Free Where the Broken Lie by Derek Rempfer Page A

where the hydrangeas still thrive against all botanical logic.
    I am much more careful than I had been the first time I did this, those many years ago. Back then, I had grabbed the flowers by the stem and yanked. This time, I gently bend them over and clip, almost surgically.
    Back then, I had tossed them to the ground, piled on top of each other. This time, I gently lay them down in a bouquet.
    Back then, I had run away, flowers clutched in fists. This time, I cradle them in my arms and walk.
    Back then, I had given them to Katie Cooper. This time, I would do the same.
    I hide them among the bushes behind Grandpa and Grandma’s garage. I would rise early the next morning and take them to the cemetery.

    With a fistful of flowers in one hand and a travel mug of coffee in the other, I leave for the cemetery around 6:30 the next morning. Rather than walk along the roadside, I trudge through Bruner’s field and enter the graveyard from the east.
    Upon arriving, it’s immediately evident that my letters to Beatrice Hart and Phyllis Ross seemed to have started something of a trend, as there are a handful of headstones adorned with letters.
    Some are stuck on with masking tape. Others have been carefully placed in the plants and bushes surrounding the graves. I see one that has been clipped to the chains on a wind chime. Another has been placed in the open palms of a weeping angel.
    And those were just the ones I could see. Perhaps there were others more discretely hidden. Perhaps others that had already been read and removed. What a weird little phenomenon I had unwittingly instigated. And what a weird little sense of joy it brought me.
    As I approach Katie’s grave, a bird taking flight from a tree branch above startles me. Wings flap mightily and it takes an arched path downward, spreading its feathery arms wide and gliding parallel to both heaven and earth.
    It lands atop a headstone about thirty feet away and faces the opposite direction. On the ground in front of it, an envelope sticks out from beneath a small heavy rock.
    The bird looks to be a falcon or a hawk of some sort. I stand silent and marvel at its majesty. What a curious flight it had taken.
    Then that bird does a remarkable thing. It turns around and it 
faces me
 from atop its stony perch. The eyes seem human, old and wise. Its white and brown-speckled chest heaves. Our eyes lock for a second, maybe two, and then it expands and flaps its wings mightily and flies away.
    In its wake, a single brown feather floats back down and lands on the ground on top of that partially hidden envelope.
    Watch for feathers
.
    Dropping the flowers I had brought for Katie, I walk to the grave and pick up the feather. Then I look for the name on the headstone it had fallen in front of. A simple engraving on a small and simple stone.
    James Johnson
    1953-1982

    … First Katie, now Slim Jim. Couldn’t Tucker see that nothing good could possibly come from this. He was going to mess up a lot of lives going down this path. Including his own. In fact, it had already started …

    James Johnson? Did I know that name? And then I realized … this was Slim Jim. Something about seeing his real name made me sad. Whatever James Johnson had been in 1953, he was something completely different by 1982. From James Johnson to Slim Jim. From love to hate. From a hopeful beginning to a tragic ending.
    Slim Jim was the same as Katie and Ethan in that way.
    But who would leave a letter at Slim Jim’s grave? He had no family or friends here to read it. Nobody cared about this child killer.
    Except maybe for whoever paid for him to be buried here.
    I bend down and pull the letter out from under the rock. It is unaddressed and unsealed. Feeling a little guilty for what I am about to do, I look around and make sure that I am still alone in this death field. I see that I am but still feel like I am not. A chill runs through me. Is it Katie or Ethan watching over me here? And have I somehow