A short story
This one has a ghost, but it’s not too scary.
If Mina had knelt at any other gravestone, she would have missed the locket. She was working on restoring the moss-covered tombstone of Adeline Coombs. The locket lay wedged in the grass at the base of the monument, its gold chain glinting in the late afternoon sun. She eased it from the soil — a sort of resurrection, and held it cupped in her calloused palm. Mina picked up the stiff brush she’d been using to clean the stone and flicked it across the pendant. Flaked dirt fell away to expose a heart-shaped locket studded on its face with tiny amber jewels. They had the dull shine of yellow glass.
“How long have you been hiding here?” Mina wondered aloud. The grave’s occupant, a woman who died young, had passed in 1910, so it was doubtful the pendant had been there all that time. Had some distant relative lost it here, or maybe they had left it as an offering of sorts? Mina decided it would be best not to leave the locket there. It could be valuable. She’d drop it off at the caretaker’s office after she finished her rounds. Rising, she dropped the necklace into her jeans pocket. Mina gave the gravestone a little pat. “Rest easy, Adeline, and I’ll see you next month.” Mina like to converse with the dead, they were good listeners.
Mina Carroll was a large woman. She wore her size proudly, assured that her ancestors had gifted her the frame to survive famine. Smile lines wrinkled her face prematurely, radiating out from her ice-blue eyes. She wore her ash blonde hair clipped short and the fair skin of her neck often sunburned. The first Saturday of every month, she volunteered at the historic Pecan Grove Cemetery, cleaning the gravestones and clearing brush and weeds that had sprung up. Mina finished her rounds as the sun sank below the horizon. A chill wind rustled through the leaves of the graveyard trees, sounding like whispering ghosts. Mina hurried to her car to beat the dark and forgot to drop off the necklace.
She found it a week later, on laundry day, as she cleared her pockets.
“Oh, no.” Mina held up the locket. Her cat, Percy, weaved in and out of her legs. “I didn’t steal it, you know.” The cat gazed up at her. Mina nudged him out of the way. “I’ll take it back next Saturday, I promise.”
Mina spread the locket on a soft cloth at her kitchen table. She decided to clean the chain and wipe the dirt from the pendant before turning it in. Once the outer layer of grime was gone from the metal, it reflected the light in a burnished glow. The gemstones on the front sparkled, and Mina wondered if they were valuable. The necklace might be an antique, or at least vintage. She knew nothing about jewelry. The only accessory Mina wore was a lanyard that held the keycard for the office where she worked. Curious, she held the locket close to her face to study it. A tiny latch protruded from the side, and when she touched it, the locket sprang open.
Mina had expected there would be a portrait inside. The heart shape led her to imagine a pair of lovers, immortalized side by side. She thought she’d see a sepia toned photos from the 1920s. Instead, one side of the heart shape was empty. The other held a modern, full-color photograph. The man smiling up at her from the locket looked familiar, like someone she’d seen recently. He wore his brown hair swept back from his forehead, and a hint of mustache dotted his upper lip. Brown eyes, no glasses. His smile revealed a crooked front tooth. He could have been the cashier at the grocery, the assistant at the dentist, the barista at the coffee shop, the mechanic who changed her oil. Familiar, but not intimate. His smile made her nervous, as though the man could stare through the locket and see her sitting alone at her kitchen table. She snapped the locket closed and put it away, nestled in the junk drawer in her cabinet.
Mina meant to take the locket back to the cemetery and drop it with the caretaker. But out of sight meant out of mind. She didn’t think of it again until the evening she dashed into Subway to pick up a quick dinner. Tired from a long work day, she fumbled with her credit card at the register. The bell at the store’s entrance jingled, and someone spoke up behind her.
“Let me get that for you.”
Mina turned and came face to face with the man from the locket. He held out a twenty- dollar bill to the cashier, who took it and finished ringing up Mina’s food before she could protest. “Thank you,” Mina said.
“No problem. I like to pay it forward now and then.” The man smiled, revealing his crooked front tooth.
Mina scurried away from the counter, clutching the plastic bag holding her sandwich. She felt his gaze on her back as she pushed through the door. Heat flooded her face. Stupid. She could have at least asked his name. Or asked him why his picture was inside a heart-shaped locket she’d found in a graveyard.
At home, she took out the locket. Yes, it was definitely the same man who’d paid for her meal. Had he lost the necklace at the grave? He could be a family friend, she supposed, or a relative of the woman buried there. She’d speak to Barry, the caretaker, to find out if anyone had reported a lost locket. The next day, Mina took off work early so she could make it to the cemetery before the office closed for the day.
At the cemetery, Mina discovered the office was closed. There must be a funeral. Sure enough, Mina spotted a huddle of black-clad people at the far corner of the cemetery. Barry would have a crew out to fill the grave as soon as the mourners left. He’d be busy, but maybe Mina could catch him. She’d stay out of sight, to not disturb the funeral folk.
Wandering through the graveyard, Mina made her way over to the older section. There the gravestones tilted and settled in the earth. Adeline Coombs’ resting place, where she’d found the necklace, was next to a large oak, and partly hidden behind a white stone mausoleum. Before Mina made it to the grave, she stopped. A man, head bowed, stood at the foot of the burial plot. An odd certainty raced through Mina — this was the man from the locket. She backed away before he could turn around and hurried out to her car.
Why had she run off like that? This would have been the perfect opportunity to ask him about the locket. There he was, at the very grave where she’d found it. Obviously, it belonged to him or to someone he knew. It had only been a coincidence that she’d run into him at Subway. And what was causing her fear? He’d been kind enough to do her a favor.
Safe in her car, Mina cranked the heat high. She shivered and remembered her mother saying that every time you shook like that, it was because someone was walking across your grave. She went home and packed the locket into an envelope, along with a letter explaining where she’d found it. The following Saturday, when she arrived for her normal volunteer day, she dropped the envelope off on Barry’s desk.
The oak tree’s shadow stretched long across the grass as Mina finished plucking the weeds around the markers. Barry wandered over, tapping her envelope against his leg.
“Hey Mina. Thanks for dropping this off. No one’s reported it missing and I don’t think anyone is going to claim it.”
Mina stood and stretched. “I thought it might belong to one of her family. Someone visiting.”
“I don’t think she has any living relatives,” Barry said. He held the envelope out to her. Mina took it while he pulled a second envelope from his pocket. “I remembered we had this in the file. You think we can put this back on the stone?”
Mina took the second envelope and tapped the contents out into her palm. It was a small, porcelain oval portrait of a young woman. “Is this Adeline?” The tombstone had a blank oval inset the same size as the portrait. Mina studied the picture. The woman in the black-and-white photo had short, dark hair styled in waves. She wore a loose-fitting blouse and around her neck hung a heart-shaped locket. The pendant had small gems set in the locket’s face.
“Did you see this?” Mina pointed to the oval, to the necklace the woman wore.
“Pretty strange, right?” Barry said. “Doesn’t mean they buried her with it, but this looks like the same necklace you found.”
“Yeah, weird. Especially with the guy’s picture inside it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look.” Mina opened the locket. There was no picture there. “Did you take it out?”
Barry shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Say, if no one claims the locket, do you want it?”
“No. Absolutely not.”
For the rest of that month, Mina kept watch for the man from the locket. She felt like she’d see him around, and finally she did, but not in a way she expected. His photo popped up as she scrolled across the news feed on her laptop. They had arrested him for murder, his victim a woman Mina’s age. The news story said they tied him to others — missing girls and women across the state. He smiled in his mug shot, a cruel grin that didn’t reach his eyes. And there was the crooked front tooth.
If she hadn’t seen his picture in the locket, Mina would have spoken to him. He looked so ordinary, like someone you see in line next to you at the grocery store. Like someone who liked to do a good deed, to pay it forward. How many other women had felt comfortable enough with him, this ordinary man?
She’d stop by the florist tomorrow and get a bouquet for Adeline’s grave. If no one claimed the locket, she’d ask Barry if she could have it. After all, it seemed like Adeline meant to give her that gift.
THE END
