The Summer I Left novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Two Graves

The cemetery in Toledo sat behind a tire shop, with a chain-link fence and a gravel road.

Eddie parked by the gate and turned off the engine.

"I'll stay with the car," he said. "I'm very good at staying with cars."

"You can come," Nate said.

Eddie looked at him.

"Not to the stones," Nate said. "But you can stand where I can see you. It helps."

"Done," Eddie said, and got out.

We walked up a slope of dead grass.

Nate knew the way. He had looked it up on a county records page the week before, and he did not need the map.

The woman's stone was gray and small, and some kind person had left a pot of mums on it that had gone brown.

I read her name.

I had read it twice in the letters, and I still stopped.

Under it were two dates, and under those, the line *Beloved Mother.*

Nate stood next to me, close but not touching.

"She is the one who taught me to make toast," he said. "She cut it in triangles. She said squares were for people who didn't care."

I laughed, and then I put my hand over my mouth.

"I was seven," Nate said. "She was too thin. She slept all day. The man shouted at her for it and she did not shout back."

"I'm sorry."

"She hummed to me. Every night until the last week."

He cleared his throat.

"Would you like to hear it?"

"I know it," I said. "I mean, I've read it."

Nate began to hum.

It was a low tune, slow and a little off at the end of each line. I stood very still.

After a moment, I hummed it with him.

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