickered. “We say that every time.”

  I placed the ball at the start and lined up my club. “I mean it this time.”

  Toby raised a brow.

  “Really,” I said, and hit the ball. It whizzed to the end and rocketed out of the green.

  On my way to retrieve it, I punched Toby lightly in the gut. “Stop laughing.”

  His smirk broadened. “I’m not.”

  It was at the 15th hole that a miracle happened. I sank the ball in one shot. Startled, I spun on my heel. Toby was rubbing his stubble, staring at the turning windmill that the ball had just passed through.

  He said, “Fluke. After everything else I’ve seen this evening....”

  I went to punch him again, but he anticipated it. He grabbed my arm and drew it to his side. I stumbled and the hand closed around my golf club bumped on his firm chest. His T-shirt was soft and thin on the back of my hand; for a long moment, I was unable to move.

  And then my senses returned and I pulled back.

  Heat rose to my cheeks. I focused hard on the windmill at the end of the green. “Let’s see if it was a fluke,” I said, and readied another shot.

  It was a fluke.

  But at least Toby was no better. I slunk my way over to the eighteenth hole.

  “Damn it,” Toby said. “Come here.”