And just behind him was June. Everyone by now had understood the connection, that June was a part of this, too, and the crowd, in between watching Heath melt after being doused with water, was looking to her for guidance: what to do, where to look, how to feel. She gave them nothing except a small, closed-mouth smile that if considered would probably have told them everything they needed to know.

She’d won.

Heath looked pleadingly at the audience. ‘Does anyone know what this is?’ he asked, like an idiot.

The district superintendent, who was standing on the stage ready to shake hands, touched Heath lightly on the shoulder and gestured towards the stage stairs.

‘No,’ Heath said, just close enough to the microphone for it to pick up his words. ‘I have a speech. This isn’t right.’

The audience jeered.

Dumb old Heath.

The principal made his way back to the microphone while the superintendent gingerly took Heath’s arm and led him offstage. ‘Listen, I think we’re just going to get on with things, I, uh – the next speaker? Who? Oh, yes, we have a Pleasant Hills alumnus here to, eh –’

Leo and I slipped out of the door. We’d seen enough.

‘We did it,’ he said, and wrapped me in a hug. ‘Done. How do you feel?’

The truth was I didn’t know how I felt. It absolutely sucked that this was pretty much all we could do, and the feeling that maybe I’d failed June hadn’t gone away.

I turned the question back to Leo; this was probably as important to him as it was to me.

He smiled, and that was when I realized his eyes had gone filmy. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I think we’ve done something here, my love. Something good.’

And honestly, I think that was all he wanted.

We really didn’t know if anything would come of it.

But we knew Heath sure as hell couldn’t show his face back here again.

It was the first really warm day of the year, leaving all of Pleasant Hills a sort of sweet-smelling oven of warm earth and concrete and sky. Heat distortion wobbled up from the parking lot, and the emerald oaks behind melted and trembled.

The cemetery glistened in the light.

June parked the car and looked over to me. ‘Alrighty,’ she said.

It was the second week of June. It had been nine months, I realized, as we stepped through the plots together, weeds and too-tall grass clawing at my exposed shins, making them itch. Nine months.

And we were here to say our goodbyes.

We’d decided it would be fitting, after everything that had happened.