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Josh had shaken his head weakly. “Don’t need no camera. Photographic memory,” he whispered, tapping his forehead. “I’ll send you a copy someday.”
“I’ll put the pictures in an album, send them to all the newspapers and you’ll be hailed a genius. Your name will go down in history.”
Josh gave a small smirk, lifted his fist for Wade to bump, and then fell asleep.
As if on cue, Wade suddenly heard the faint sound of a phone ringing.
He whipped around, wondering if Lydia had exited the car and followed him. Nope, not a sign of her, but the huge oaks with their enormous trunks and limbs prevented him from seeing the parking lot from the back section of the graveyard.
Wade walked in the direction of the ringing and then the sound stopped.Huh. Maybe someone with a cell phone was standing beyond the tall hedge, but he couldn’t hear any voices engaging in conversation.
Returning to his brother’s gravesite, Wade crouched down to say goodbye just as the ringing began again. Ignoring it for the moment, he muttered, “Stay cool and stay smart, buddy.”
When he rose to his feet, the phone was still ringing. And ringing. But the sound was muffled. Where was it coming from?
Wade had a really weird thought. What if the phone wasburiedinside one of the coffins nearby? Leaving a phone inside a dead person’s grave would be a bizarre joke, even if it was kind of humorous.
Just then, a glint of silver flickered in the sunlight. Wade blinked. It happened twice more then stopped. He rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. Was he seeing things?
A fence line about a hundred feet away was piled with mounds of dead leaves from the previous winter, which gave him an idea. The closer Wade walked toward the leaf piles, the louder the ringing sounded. The phone must beunderthem.
His shoes made crunching sounds while he took slow steps, brushing aside the leaves until he caught sight of the glint once more.
When his toe knocked into something solid, he knew he’d found it.
“There you are,” he said, lifting the shiny object with its black glass face—a cell phone with a wrap-around cover of the Disney mermaid Ariel.
A sense of déjà vu ran down his spine. Seeing Ariel was like a blast from the past.
Maybe it was just a memory of his older sister with her girlfriends pretending to be mermaids in the community swimming pool when they were nine-year-olds.
They always refused to get out for the longest time, but when the pool was finally empty of girls, Wade practiced his cannonballs and splashed water all over the lounge chairs where Adele and her friends were trying to sunbathe and gossip.
Instantly, the shrieks were followed by his mother yelling at him to knock it off.
The ringing started getting on his nerves while he glanced about the rows of gravestones, looking for its owner. Not a soul in sight. Nobody had been near the piles of old leaves the entiretime he’d been here. Somebody must have dropped it before his arrival.
Wade finally couldn’t resist. He slid his finger across the screen to open the phone. “Hello?”
“Who is this?” a female voice demanded.
Wade was startled at the abrupt question. “Who is this?”
“I asked first—and obviouslyyouare holding a phone that does not belong to you.”
Wade decided to have some fun. “Finders, keepers.”
“Hey! Don’t youdaresteal my phone!”
“How do I know it’s yours?”
“Obvious. I know the number.” She rattled it off even though Wade couldn’t have possibly known the number of a lost cell phone he was randomly answering.
“Maybe you’re just making prank calls,” he said flippantly. “And just happened to get this number.”
“Oh, please. Honestly, who are you? Can we meet so I can retrieve my phone?Pleasedon’t sell it on the black market!” she said, her voice desperate.
Wade leaned against the fence line, having fun now with the girl—woman? He probably shouldn’t tease her. Even so, her voice was light and airy, including a laugh she was obviously trying to hold back.
