The sun feels like it's making a last stand before it lets winter take hold. The past week has been blissfully was and scorchingly sunny, but it's October so it should start switching soon. There are no shadows across the bright graveyard as a smattering of the elderly pay their respects; along with the usual oneortwo goths with death poetry notebooks and black t-shirts.
Standing before a newly dug grave is an impeccably dressed woman looking barely sixty. Her hair is neater than mine, and her lipliner is applied perfectly red.
She gazes sadly down at the dirt that stands without a monument yet, and folds and unfolds a stark price of paper between her hands.
On her left hand is a wedding ring, and she brings it to her lips and kisses it, single tear making a watery track down her cheek.
"Hon, do you want to say something?" Mom asks, placing the usual, yearly, bouquet of flowers in front of my father's gravestone.
"Um, no?" I never have anything to say. She still misses him, I realize it, but he hasn't been in my life for eleven years. I have one extremely foggy memory of him, but that's all.
Nope. Nothing to say.
She traces the letters of his name; Andrew McCauley written in pretty curling script.
I surreptitiously unlock my iPod and look for wifi. I guess they don't offer it in cemeteries.
Across the rolling lawn are a black couple. Not black, as in skin tone, but black as in attire. As well as makeup; and they both wear makeup.
The boy's hair is pale and ruffled, falling into his kohl lined eyes. He doesn't smile, but stares in consternation down at his notebook. He has a temporary (or perhaps not-so-temporary) chain tattoo around his neck.
The girl sits beside him with ripped tights and a black-purple plaid miniskirt. Her shirt is dark and tight with intriguing ribbons running from the hem to the extremely low bust-line. She bops her head subtly to the music coming from her earbuds.
They don't speak, nor do they even acknowledge each other. Maybe they're there at the same tree by coincidence.
"Okay. Lets go get some coffee and scones." Mom pulls herself upright and I wind my arm around her back. She sniffles. "I wish you could've known him, Grace."
"Yeah. Me too."
She worries her dusky gold wedding band, and I look at it, thinking of Adrian.
Then I blush and stare at the grass.
***
I was trying for character development but this whole chapter is ew.
How about some unique date ideas for the... Uh, gracrian/adracie... ship?
