Who We Are

1

It was a warm summer's day and the sun was up, blazing brightly against the backdrop of a clear blue sky. It was a nice day and Lara knew that somewhere else out there, people were having fun.

Fun. Lara thought it was a good word. Something that made everyone else think of the happy things that made life so much better. But fun was only for the living, not the dead.

Lara was not dead, which was why she had never been particularly fond cemeteries. The idea of dead people lying several feet beneath the ground she treaded on have always reminded her of movies where bony hands and pale skeletons clawed their way out of the earth to join the world of the living once more.

The dead scared Lara. But right now as she stood before her mother's newly carved gravestone, Lara could not deny that a small part of her wanted nothing more than to see the ground in front of her crack open and watch her Mom crawl out of it. Lara knew it wasn't a pleasant thought, but she couldn't help herself. She missed her Mom so much already.

"She was a strong woman."

Lara looked up at the man who was her father and forced a smile.

"She is," she replied quietly, not yet having the courage to refer to her mother in past tense.

"Lara---your Mom and I. We tried. We really did."

"You had a family," she told him and saw her father flinch as if she had somehow struck him.

"I loved her."

Lara heard the wistfulness in his tone and wanted nothing more than to scream at him on the top of her lungs. Liar.

Lara wrapped her hands around herself. It was a hot day but the light breeze that blew past them and billowed the folds of her white skirt felt cold. Lara thought of ghosts and wondered if it was her mother's giving her an embrace.

Somehow, the long silence that stretched between her and her father made Lara feel guilty. She hadn't meant to sound so accusatory. She knew he was trying so hard to make up for all the mistakes he had done in the past, but Lara had grown up without a father, and a part of her remained adamant that nothing he'll ever do could change that. For a long time, all she wanted was to have someone she can call a father, but now that she had, she had lost her mom. She felt as if life was toying with her. Or maybe it really was, she thought bitterly.

Lara bent down and reached out a hand to touch the engraved letters of her mother's name on the white marble. Somehow, despite the heat, the stone beneath her fingers felt cold.

She looked down at her mother's grave one last time and felt her father's hand on her shoulder. It was meant to be a comforting gesture but it took Lara a great deal of self control to stop herself from recoiling.

Then the light wind came again, featherlight against her skin as it gently blew the hair off her face. It almost felt like a caress, distantly reminding her of her mother's touch. Lara smiled at that thought. Perhaps it really was her mother.

"I'll be fine Mom," she whispered softly. "I promise."

Lara wiped a single tear that had escaped the corner of her eye and let her father lead her away.