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A bike leaned on its kickstand in front, the paved driveway on the other side leading deep into the cemetery’s gloom.
I parked my bike alongside the one that stood the exact height as mine and pressed my face to the cool bars of the gate, scanning the area beyond.
Someone huddled with their back to me in front of a headstone off to the right. Arms wrapped around their legs, and head bowed, they shivered, their shoulders shaking as cries reached for me like a magnet to my ironclad heart.
A strange ache moved over my chest, and I rubbed at my shirt, trying to soothe it away.
Frowning, I tilted my head back and eyed the gate in front of me.
It stood too tall to climb.
But the fence beyond, the tree alongside where the person’s bike sat—its branches crept over into the graveyard just as creepily as the beams of moonlight reaching through the leaves.
The boy’s sniffles continued, pulling my focus back on him.
Boy, I had decided, because no middle school aged girl I knew would ever go into such a place alone after dark when everyone else slept.
I eyed the tree. Glanced at the crying boy. Rubbed at my chest for a second time, my feet itching to move closer.
He had gone to see that grave by himself, but I felt he shouldn’t be alone. He needed someone strong beside him while weakness held control over his emotions.
Mind made up, I set a plan in motion that had me scaling the tree, shimmying along a branch until I hovered over green grass, and dropping to the ground.
The boy turned at the thump of my feet behind him but didn’t jump up in startled fear like I’d expected.
Definitely brave…or perhaps he’d already heard me coming.
“Hey.” I moved closer as he swiped his arm over his eyes. I wasn’t about to ask him if he was okay. That would have been a waste of words.
Instead, I stopped beside him, reading the name etched in granite in front of him.
Archer Blackwood.
A quick calculation let me know he’d been dead three years to the day—and that he would have been twelve if he still lived.
I sank onto the hard ground, breathing in the scent of soil, fresh cut grass, and flowers.
The boy beside me sniffled. “He was my brother,” he whispered, sending that weird twinge through my heart again. “My twin.”
Our elbows brushed, sliding a shiver down my arm.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I murmured, looking over at the boy.
Wetness still filled his eyes that appeared as red as his nose in the moonlight shining on us. “Thanks,” he whispered, his voice breaking. He didn’t seem embarrassed by his tears or the show of emotion like I would have been.
But I wasn’t about to put him down like Dad used to do with me all the time.
“I’m Rhett,” I told him but didn’t offer my hand since his clasped around his knees—and I didn’t want either of us moving and breaking the magnetic contact between our bodies.
“Ashton,” he replied quietly.
“What happened to him?” I asked, picking at the grass between our thighs so I wouldn’t grab hold of him like I wanted to and hug his sadness away.
“Leukemia. It’s been three years, and Mom and my therapist tell me that healing will come, but they didn’t have their other half ripped away from them.” He wiped his nose on his T-shirt at his shoulder, leaving a smear of wetness that should have grossed me out but didn’t. “Even my dad and four older sisters don’t understand.”
I had no clue what it was like to have a twin—or even a sibling.
Heck, not even a close friend since I’d never allowed my emotions free so someone could get to know me beyond the hard shell I hid inside.