Love, your stalker

One

It was a cold, rainy April day in Colorado. I shivered and shivered as the funeral people lowered my husband's mutilated body, which was in a mahogany coffin, into the soft, muddy dirt. My two kids grasped the sides of my coat and dug their heads into my hips. I stared straight forward at the coffin, petting my kids heads, and let a little tear dribble down my frozen face. Harrison was a good man; always hard-working, enthusiastic and optimistic. He was the husband every women dreamed of. Tall, brown shaggy hair, hypnotizing grey eyes, bulky. The whole package. After the funeral, everyone had already left, escaping the rain and getting warm. My kids and I stayed and knelt by Harrison's coffin, softly touching it as if it were a special artifact, letting our warm tears fall and soak into the coffin. I was proud of him, in a way. He'd left our nice family home to enlist in the army. It was his first mission, and he never came back.

They found his lifeless body by a nearby village, along with some of his buddies we used to play poker with on Sunday nights. No matter how hard it got, he always found some time to write us heart-felt letters with gifts attached to them. After about a hour of seeing Harrison and saying our good-byes, we all left and splashed in the muddy puddles and pouted to our car. We seldom talked the whole drive. I glanced over at Lacey, who is fourteen-years-old, staring out the window, her body snow white and shaking. Harrison Jr., who is also fourteen-years-old, staring down at his phone, not saying a word.

As soon as we got home, Lacey and Harrison Jr. both stumbled out of the car and went into the three-story house quietly. Our house is colored dark blue, Harrison's favorite color, the shingles were white as well as the outline of the windows, our porch was dark red and our grass was grey, dying from thirst. I locked the car and went into the warm, soothing house. I unraveled and took off my scarf, hat, gloves and coat. The warm air melted the coldness off my face and warmed my whole body to room temperature. I sighed with relief and went on to the marble kitchen to cook hot dinner. Lacey sat on the leather couch, messing around on her IPhone 5, blasting her music. Harrison Jr. was doing the same. It's always nice to have nice conversations with the family.

I unraveled my brown bun from my hair tie and went into the kitchen  to start dinner. Chicken.

I cupped my pregnant belly with care and whispered to it in a motherly voice, "It will be alright. I'll take care of you. I'll protect you, no matter what comes our way." It kicked away at my swollen belly and I smiled.