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Over His Dead Body
Folder:
Vignettes
A weeping woman knelt at his graveside, covered over with fresh dirt and scattered with wilting calla lilies & gladiolus. The wife watched from afar wondering who was this strange person prostrate beside her husband's burial mound. Was she the reason he had held a shotgun to his chin and pulled the trigger. Her face was hidden under a mantilla of black lace but the wife could hear the woman crying inconsolably.
The weeping woman dug a hole with her fingertips and lay a piece of paper into the loose soil. She whispered one last bereaved sentiment then straightened herself and taking a single white lily with her, walked away.
The wife waited a moment, weighing the consequences of knowing what was on that piece of paper interred along with her husband of 17 years. Perhaps better to let secrets die with him than to unearth a can of worms. But her grief was still fresh and her heart too full of unanswered questions at both the cause of her husband's violent exit as well as the appearance of the mysterious woman.
She approached the grave and nudged the dirt with the toe of her boot, then began scooping it out in handfuls. There it rest, rolled loosely, stuffed inside a gold ring, as would be a linen napkin at a formally set dinner table. She lifted the scroll parchment, suspiciously brushing her thumb along drippings of black wax. Considering one last time the possible fallout of reading it, she abruptly slid off the ring, one too large to fit a woman's finger. With trembling hands she unfurled the note. In elegant script penned in carmine ink, were writ the words, "Come back to me beloved... take a new body and come back to me."
