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❝ I haven't recognized myself in a while, and since you left, I stay up every night. ❞
Ghost In The Wind, Birdy
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THE OAK FOUGHT THE WIND AND WAS BROKEN. THE WILLOW BENT WHEN IT MUST AND SURVIVED. Ronald had been gone for weeks of three. His gracile legs no longer dragged a pouting, cherub face. He was not curled up in corners, attending to whichever task befallen. He couldn't smile at his sister lopsidedly when she poked his forehead and scolded his cancer sticks. Not anymore. That pack of cigarettes, stained in dried blood and crumpled, was clenched in her trembling hand now.
The only remnant of her brother. The rest of his seventeen years, now but a memory...
Stupid boy, she had wept, cradling his ravaged torso. His guts had spilled upon the forest ground, limbs hanging lifeless from her embrace. Stupid, stupid... She had kissed his cold cheeks and brushed her thumbs over his left open eyes to grant him rest. He slept somewhere more peaceful than the world that had trapped them, one could only hope. Jacqui had prayed. But it had long been proven that God had abandoned humanity.
He's gone, Landon, that foolish boy. He used to chase butterflies in Grandma's yard. Look at him now, smothered under all this earth.
"Step by step, Dale says. Grief never ends, but it becomes a part of you. You learn to accept it." Harlene toyed with a peeling strand of skin around her thumb. Even knowing there would be raw flesh beneath, she stripped it to pain, watching the wound bleed. "The days are beginning to pass. I've been sleeping in the RV to help the nights. Landon packed your belongings, but I still can't seem to sleep in our tent. I don't think he can, either. He looks worse than the prowlers, staying awake for too long."
She cried no more, sitting before a mound of black soil by the forest. Shane had done his best to carve the name on a wooden plank: Ronald Wade Walker. Barely legible, still better than letting dust and grass engulf his memory like millions of others. Beloved son & brother & friend.
