Hers

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Four

My parents were buried at the only graveyard in our town that wasn’t in the backyard of some church.  It was the same place my dad’s parents were buried, and undoubtedly, it would be my final resting place as well.  I walked through rows and rows of headstones, some from as far back as the 1800s.  When my mom died, I used to walk around and calculate the ages of people, both when they had died and how old they would be today, if they were still living.  When my dad died, I quit coming.

I found their shared headstone.  One side read, Emelia Ann Hamilton Owens.  The other read, Matthew Shane Owens.  I laid under the stone, like I did when I was younger.  My fingers brushed across the grass and gripped the cold, damp earth, like the world was turning upside down.

I remembered when my mom brought me here.  It was the anniversary of my grandmother’s death and dad had to work, so mom and I came to the graveyard, armed with daises- my grandmother’s favorite according to mom.  After we placed the flowers on her grave, mom brought me to this very spot, when it was unplowed and bare and said, “This is where I will be.”  And she laid down on the grass and gripped the earth with her long, pale fingers.  I stared down at her, her curly black hair woven between the blades of grass and eventually joined her.

“Where will daddy be?”  I asked.

She turned and looked at me with her shinny blue eyes.  “Right here; right beside me.”

Now I laid between them, clutching onto the earth like my mother used to.  But it felt like they were there beside me.

“I haven’t seen Ace in almost a week,” I told the sky.  “I don’t blame him for not coming around.  I said some pretty crappy things to him.  He was just looking out for me and I completely shut him out.”

It was like I could feel my mother running her fingers through my hair and hear my dad saying, “Forget him, honey.  Boys are nothing but trouble anyway.” just like he did when my first boyfriend dumped me.

“When did things become so complicated?”  I asked them.  “Sam’s gone looking for Ace.  He’s even looked in some unholy places.  He’s gone to God now to see what he may know.  It’s tricky though, God can’t see what happens in Satan’s realm.”

“You’ve grown so much,” I heard my mother’s voice echoing in my head like some distant memory.  A lump rose in my throat as I remembered the way that she used to look at me.

“If I hated Ace just because he as a demon, doesn’t that make me no better than him, filled with hate for no real reason?  Who wins then?  Satan because I feel hatred, or God because I hate what hates him?”

“Close your eyes, baby.”  I remembered my mother saying the first time we came here together, as I laid beside her, our hands intertwined.  And just like old times, I closed my eyes and squeezed her hand- or the area that would be her hand- a little tighter.  “What do you feel?”  She’d ask in a soothing hum.

I pursed my lips to keep from crying and exhaled a shaky breath.