Elizabeth of the Lily

A Star Danced

Lost Boy Rule: Beware of foggy nights and graveyards. Both are scary and usually are the start of a bad ending. 

Melody Phillips had lived to the becoming age of 21. She was a teacher at a lovely small school and had a loving husband and family. Life has a funny way of changing course, and for Melody her life went from bliss to tragedy. 

 It was an early September morning a week before school was to start. Dawn had lazily peaked it head over the rolling mountains of their small town and the haze of the late summer heat clung to the windows in foggy drips. 

Melody's phone rang. Melody saw with dread that it was her Husband's partner Steve Kennedy. 

After a hesitant, "Hello" on her part and Steve's chocked reply, she knew her worst fears had been realized. 

It was a routine traffic stop, David had pulled the driver over because he was weaving all across the lanes of the quiet Main Street. Steve waited while David went to the window to deliver the ticket and perhaps perform a sobriety test. The drug dealer, high off his mind,  panicked and shot Melody's beloved David right in the heart. David was dead before he hit the ground. 

The phone dropped from her hands to the floor as the vaccuum of David's sudden loss swallowed her whole. 

Two Weeks Later...

David had been laid to rest. Melody's parents and mother-in-law were not leaving her side for a moment. How could they? Melody seemed bound to break if not watched and handled with care.  

But they did leave. They reasoned that they could leave if Melody's brother were there to keep her company. Kyle was her rock after all. David's mom needed to pick something up at her own home and Melody's parents were going to pick up some groceries. They all went together. 

 Traveling back from the store ended in a terrible car crash. It ended in Melody's parents, Oxford and Leena Phillips' deaths. Melody had only Kyle and his wife and children left in all the world and as much as she wanted to be there for him, she withdrew into her protective shell. 

Two years later...

Two long years of therapy, guilt, anger, helplessness, and the feeling of being a curse to those around her plagued her mind. When she was well enough to work, her students noted the loss of joy. 

Her brother was the reason she was able to finally break free. It was Kyle who showed her that she was not a curse. It was his refusal to blame her for their parent's death that sustained her sanity. It was Kyle and his wife Valerie who got right into the weeds of grief with her and helped her find her way out. 

Melody's next year of teaching was much better. The ache of profound loss would always be there but she was learning to live with a shattered heart in her chest. 

By her 24th  birthday, a two years and five months after the tragedy, the guilt was less, the anger was gone, but she still had a sense of being adrift, and frankly a little lost. Her life as a teacher was no longer enough. She had been touched by evil and death and if she stayed stagnant, she would wither. 

So she made plans, she downsized her home, and she mapped out her next adventure. The quest to find herself again had begun. 

It was three revolutions around the sun had come and gone since David's murder. It was  early October and Fall Break had already started. It was David's birthday today and so Melody went to visit him and her parents at the East Levitt Cemetery. She packed a blanket and some flowers because, today, she intended to stay with them and talk for a while. Mostly she wanted to talk to David.