When The Sun Sets

14: Who Knows How Long I've Loved You

Part Two | Chapter Fourteen: Who Knows How Long I've Loved You

Newport, Rhode Island

July 1919

The cemetery is just as one would imagine it to be in the middle of the night, eerie and cold, with shadows lurking, making you question your sanity. The church stands to the left of it and the entire land is surrounded nearly all the way by a forest. The wind blows, strangely cold despite it being July. I should have brought a shawl, I think, as I walk past the gates, careful not to step on any headstones embedded into the ground. The earth crunches beneath my foot, my arms around my body.

The priest besides me nods his head towards the cemetery and then disappears as he walks in the dark to the church. "I'll have someone wait outside for you," he calls out from somewhere. He finally understood that I was trying to say cemetery.

I only see the figure when I squint. It's a shape I recognize all too well, sitting with its knees drawn to it's chest, resting its back on the concrete headstone.

I approach with caution even though all I want to do is march up to him and demand what his problem is. One look at his face though wipes any rage I have directed at him, the odd squeeze of my stomach returning as I settle down beside him, knees on the cold, grassless ground.

His eyes are closed, but when he senses me, they open, and a small smile spreads across his lips. "You found me."

"I did."

"Did I worry you?"

I touch his frigid hand and sit besides him, resting my back on the tombstone. "You have no idea, Styles."

"I'm sorry."

I don't want to make him feel guilty so I change the topic. Glancing back at the headstone, I ask, "Who's grave is this?"

Harry's head rolls until it lands on my shoulder and I freeze, alarmed by the physical intimacy. I haven't spoken to him all day, it seems like I haven't seen him in days.

"Nedjem Bahman III."

"Wow."

"I know. It's quite a name." Harry's voice rumbles softly, his breath against my neck, suddenly the only warm part of my body. "He'd say in his thick French accent, 'Hey, man, that's unfair, non? You've got a stupid name too! Edward? Stupid!'."

I turn to look at the grave again, reading. "He was only 19." I gently begin to trace over the inscription, too dark to be legible.

"His aunt is beside him."

I follow where he's pointing to find the grave of Noor Bahman, slightly older with more moss on the concrete. I don't see an inscription on her headstone.

Silence engulfs us again. I stop touching Nedjem's headstone, feeling as if I'm being too intrusive. Surely a living stranger doesn't want to be touched, and a dead one may feel the same. I imagine an apparition in front of me, faceless, a ghost in a uniform I saw my own husband in. He glares down at me for sitting against the stone. I pull away from it. Eternal peace does not include getting touched by random strangers.

Harry stares into the woods, unblinking. "A cemetery is very creepy at night," he finally says, voice rough from lack of use.

"True," I say nervously, tugging on my sleeves. "I feel like someone's watching me."

"I like to think every soul in this graveyard is looking at us."

This statement certainly doesn't help my nerves. "Oh."