“We really should go now if we don’t want to be late,” she heard the hoarse voice that had come from the older woman behind her.
“Give me one more minute,” she said
as she glanced back towards the woman and a man in a white shirt and black
suit. The man did nothing but stared at her in reluctance. Her wife didn’t reply.
Instead, she was looking at him, waiting for his answer, so the young woman
continued, “Please?”
With a sigh, the man replied, “Very
well. We’ll wait in the car.” She nodded and turned her back against him, not
watching them as they made their way to the SUV. With the couple leaving, there
was only one person on the corner of the field.
The woman standing there was wearing a long sleeved black midi dress
that made her fair skin look paler. Her mid-length brunette hair hung loosely
and somehow reflected the summer sunlight. She had hazel eyes which were framed
perfectly by a pair of brown-rimmed glasses that made her eye color stood out
even more. Normally, they were sparkling with joy and pleasure, but that day
they were blank. They were as blank as her expressionless face.
She stood with her head facing the ground below. As if not wanting
anyone to recognize her, even though the neighborhood was empty. As if not
wanting anyone to know what her face is like. She was not beautiful, but so
strikingly attractive that everyone who saw her would stop whatever they were
doing only to see her face for one more second. Everyone, including a boy from
her childhood.
The field was the place where she first met the boy. She had just
moved in to the neighborhood. While her parents had been busy unloading
their boxes of belongings from the truck, she had walked around and finally
found the field. There was nothing special about it, except that it was wide
and had a large sycamore tree. She had always liked that kind of trees, so she
was caught in awe when she saw it. Without waiting any longer, she’d climbed
the dense sycamore. She couldn’t remember how long she had spent time on the
tree that day, but she remembered a boy walking toward the tree, toward her. He’d
walked from the house beside the field. “That’s my favorite place to hide. Please
don’t steal it,” was the line that started it. Soon enough, they’d spend a lot
of time together until they eventually got separated. She had gone to college
in another state, and he had decided to serve the country. She must have seen
the leaves falling to the ground because she now looked up to the tree just
across her. Not much has changed, it only looked older than it had been when
they used to climb it. She even could still see their name they’d carved into its
trunk, though vaguely.
She bit her lower lip as she
clenched her fist and tightened her face muscle. She wanted to cry and let her
emotions out, but she could not. Water filled her blank eyes, but no tears
came. She wanted to cry but she knew that he wouldn’t want her to. She almost
never cried since the boy helped her to recover. Whenever he’d seen her crying
or panicking, he would have soothed her, told her to breathe deep, and asked
her to speak the words he wanted her to say.
The black-dressed woman had been
standing there for almost twenty minutes now and wondered if her parents would
just leave her alone, like what she wanted them to do. She wanted to stay there
for as long as she could, but she knew her mother was right. Her mother was
always right. They shouldn’t be late. After all, it was her party, so she took
a deep breath and closed her eyes. “My name is Karen. I may not be okay now,
but I will be,” she said the words she had never spoken in the past four years.
Those words she used to repeat when the boy in her mind whispered in her ears,
trying to stop her from drowning in her own thoughts just as waves of anxiety
come at her. The boy who had now grown up. The boy who had become a charming
gentleman. The man whose body laid motionless, six feet beneath the ground.
Her clenched fist was now loosened,
leaving her slowly opened hand trembling. In another, a bouquet of lilies was
gripped. She brought it up so she could smell the flowers that the man had
loved. As she opened her eyes, drops of tears streamed down her face. She held
the bouquet tight in her grip as if it was the last piece of him that she could
touch.
The next moment, Karen bent down to
put the lilies in front of the gravestone. She stayed a little bit longer, her
hand on the stone. Her mind traveled through the past for what seemed like the
hundredth time that day, back to when she last met him. It was five years ago
in an airport before his leaving to Afghanistan. For one year, he’d write her
every fortnight, checking up on her. In his last letter he’d said, “Happy
birthday! When I come back next month, we’ll have dinner to celebrate with the
family.” She had never received his letter anymore, let alone phone calls, until she finally did the following month, but it
was not from him. It was about him. She held her breath as she looked at the stone
one last time. Her left hand was over his carved name. Underneath the bright
summer sky, the ring on her fourth finger gleamed. Only then did she get up,
making her way back to the car where her father would drive her to the life
beyond him.
