The Love I Buried With My Grandma Chapter 07

The Love I Buried With My Grandma Chapter 07

Grandma was laid to rest beside the eight-month-old child we’d lost.

It rained on and off for weeks after. I went to see them every day.

I always brought her favorite white magnolias, and a toy for the baby.

One day I arrived to find fresh magnolias and a new toy already there.

I walked over, picked them up, and threw them away.

“Nora.”

Daniel shuffled out from behind the headstone, awkward.

“Have you been alright?”

“Fine.”

I knelt and set down my own magnolias.

“Don’t come here again. They don’t want to see you.”

His face was full of sorrow.

“Nora, let me explain.”

“I really didn’t know about Grandma. I didn’t think it was that serious, so…”

I looked up at him sharply, my gaze cold.

“Don’t make excuses for yourself, Daniel!”

“Stop hiding behind I didn’t know.”

“You understood everything perfectly well. You were just tired of me. Tired of Grandma being a burden. Tired of her being- dirty.”

“I never-! I-”

I cut him off before he could finish.

“Last time Grandma touched your hand, you wiped it off for a full minute.”

Daniel went white as a sheet, like someone had a hand around his throat.

His umbrella slipped from his grip.

He sank to the ground like all the strength had drained out of him.

Rain soaked him through. He looked wretched.

“Gu home.”

I turned my back on him.

“Nora… Nora… since you left, I haven’t gone back home once.”

“I’m afraid to. I’m afraid… afraid the house is still full of you, and her.”

“I can’t live like this… Nora, come back with me. I swear I’ll change.’

He crawled toward me on his knees, expecting me to soften.

But my heart was already hard as stone.

I pulled a small knife from my bag and dropped it in front of him.

“Can’t live? Fine. Then go ahead and die.”

“A fife for a life. You owe me two.”

“Pay it off, and then we’ll talk about the future.”

Daniel grabbed the knife and dragged it across his wrist.

“Fine! If dying means you’ll forgive me, then I’ll die!”

Blood ran down his wrist, dissolving into ribbons of red in the rain.

Time dragged on. Daniel’s lips went paler and paler.

He called out to me, mournful.

“Nora… will you really never forgive me?”

I looked at the two headstones in front of me, my heart perfectly still.

“You’re not dead yet,”

“You’re really this heartless?! I have to actually die in front of you before you’ll change your mind?!”

Daniel clutched his wrist, eyes blazing with fury, his face twisted.

I turned and looked at him.

“That’s right. Debts die with the debtor.”

“Daniel Ashford, you owe me two lives.”

He said okay three times in a row, then clutched his wrist and bolted down the hill.

He slipped more than once, running.

The last time he’d run like that was early in our relationship, when he heard I was sick.

He’d crossed from Southgate to Northfield in four hours flat.

Same rain. Same desperate mess of a man.

The difference was-last time, he was running toward love.

This time, he was running from being left behind.