"They say the most beautiful smile hides the darkest secrets." he says ruefully.
Looking at her now, knowing the truth, his heart simmers with guilt. The hatred he had grown to home towards her, now withering away like the sand falling from one's f...
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Funerals in the Wrethmeir family were a common commotion at this rate. Five years ago, Jewel, then recently Nathaniel and now William. Given the times she had attended such gatherings up so closely, Janice could even recite the prayers that the priest was chanting.
But the fact that she didn't want to make any prayers for the deceased prevented her from doing so. Inhaling a gust of misty-dawn air, she hopes for it to end quickly, as the throbbing in her shoulder irked her. The effect of the medicines she took the night before was abating, draining away the remaining ounce of energy that was left in her.
It was quarter past two in the morning, when her blaring cell phone crashed her sleep. The police head had called to inform that her husband was no more. He had shot himself after getting into a scuffle with some cops. She couldn't comprehend what the police head was saying then.
But she could understand it all too well now, as William's body was being lowered into the ground.
The cold wind rustles through the leaves, cocooning her in its crisp roughness. But something about that rough morning wind was tender. As if it carried with itself some sort of comfort. A tranquil ardour encompassing the barren wounds, reminding them of their turmoil as they witness the end of their agitator.
The chilly wind with itself carries a serene pride. As if it's celebrating its freedom. As if its symphonizing with the onset of an approaching euphoria. She looks over at Nathan's grave, a few feet away from his son's.
The irony of life mocking at his tombstone as his son accompanies him to the afterlife. If the concept of it is not hypothetical.
With her gloved hand, she throws the soil on his coffin at the priest's signal. The burial ends as the priest whispers, "May your soul rest in peace.", but no one follows.
Two men in old khaki, using a shovel, cover the grave in soil. They put a ledge atop the cemetery ground, surmounting the process of burial. The cops are the first to leave, following the priest and the men who covered the grave. The cemetery's now almost empty, with hundreds of dead buried under the earth with only three humans bidding their nemesis a farewell it deserved.
She checks the time on her wristwatch. The clock was about to hit six, the sun would soon appear in the sky, embarking a new day. A new life. A shiver runs down her spine as the realization dawns.
Her life was finally being devoid of things and people she abominated. Her life, it was finally going to see a sunrise that didn't bring with itself another day of misery and dread. She was finally going to visit her daughter's grave with a promise fulfilled.
For what feels like an eternity, she just stands there, looking at William's freshly covered grave, but her mind was nowhere in the vicinity. For someone who had always received a thing desired only at an exorbitant price of her loved ones, she feels unsure of the reality.
