The Girl Death Left Behind (13 page)
“Fair enough,” Terri said.
“Fair enough,” Beth echoed.
T
he next morning Beth got her wish and returned to the cemetery. Aunt Camille drove, and Terri came along.
She made her way between the long aisles of neatly manicured grass as the sun warmed her shoulders. In the distance a caretaker trimmed hedges, while another planted rows of impatiens along a footpath. She walked quickly, her heart tight in her chest, reading the small metal plaques as she passed among those buried.
PAUL HAXTON
. She stopped. She’d almost missed it. On the day of the funeral, there had been a canopy, a crowd, a hole in the
ground, covered by a tarpaulin. But the grass had done its work; now the ground looked lush and green. No scars remained, no telltale signs of that terrible day last summer.
Beth sank to her knees. Beside her father’s marker, her mother’s rested.
CAROL TALBERT HAXTON
. Next to hers were Allison’s and Doug’s. In a neat little row they lay. Side by side. Together beneath the ground. She struggled to see their faces as they had been that last morning. The images weren’t there! Why? It had been so easy for so many months to recapture their faces. But suddenly it was as if there were a rip in her memory and all the pictures had leaked out. Panic filled Beth. Why couldn’t she see their faces?
She heard Terri and her aunt come up and stoop down beside her. She didn’t want them to suspect that her memory had failed. They’d think she was callous, uncaring. “I should have gone with them that day,” she said. “I should have.”
“Then you would be dead too,” Camille said. “And we would have
none
of you with us.”
“I should have made them stay home
with me. Mom said she would, but I told her no. I watched them drive away. I could have stopped them.”
“We can’t keep the people we love safe, no matter how hard we try.”
Terri patted the grass over her aunt’s grave. “I miss you, Aunt Carol.”
In a rush the images of Beth’s family returned, tumbling through her mind like scattered leaves. With great relief, Beth sat back on her haunches. “I don’t want to forget them.”
“You won’t,” Camille assured her. “Their memory will grow dimmer, but it’s a light that will never go out.”
Death had forgotten Beth. It had left her behind. She had been spared. For what? “Why?” she asked. “Why them and not me?”
“I think that’s what life’s journey is all about. Discovering the whys, the reasons we’ve been put here on earth. Some people never know. The lucky ones find work to do that makes them whole and gives them value.”
Beth wanted things to be normal again.
She wanted to go home and find her mother fixing lunch and Allison and Doug watching TV. She wanted to see her father mowing the lawn. “Do you think they can see us? Up in heaven, when they look down. Can they see us?”
“I’m sure of it,” Camille said.
“Allison and Doug never got to grow up.” Beth wondered if angels would kiss them.
“True,” Camille said. “But how many children get to walk into heaven holding their mother’s and father’s hands?”
“Not many,” Beth admitted. The image comforted her. Still, she saw the vacant spot where she should have been. “Will they remember me? When I get to heaven? Will they know who I am?”
Camille traced her sister’s name on the brass plate with the tip of her finger. “When you die an old woman and walk up to heaven’s gate, Allison and Doug will run to meet you. They’ll take your hand and show you off to everyone.”
Beth was separated from her family. For a while. For the span of her lifetime. She would go on, and when her time was over,
she would be with them. In the meantime, it was up to her to spin the straw of her life into gold.
She looked at her aunt, and then at her cousin. She and Terri would grow up together. Side by side. They would adjust, compromise, change, accept. They would learn to get along—just like sisters. Beth took Terri’s hand and then Aunt Camille’s. They were family. She had no other. And they wanted her. “I’m ready to go home,” she said.
Together they walked out of the cemetery. And this time it was Beth who left death behind.
