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happy birthday, baby-girl!!! i'll see you when I get home xx
the note had been sticky-taped to the fridge. drawn in the old handwriting of her grandfather, who'd left early this morning to go to his physiotherapy session.
apparently there'd been an accident when he was 21, involving a motorbike and a sturdy fence post. which had then resulted in lots of hospital bills and weekly therapy class for the next forty years.
maë grabbed the juice from the shelves and poured a glass, looking out the window as she did.
coral, gold and the palest of blues streaked along the horizon as the world woke.
gale was still asleep. she'd grown so accustomed to hillard leaving early for his appointments, that now she didn't even stir.
there was a knock on the front door, which was weird, maë thought, because normally the mailman left the houses in the hills until last. at least until 1:00pm.
the bolts were hard to slide, but eventually, they came and the old wooden door swung open.
there was no mailman.
no mail van.
no one.
maë looked down.
on the doormat lay a single orange lily.
as the girl picked it up, she saw the chain wrapped around the stem.
it was a necklace. a pinkish metal - almost rose gold. a small star pendant hung in its centre.
maë smiled and her eyes were drawn back to the doormat. a single piece of paper, scorched around the edges lay on the grass-and-dirt-matted mat.
happy birthday, beautiful.
there was no signature. no indication as to who it was from.
it wasn't christina's writing.
it wasn't hillard's.
or gale's.
what maë didn't know was that the necklace was in fact from a boy who lived in the sky.
