Fatal Memories

Chapter 11: Afire Love

Unedited

Chapter 11: Afire Love

Gwen Point of View

May 18, 2014

               There was no answers that could form in my mind to explain how I reappeared back into the place I grew up in 25 years ago. I try to readjust the situation when I first see my mother, to me when I lay my eyes on her it’s going to feel like I only saw her a day ago. I was once a teen worrying about my future and my high school life. However, to her, she is going to be shock, stunned and she won’t be the young-vibrant 35 year I used to know.  I knew she would have aged and probably changed but I hope my mother didn’t change that much and I hope the shock of seeing me wouldn’t harm her in anyway. I have almost played out the different scenarios of what would happen when I see her and decided to run away. To not see her and find some way to avoid my past, to avoid what has happen to me.  However, how did this happen in the first place?

                               “Gwen---Gwen are you alright?” Alex’s deep voice travel through the small space between us in the car. I clench my hand against the seatbelt strap that was across my chest. Alex fleeing gaze was on me when he should have been paying attention to the road. “If this about last night and this morning with Marian---I can apologize---.”

I had a more important matter at hand than to be worrying about my past with Alex. To me, it has only been a couple days since I’ve been with my younger version of Alex, all laughs and smiles. However to him, it been over twenty-five years, he grieved for the so-called me that died and was able to move on. The love we shared is now in the…past.

               It was awkward dealing with Marian because…I was jealous, of course but she didn’t like me that much either. I remember how she shunned me last night and wouldn’t let Alex talk to me because she ended up playing sick. I cringe mentally thinking about Mariana but I had no reason to interfere with their relationship. “It’s none of my business,” I pause; I heard my tone was soft, airy.  If Alex remembers correctly, he knew I was lying. “I’m worried about my mom,” I cover-up the lie quickly and I jerk my head out the passenger window. We have been driving for over thirty minutes-- now what is supposed to be a Sunday morning, it was now 10 am. We drove from out the small boutique shops in the downtown area then along the May City Creek. The murky water lead to an unmarked forest, there was many scary stories told about the forest when I was a little kid. One thing I knew I feared was that forest and now I feared the situation I was in now.

               Alex slows his blue-Sudan car on a curved hill before descending on a paved road, covering both sides of the one-way street was rows of rows of thin, twisted trees. “Your mother moved out here when---you ---um---were announced dead,” Alex says uneasily.

               “When,” I pause trying to figure out the right questions to ask him. “And How…was my death called,” I asked him. I turn my head to take in his muscular large frame that took upmost and all the space of the driver seat. His fingers tighten around the steering wheel as the speed of the car slowed even more. The bumps in the paved road were unsettling and it wrecks my nerves.” I—Alex if you don’t want to talk about---.”

               He coughs, loud and hard and jerks his head back, averting his eyes to the road. “They found a female body in the May Creek right after---um---prom. The police chief at the time announced that it was you, Gwen Lehman.”

        My fingers unclench the seatbelt and drop in my lap and my bottom lip tremble as I try to come up with something to say back. ”Impossible.” The car grew tense and after we left the road and the forest, we came upon houses that were wood like and large but spaced out by woods and fields. Alex parks his car in front of a four story, cabin-like house. My mother and my father talked about their dream house when I was little before they got divorced. My mother wanted a house away from everything and wanted to be one with nature. A smile slips on my lips thinking about my mother having her dream home. “This is the house?” I ask and I turn my head to Alex who turned the car off and unfasten his seatbelt.