Page 26 of Walking on Broken Paths

Chapter Twenty

The cemetery was as beautiful under an overcast sky as it had been on the day of Mr. Willis’ funeral. Jesse wiped a fallen leaf off Mikey’s headstone and crouched next to it. He traced Mikey’s name; the marble was cool against his fingertips.

“Hey, Mikey.”

His whisper was swept away by the wind, so he tried again. Louder. “Hey, Mikey.”

He’d brought flowers to lay at the gravesite, but he felt like an idiot leaving them behind.

Because Mikey wasn’t here.

Sighing, he stood. “You’re not here, are you?”

Only the wind answered him.

He left the flowers at the base of the headstone anyway, though he wasn’t sure Mikey would’ve appreciated them had he been alive.

He’d have much rather received a fresh sketchpad or new graphite pencils.

But Jesse couldn’t leave those behind for Mikey—they’d get blown away or waterlogged after a rainfall.

Although... Now that he was looking around, there were some gravesites with glass enclosures attached to them that clearly held an item or two of value to the deceased.

Something to think about.

There was beauty in this place of sadness, evident in the flower-strewn graves, the trees trilling with birdsong, and the squirrels that chased each other around a tree trunk.

Mikey would’ve liked it here.

Jesse touched two fingers to his lips and pressed them to Mikey’s name. “You’re not here. I hope one day I’ll find where you are, Mikey. Until then...” He swallowed thickly. “I’ll just keep missing you until we meet again. I love you.”

Inhaling the scent of freshly turned earth, he brought his second bouquet to a gravesite a few rows away and crouched by the headstone. “Hey, Mr. Willis.”

Unlike Mikey’s grave—grassy and spattered with wildflowers—Andrew Willis’ grave was covered with a mound of fresh earth. A semi-wilted bouquet of colourful flowers sat atop the mound, indicating someone had been by recently. Jesse added his to it.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry you left this world so early, and I’m sorry I wasn’t here to say goodbye. Sorry, too, about cutting Parker off after Mikey died.”

Hello, guilt and shame, my old friends.

“I’m not sure what things were like for him after I left, but I’m sure you had to deal with the fallout.” His mom had once told him that Parker had been lost without him, but Jesse wasn’t clear what that meant exactly, other than heartbreak and loneliness.

Hell. That was enough, wasn’t it?

“I’m thankful Parker had you to support him and thankful you had him to support you when you were sick. You don’t have to worry about him now, though.” Like he’d done at Mikey’s grave, he traced Andrew Willis’ name, committing the marble-etched grooves to memory. “I’ll take care of him. I promise.”

Throat clogged, he stood and turned his face into the wind, letting it dry his eyes.

Dr. Ippolito often told him that he was allowed to take space from his grief. It wasn’t selfish, and it wasn’t avoidance; it was compassion for himself. If it wasn’t tolerable for him to feel his grief, he could temporarily set it aside.

Considering he’d set it aside for years until Coach Vernier had sat him down and told him about his son, Jesse didn’t feel he deserved to set it aside ever again.

“Haven’t you been doing just that for years by avoiding your hometown, Mikey’s grave, and The Windblown ?” Dr. Ippolito had asked during their recent therapy appointment.

Jesse had gaped at her fuzzy image on his computer screen, the truth of her words sinking into his gut like an anchor dropped into the ocean.

“I don’t say that to make you feel bad,” she’d continued kindly. “Only to make you face the truth—you know how I feel about you lying to yourself.”

“I should’ve come back years ago.”

“Maybe.” Dr. Ippolito had shrugged. “Maybe not. But forcing yourself to face something you weren’t ready for wouldn’t have done you any good.”

Jesse had faced the island. Charlottetown. His parents. Mikey’s grave. Mikey’s memorial.

And although each one had cleaved a part of his heart clean off, they’d also, mysteriously yet unquestionably, affixed those parts back together again into a shape that wasn’t whole, but wasn’t fragmented either.

Coming home had been healing.

Perhaps visiting The Windblown would be too.

Twenty minutes later, he stood by The Windblown after a quick stop at his parents’ house, feet braced against the sway of the docks at Peakes Quay.

He inhaled the scent of salty ocean air, and, reeking unpleasantly above it, seaweed.

Gulls circled overhead and fish darted around the pilings.

The Windblown looked the same as she ever had: an eleven-metre fibreglass sloop with a four-metre beam that his parents had bought for cheap a couple of years before Jesse had been born, and that they’d restored with the help of friends.

She was gorgeous.

Jesse wanted to take her out, sail her into the wind and leave his doubts, his guilt, his self-recriminations on land.

But he wasn’t sure he was ready for that.

Hell, now that he was here, he wasn’t sure he was ready to get on her at all, onto the place where he’d found Mikey’s body.

Dread crept up the back of his throat, and he took a step back, bumping into a hard chest. He was about to turn around and apologize when arms wrapped around him from behind and a smooth voice whispered, “It’s just me,” in his ear.

Parker.

Inexplicably here exactly when Jesse needed him.

“How are you here?”

“Staff meeting before tonight’s cruise,” Parker said. “I came early to pick up some apps from the restaurant. Figured since I was asking the staff to come in early, I might as well make it worth their while.”

Jesse glanced down, and sure enough, there was a paper bag stamped with the Peake’s Quay Restaurant & Bar logo. “I won’t keep you then.”

“I’ve got time.” Parker gave his waist a squeeze, then came up beside him. “Were you thinking of boarding? Why don’t I come with you?”

That quickly, the dread cooled to mere apprehension. “Yeah,” Jesse croaked. “Okay.”

Bracing himself, Jesse stepped onto The Windblown for the first time in fifteen years.

He tried to look at her clinically, as if this were his first time aboard. Railing, cockpit, blue canopy, door that opened onto a short flight of stairs that led down into the galley, saloon, and cabin.

He could do this.

“The cockpit is smaller than I remember,” Parker commented matter-of-factly, aiding in settling Jesse’s apprehension somewhat.

“And yet we managed to fit me, you, Mikey, my parents, and your dad in here.”

“Were we sitting on top of each other?”

Jesse barked a laugh he never would’ve predicted under the circumstances. “Probably.”

“Remember when Julian tried to goad you into racing against him?”

“Dumbass,” Jesse said fondly of their old school friend. “If I wanted to race, I would’ve entered the regattas at the yacht club. What’s Julian up to these days, anyway?”

“Last I heard, he was in Halifax.” Parker took his hand, his palm warm against Jesse’s. “Are we going downstairs?”

“I guess I have to.”

“No. You don’t.”

Perhaps not. But it was time.

“Yes,” Jesse countered. “I do.”

Without giving himself time to second-guess, he unlocked the door to the galley with the key he’d picked up from his parents’ house and took the trio of steps down.

It, too, was exactly as he remembered. Galley with a microwave, a mini fridge, and a two-burner propane stove with an oven. Saloon with a chart table bolted to the floor, cushioned benches, and a fully enclosed head with a shower and vanity. And a cabin with the tiniest of beds.

He sat on the bed and passed a hand over the thin mattress. “I always hated that this is where he decided to...” His exhale was shaky. “I hate that he was shut up in this cabin instead of on deck where he could see the clouds. He hated it down here. Always found it claustrophobic.”

Parker crouched in front of him and rubbed his palms up and down Jesse’s thighs. “I remember.”

The clinical eye he’d been trusting to see him through this vanished, and he was seventeen years old again, calling to Mikey from the top of the stairs.

“Mikey. Are you down here? You missed dinner.”

The thump of his clomp down the stairs echoed in his ears in the present, and he wished he could go back and tell his younger self to leave the house an hour earlier.

Just an hour, and Mikey might still be alive.

The ghost of his seventeen-year-old self clomped his way through the galley and through the saloon, as graceful as an elephant stampede.

The ghost was annoyed that he’d had to look for his brother at all, but he was also fond because sketching on The Windblown had always been Mikey’s thing, and the ghost was looking forward to seeing what Mikey had sketched today.

Then he’d spotted the bottle of pills.

The note. I love you, but I don’t want to be here anymore. I’m sorry. I love you.

The sketchpad on the end of the bed, open to a sketch of Jesse and Mikey from behind, looking out toward the ocean.

The graphite pencil staining the utilitarian white sheets.

Mikey. Unmoving. Still warm because Jesse had been an hour too late.

“Mikey! No, no, no, Mikey, wake up. Wake up!”

“Jess.”

The ghosts of Jesse and Mikey of years past vanished at Parker’s voice, and present-day Jesse came back to himself to find his face wet with tears.

He couldn’t see through them. He couldn’t breathe through his burning nose.

He couldn’t speak past the tightness in his throat.

He couldn’t hear past the rushing of blood in his ears.

The only sense left was touch. Parker’s hands on his thighs. Parker’s forehead against his. Parker’s lips against his wet cheeks. Parker’s own tears against his neck.

Eventually, Jesse managed a sobbed, “I miss him, Parks. I miss him so goddamn much.”

“I know, babe. I know.”

The grief was a fresh wound as they held each other. Leaned on each other. Supported each other.