Cemetery Tours (32 page)

“Destroy the evidence.
  Talk to her friends.  Email them.  Do whatever you have to do.  Say that because of the trauma that she experienced, her doctor thought it would be for the best not to remind her of everything she lost.  Just make sure they know that as far as Kate is concerned, there is no such person as Trevor Hanson.”  

~*~

For the next few days, Gavin scoured Kate’s apartment for pictures of her and Trevor.  He searched every nook and cranny, collected every photograph he could find, and stored them all in a large black photo album, which he stuffed in a suitcase and stashed at his apartment.  Then, he took every item that could possibly remind her of Trevor; the souvenir double decker bus that he’d bought for her in London, the Tiffany heart necklace that he’d given her for Valentine’s day, her collection of ticket stubs of all the movies they’d seen together.  The doctors had removed her engagement ring some time in the midst of her surgery and had since returned it to her parents.  

Then, he was faced with the ridiculous feat of getting rid of all traces of Trevor from her computer.
  That included pictures, emails, and her Facebook account.  That proved to be the most difficult.  Hacking into her page was easy enough.  She’d had the same password for everything (HouseMD203) since she was seventeen.  The hard part was seeing all the messages people had left not only on her wall, but on Trevor’s.  

It was horrible, reading post after post, expressions of shock, sympathy, and utter sorrow that had been left for the world to see on Trevor’s page.
  Gavin knew he shouldn’t be reading them, particularly the more personal ones, but for some reason, he couldn’t tear his eyes away.  It was like some strange form of self-punishment.  

Finally, after he’d gone through every message, he began the process of deleting Trevor from his sister’s life.
 

~*~

It turned out that Facebook posts and photos weren’t the only thing that needed to go, at least as far as his mother was concerned.  The family had gone out of their way to tell Kate that she had been driving her car when she’d had the accident.  Of course in actuality, it had been Trevor’s Corolla, not Kate’s old Jeep, that had been totaled.  But Kate wasn’t supposed to know that.  So one day after work, Trevor went with his father to sell his sister’s beloved vehicle.  Instead of buying a new one on the spot, however, they decided to wait and let her decide which car she wanted next.  

The final step in their attempt to shield Kate from anything that might pose a negative effect on her recovery was for Terri and Rex to call off their divorce.
  Gavin had mixed feelings about his parents’ decision.  Although he hadn’t wanted to see his parents end their marriage, he knew how unhappy they’d been, especially in the months leading up to the filing.  Part of him was afraid that their trying to stay together might create unnecessary tension that would be harder on Kate than learning that they had planned to divorce.  But then, both Terri and Rex seemed dedicated and determined to put their personal issues aside to create the best possible environment for Kate.  Maybe, just maybe, something good would come from these last few weeks of hell after all.  

Unfortunately, not everybody was convinced that the Averys truly had Kate’s best interests at heart.
  Trevor’s family in particular.  The Hansons had loved Kate like a daughter, and to be told that they wouldn’t be able to see or speak with her had hurt them terribly.  They argued extensively with the Averys, saying that Kate deserved to know about the man she loved, that they needed to have that connection with their son, but Terri wouldn’t budge on the issue.  She even threatened legal action should the Hansons attempt to contact Kate without their consent.  Finally, Ted and Arlene left, tearful and defeated.  

A lot of Trevor and Kate’s friends were angry too.
  It was bad enough that they’d lost Trevor.  Now, unless they wanted to be cut off from Kate, they had to act like their friend had never existed.  Several of Kate’s older friends understood and agreed that it was for the best, but some expressed concern about not being able to keep Trevor a secret.  A few of them also said that they would feel guilty keeping something so substantial from her.  In the end, however, they all committed to the lie.  They didn’t really have another option.  

~*~

Over the next couple of weeks, Rex, Terri, and Gavin took the baby steps in reintroducing Kate to her old life.  They brought in Valerie, the interior decorator who had hired Kate right after she’d graduated from SMU.  If Kate not being able to remember her was difficult for Valerie, she didn’t let it show.  Instead, she walked into Kate’s room with a bright, cheerful smile and announced, “Hi, Kate, I’m Valerie.  How are you feeling, Sweetheart?” 

“A lot better than I have been,” Kate replied.

“I’m glad to hear that.  We’ve missed you at work.”  

“I’m sorry that I haven’t been there,” Kate answered diplomatically.
  Gavin and their parents had filled her in on her job with Val.  

“You have got nothing to be sorry for.
  I’m just glad that you’re going to be alright.”

After a brief visit, Valerie told Kate that her job was still waiting for her if she wanted it.
  Kate thanked her and accepted, but Gavin thought there was something off about her response.  

While Rex and Terri escorted Valerie out, Gavin took a seat on the edge of Kate’s bed.
 

“Everything okay?” he asked her.

“Mm-hmm,” she nodded.  “Why?” 

“You just seem a little distracted.”

“I guess I’m just tired,” she shrugged.

“Are you happy to have your job back?”

“I don’t really have it back,” she reminded him.  “I mean, I guess I technically do.  But I might as well be starting a new job.”

“Val will help you out.
  I know you don’t remember her, but she is a really great person.  And she loves the hell out of you.”  It was true.  After Kate first started working for her, she and Val had become fast friends.

“Okay,” Kate replied, still looking despondent.
         

“You sure you’re okay?” Gavin asked.
  Kate took a deep breath and bit her lip.  Gavin suddenly realized she was trying not to cry.

“I don’t know what this is,” she finally admitted and held up her pale blue blanket.

“Your blanket?” 

“No, I know it’s a blanket.
  But I don’t know what color it is.”  Gavin was confused.  The blanket was obviously blue.  Had the accident somehow impaired her vision?  

“It’s blue,” Gavin told her.
  Kate blinked and two tears ran down her cheeks.

“I don’t know what that means,” she said.
  Now Gavin was alarmed.  Trying not to panic, he grabbed a get-well bouquet of pink stargazer lilies off her window sill and held them up. 

“Do you know what color these are?”
  Kate shook her head.  Gavin didn’t know what to do.  Should he call a doctor?  Track down their parents?  “Do you think - are you colorblind?”  

“No, I can see the color.
  I know that it’s the same color as a Valentine heart.  But I - I don’t know what it’s called.”  

“Do you know what any of the colors are?”
  Kate trembled and shook her head.  “Is this a new thing?  When did you notice it?”

“I don’t know.
  I had so much going on inside my head that I didn’t really think about it.  Then, when you guys told me about the decorating job... I don’t know.  I looked around the room and realized that I didn’t know what anything was called.  I tried to shake it off, thought maybe I was just tired and that if I slept, it would get better...” Kate explained.  “And Valerie was so nice to me, offering me my job back.  How am I supposed to do that job?”  

“You’ll figure something out.
  The doctors told you it would take some time, right?  You’re going to have to relearn some stuff.  Maybe this is just part of it.”  Kate didn’t look so sure.

“Why did this have to happen?” she asked, resting her head back so that she was staring at the ceiling.
  Gavin didn’t want to answer that.  

“I don’t know,” he finally replied, hoping she wouldn’t detect the raw guilt in his voice.
  “But I swear to you, everything will be okay.  I know everything seems like a nuisance right now, but Kate, you have no idea how lucky you are just to be alive.”  Although he’d intended his words to be comforting, something in his tone betrayed him and he found himself locked under Kate’s curious gaze.

“I was the only one, right?
  I mean, you’d tell me if someone else was hurt, wouldn’t you?”  Gavin looked his sister square in the eye.

“I promise, you were the only one.
  No one else was hurt.”

Kate seemed to relax a little after that.
  Gavin was relieved.  He realized then that his mother had been right.  Kate was struggling with her new life enough as it was.  If she’d found out about Trevor, about how much she’d really lost in that crash, it would have been more than she could handle.  

Gavin remembered that day specifically, not only because of the conversation he’d had with Kate, but because it was the first time he came home to discover that the temperature inside his apartment had inexplicably dropped about twenty degrees.

Present Day

Kate had managed to remain calm, even neutral, as Gavin recounted to her the details surrounding the accident.  Maybe it was the overwhelming abundance of new information, or maybe it was her brain still trying to protect her, but for whatever reason, the story had left her feeling numb, like she was listening to a plot that characters would act out on television.  It didn’t resonate with her that what Gavin described had actually
happened
.

“So when Mom and Dad said they didn’t want me thinking about Trevor, they weren’t afraid it would impair my recovery.
  They were afraid it would advance it, that I was starting to remember him.”

“Yeah.”
  Gavin didn’t try to deny it.  Kate was stunned.  Not that her parents would go to extremes to try to protect her.  She supposed every parent would.  But to go so far as to try to hinder her recovery?  That just seemed so... wrong.  

“So what’s in the photo album?” she asked.
 

“Everything,” Gavin replied as he handed it to her.
  Kate was surprised by how heavy it was.  

With a deep breath, she set the book on her lap and pulled back the front cover.
  Inside, she found images of herself smiling, with her arms around the same tall, dark-haired man in the picture that Gavin had given her earlier.  One picture showed her dancing with him in the middle of a crowded room.  In another, they kayaked across a lake.  In one, he gave her a piggy-back ride on the beach.  In another, she kissed him on the cheek.  Kate was struck, not only by the massive accumulation of moments that she couldn’t remember, but by how incredibly happy she appeared to be.  Still, there was something bothering her.

“What was he really like?”

“What do you mean?” Gavin asked.   

“I mean, the way you talk about him and the way he looks in these pictures, he seems like this wonderful, amazing guy.
  But he’s been draining you for months.  He made you sick.  He threw you into a wall!  What kind of person does that?”  Kate realized that Trevor was probably listening in, but she didn’t care.  She was angry at him.  He’d made Gavin’s life, and her life for that matter, an absolute hell for the past five months.  And
that
she couldn’t forget.       

“He says there’s no excuse for everything he did, and that if he could take it all back, he would,” Michael spoke on Trevor’s behalf.
  “He just needed you to know who he was.  He couldn’t move on without you knowing how much you meant to him.”  

“Kate, he loved you more than anything,” Gavin told her.
  “We should never have tried to keep him a secret from you.  You know, to be honest, I can’t really blame him for wanting to punch my lights out.”  Kate still wasn’t entirely convinced.  

“He says he wants to talk to you,” Michael told her.
  She glanced up at him.  As usual, his dark eyes were a source of reassurance and comfort.  This time, however, she could swear she also detected the slightest hint of regret.  Kate was ashamed.  She’d been so caught up in Gavin’s revelation that she hadn’t considered how Michael might be feeling.     

“Michael, I can’t ask you to - ”

“Kate, it’s okay,” he assured her.  “I think you both need this.”  Kate looked at her brother.  He just nodded.  She could tell his pain was beginning to get to him.  He needed to take his medicine, but she was fairly certain that wouldn’t happen until everything was resolved.  Finally, she relented.  

“Where is he?”
 

“He’s been sitting next to you this whole time,” Michael said.
   

His answer sent chills racing across Kate’s entire body.
  She turned to face the empty air to her left.  She strained her eyes for a glimpse of the man in the pictures, but he never appeared.  Just then, a strange sensation, like a cool winter’s breeze grazed the fingers on her left hand.  She couldn’t be sure, but she got the feeling that Trevor had just reached for her.  Blinking back tears, she looked into thin air and whispered, “Hi.”

~*~

Michael felt a sick, sinking knot in his stomach as Trevor reached over and took Kate’s hand, but he tried not to let it show.  After all, they were the victims here.  They were the ones whose lives had been torn apart.  Not him.  Though self-pity would have been an exceptionally easy route to take at that point.  

No.
  For once, he wasn’t going to think about how hard or uncomfortable the situation was for him.  Kate and Trevor both had lost something precious, something irreplaceable.  As had every ghost who had ever contacted him.  Up until that point, Michael had only ever thought about how he felt.  For someone who was supposed to be so “in tune” with other people’s spirits, he had a pretty selfish disposition.  

“I miss you,” Trevor was saying to Kate as he reached out and tried to touch her hand.
  Michael took a deep breath and hoped he wouldn’t live to regret what he was about to do.

“He says he misses you,” he translated.
 

“I’m sorry,” Kate said.
  “I’m so sorry about everything that happened.”

“No, Baby, no.
  It’s not your fault,” Trevor reached up and touched her cheek.  Kate shivered and pulled away.  Michael repeated what he had said to Kate.  “I know this is going to be the last time I talk to you until... whatever’s next.  And I’m not sure what I say is going to mean all that much to you.  But I just couldn’t leave without you knowing that loving you, being with you, was the best thing that ever happened to me, and that I wouldn’t trade my time with you for anything.  I love you so much, Kate.”  He paused for Michael to translate.  As he spoke, Kate dried the tears pooling in her eyes with the back of her hand.  “I know this is a lot to take in, but I hope you can forgive me for being such a jerk these last few months.”  

“I do,” Kate whispered.
  Finally, for the first time since Michael had known him, Trevor smiled.  Then, he leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss on Kate’s lips.  Michael averted his eyes and tried to remind himself that none of what had happened or what was going to happen had anything to do with him.

Remember, this is for Kate.

“Whatever happens next, I’ll be with you,” Trevor promised her.  “I love you, Kate.”  Michael relayed his message.  And then, just like that, Trevor was gone.  The atmosphere inside the room suddenly seemed very still and empty.  Kate sensed it too.  

“Did he go?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Michael answered.  He could tell by the look on Kate’s face that she wasn’t sure how she felt.  

“Will he be back?” Gavin asked.

“I don’t know,” Michael answered, though he honestly didn’t believe he would.  He’d said all that he needed to say.  Gavin nodded, the look on his face one of great discomfort.

“Gav, you need to take your medicine,” Kate told him.
  She tried to sound nonchalant, but Michael could hear the tremor in her voice.  “Let me make you a sandwich so you can get something in your stomach.”

“No Kate, you stay here.
  I’ll grab something out of the cupboard.”  

With Gavin gone, Kate turned hazel eyes on Michael.
     

“Are you okay?” he asked.
 

“Yeah,” she replied.
  “Just a little overwhelmed.  None of this seems real.  It feels like something I saw in a movie, not something that really happened to me.”  She paused.  “That makes me sound like a terrible person, doesn’t it?”

“No,” Michael assured her.
  “It’s going to take some getting used to.”        

“That’s for sure,” Kate agreed.
  “I just have so many questions.  I don’t even know where to begin.  I was engaged?  How long did we date?  What were our plans?  And my parents... They were going to get divorced?  And then they acted like I was going crazy when I told them Trevor’s name.  They said they wanted my memories to return but what they really wanted was to get Trevor out of my mind so I wouldn’t remember him...”  

“They thought they were doing what was best for you.”

“I know,” she sighed.  “But now I can’t help but wonder what else they’ve been keeping from me.  What else happened in the past two years do they think I’m too fragile to know about?”  

“I don’t know,” Michael admitted as Gavin reappeared with a box of Lucky Charms.
 

“Are you sure that’s going to be enough?” Kate asked him.
  “You know painkillers can make you nauseous if you take them on an empty stomach.”

“Well, at least she still sounds like her old self, huh Michael?” Gavin remarked, shoveling a handful of cereal into his mouth.
  Michael grinned wryly.    

“You know, it’s getting late.
  I should probably be going,” he announced. 

“I’ll walk you out,” Kate offered.
 

Outside, the night air was still and humid.
  A thin layer of clouds obscured the waxing moon and the chirping of a dozen crickets filled the silence between Michael and Kate as they walked across the landing toward his apartment.  When they reached his front door, they stopped and turned to face each other.  Kate spoke first.

“Thank you for everything, Michael,” she said.
  “Not just for helping me with Gavin, but for what you did this afternoon.  For Trevor.”  

“You’re welcome,” Michael told her.
 

“I guess things are going to be kind of different now,” Kate mused.
  “I mean, with Trevor gone, Gavin will get better.  He’ll be able to go back to work.  I’ll stop waking up in the middle of the night afraid that someone’s wandering around my apartment...” 

She tried to make it sound that having Trevor gone would be a good thing, but Michael knew that a part of her was mourning his loss.
  He also knew that she wouldn’t have been sad if Trevor had been some random person with a grudge against her brother.      

“Kate,” Michael stopped her.
  She looked up at him, her eyes glistening with tears.

“I’m sorry.
  I don’t know why I’m crying,” she murmured, wiping them away with the heel of her hand.  

“It’s okay.
  You’ve been through a lot,” he told her.  

“You know, I should feel so relieved that I don’t remember him, because I know it would hurt so much more if I did.
  But at least I would still have something to look back and smile on.  And I’m so sorry to be going on about this to you.  I’m just... I’m so confused.”

“I know,” Michael said, trying his best to figure out how to comfort her.
  Gently, he pulled her into his arms and let her cry.  He stroked her hair and whispered, “I wish I had answers for you.”  Kate pulled away and looked up at him.

“Michael, you’ve done more for me in one afternoon than I think I’ve done for anyone in my entire life.
  And I will never be able to thank you enough for that.”

“You don‘t have to thank me.
  I think I owed it to you.”   Kate smiled and wrapped her arms around his neck.  Holding her in his arms, savoring the sweet floral scent of her hair, Michael hated himself for what he was about to say.  “I also think you’re going to need some time to... to really get over him.”  

Kate stepped away and gazed up at him with curious eyes.
  Although neither of them said the words, she seemed to know what he was trying to say.  She didn’t need to be in a new relationship.  Not with the knowledge and loss of Trevor still fresh in her mind.  And though she didn’t look like she wanted to agree, she nodded.  

“You’re such a good guy, Michael,” she told him.
  Then, with a swift kiss on the cheek, she turned and walked back to her apartment, leaving him alone on the landing.  He knew he’d done the right thing.  But why did the right thing have to leave him feeling so lousy?  It was like throwing away the winning lottery ticket.  

He tried to remind himself that he wasn’t losing Kate.
  She was still his friend.  And they did live just across the hall from each other.  And maybe one day, when she was ready, they’d be able to pick up where they’d left off.  

Until that day came however, Michael was just going to have to get used to feeling like an idiot.
 

Brink appeared almost immediately after the lock on Kate’s door clicked.
 

“Dude, what the hell?” he asked.
  “Do you realize what you just did?”

“I’m aware,” Michael replied wearily.
 

“Well, then would you mind explaining it to me?
  Because last time I checked, that girl was the best thing that has ever happened to you and you’re just letting her walk away, right out of your life!”

“She’s not out of my life.
  I’m just giving her some time.”