Black Diaries

03. Black Widow Hits the Road

Matt's funeral was very moving. We had it at the same church where, about five years earlier, the two of us had joined our lives. The same people were in attendance, the same priest conducted the proceedings, the same music teacher played the organ. Everything was the same in our quiet little town.

Except for the fact that this time, the church wasn't decked out in white, but in black, and everybody was crying. Especially me.

"I'm so sorry, my dear. So terribly sorry." Mrs. Higgins, the butcher's wife, hugged me and patted my shoulder. "Be strong. Turn to the Lord. He will help you in your grief."

"Thank you, Mrs. Higgins. I will," I managed to say. She moved on, and was replaced by her cousin. Everyone was standing in line to condole with the grieving widow, i.e. me.

"So young... so tragic... I can't even... oh, my poor little Cassidy."

"Thank you. Thank you very much, Mrs. Malcolm."

The line of condolers seemed endless. Yet I knew it couldn't be more than one thousand, four hundred and forty-seven people long. There weren't any more people in Hilly Springs.

Finally, the line dwindled, and then came to an end. The reverend began to speak about what a good, strong and kind man Matt had been. I didn't have the strength to listen, and didn't need to. I knew how wonderful he had been, and how much we had loved each other.

After the funeral, the whole town followed the casket in the traditional funeral procession down to the graveyard at the edge of town, where another service was held. Matt's coffin rested in front of the grave, a photograph of him and me propped up against it, surrounded by flowers.

Suddenly, silence fell, and I realized that the funeral service was at an end.

It was time.

Time to say goodbye to Matt.

Smiling through my tears, I looked down at the beautiful flowers heaped around the photograph of the love of my life, smiling, holding me in his arms. It was a bittersweet moment.

You might ask yourself why I wasn't still angry at Matt. He had broken my heart, after all, and a little thing like stabbing him with a kitchen knife couldn't erase that, surely?

In a way, it could. Not because I wanted revenge or anything like that—of course not! I was a loving wife, not some vengeful maniac. No, the matter went far deeper than that.

Matt loved me. He loved me, and he had sworn to be faithful. He had told me so in front of a priest and several hundred churchgoers, including my sobbing-with-happiness mother and father.

"I, Mathew Timothy Summers," he had said, "take you, Cassidy McKinney, to be my lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part."

Till death do us part, right? So, when, in a moment of weakness, he became unfaithful, I simply had to see to it that death did indeed do us part. The least a loving wife could do was to help her dear husband keep his wedding vows, wasn't it?

To be honest, I was a bit surprised that more wives didn't help their husbands in this way if they strayed from the path. Didn't they take their vows and marital duties seriously? To me, it seemed perfectly logical. Matt and I had promised to only love each other till the end, and so I simply had to end him, to preserve the beauty and truth of our vows.

I felt a sudden urge to smile through my tears. Romance was such a wonderful thing.

Yet I remembered Sam, and the school psychologist's disapproving look when I was overcome by giggles at the thought of his scrotal hernia. Somehow, I thought that the rest of the world might not share my view of things in regard to loving homicide. Other people had a strange way of looking at things and were so judgmental.