In the morning, three days after the game, there is something taped to her window. A repurposed Hallmark card. It faces into the room with an orange cat on the front, birthday hat on a jaunty angle and popped balloons in tatters all around him, victims of his claws— but the bouncy, big-lettered HAPPY BIRTHDAY! has been crossed out, replaced with I’M SORRY! I FUCKED UP! in pen. The artist has taken other liberties. Fat tears roll down the cat’s cheeks. Pen ink has also turned his mouth into a sad, downturned U.
An arrow leads to a handwritten description: MARTIN (sad because we’re fighting. he misses his uncle marlowe so much ☹️ )
Then at the very bottom of the card, in the same tight scrawl: I can’t undo it, but tell me what I can do to make it right.
A bunch of wildflowers wilt below the card, held there by Scotch tape. Their petals, crushed against the pane, leave stains of color like fingerprints. Pink-tipped primrose, scraggly violets, a scepter of goldenrod, a couple precious purple asters. Dandelions, egg-yolk yellow, sagging their heavy heads on broken stalks. He’d almost managed to find a representative for each color of the rainbow, except orange; the forest turned up no black-eyed susans, nor orange hawkweed, even with Kasey helping him scour far and wide. Too early in the season for those yet. In the middle of the bunch, a single star-shaped mountain laurel opens like an inverted umbrella, revealing its distinctive tattoo: symmetrical pink dots on pure white. The state flower of Connecticut, plenty common in Virginia too, with its preference for shade and mountain soil. Highly toxic too— but that could be said about most beautiful things. Beauty like that always came with a catch.
