Sweet After Death

It took three attempts to fit the key in the front-door lock of the Miller house. Madison shut it behind her, ran up to the bathroom next to her attic room and closed the door.

Her hands were shaking and in the mirror she saw a pale face with a smudge of red. Her eyes were wide with shock and upset. It was not fear ‒ she was not afraid then, and she had not been afraid before ‒ but the life of a man who had been within the reach of her hand had been stolen away in an instant, and it was a body blow.

She didn’t know him. She barely knew his name. What was he saying to his wife just before the first shot? It’s okay, sweetheart. How much life together, how much love and days and years were in those words?

One moment he was with her, and then he was not.

Madison reached for a tissue and wiped off the blood. It’s okay, sweetheart. She felt the tear rolling down her cheek and wiped that off too.

She sat on the edge of the bath and waited until her hands had stopped shaking. There was work to do, the work that no one else but they could do. Madison splashed her face with cold water and returned to the empty square.

Miles from Ludlow, a boy crouched in a small cave. A fire – without smoke, because the boy knew better than that – warmed the air up a little and the boy’s outstretched hands craved the waning heat. Samuel had wrapped the old blanket around his shoulders and his back rested against the stone.

The sun had come out, and the deep indigo he had rushed through when he had left the cabin earlier that morning had turned into washed-out blue. A shard of light cut through the cave’s shadows and fell on the rough walls.

In the last three years he had spent time in the cave in every season and in every weather, and he had seen the light change as the months progressed. Samuel did not have a word for the streak of warm color – a lighter shade than blood, but more intense and darker than yellow – that sliced through the grayish wall, he only knew that it looked prettier in winter.