“One day last autumn, I was making a delivery to the clinic on Oak Street, and I saw a memorial plaque in the lobby with her picture and her name: Emma Rose Harper. The dates matched. The accident matched.” Noah looked down at the bright green grass over Emma’s plot. “When the drought started three weeks ago,” Noah continued, “I came here to pay my respects.”
“I saw her grass dying while the rest of the cemetery turned to dust. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t bear the thought of the earth above her drying up and turning brown. So I brought water from my apartment every night. I bought a hand aerator tool to loosen the soil so the roots could drink. I buried notes to her… telling her about the days I was living because of her.”