An Unlikely Daddy
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Rachel Lee
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Prologue
Marisa Hayes stood atop a hill in the Good Shepherd Cemetery in Conard County, Wyoming. The ceaseless spring wind seemed to blow through her hollow heart, sweeping away her life. Johnny’s coffin, wood and brass, sat atop the bier, ready to be lowered. Beneath it a strip of artificial turf covered the gaping hole in the ground that would soon contain him. The green swatch was an affront to the brown ground all around.
She couldn’t move. Pain so strong it was almost beyond feeling, a strange kind of agonized numbness, filled her. Several men were waiting to lower the casket. A few of her friends waited behind her, giving her space and time. Dimly she realized they must be growing impatient as time continued its inexorable march into a future she wished would go away.
Beyond the coffin she saw the tombstones of others who had left this life before Johnny, generations of markers, some newer, some so old they tilted. Plastic flowers brought artificial color here and there to a comfortless landscape. No well-tended ground, this. No neatly trimmed lawns and shrubs trying to create an impression of life amidst death. Just the scrubby natural countryside, tamed to a level one could walk through, but no more. A couple of tumbleweeds had rolled in and hung up just since she arrived here. They’d move on soon. Everything moved on. Time stole everything, one way or another.
Her hand rested against her still-flat belly. She’d never had a chance to tell Johnny. If she believed the pastor, her husband knew. She wasn’t sure if she believed the pastor. Right now she didn’t know if she believed in afterlife, God or anything at all.
What she believed in was her pain. What she believed in was that she was carrying Johnny’s baby. What she believed was that when she had tried to Skype him, to tell him, she had been told he was out, they’d give him a message. What she believed was that the next thing she heard was that Johnny was dead.
No open coffin. They’d warned against it. The funeral director had practically fallen on his knees, begging her not to demand it. Telling her that some images were best not remembered. Telling her to remember Johnny alive.
If the funeral director couldn’t pretty it up...
But, no, she refused to go there. It was the one piece of advice she had taken. Holding the folded flag in her arms, against her baby, she could still hear the ring of “Taps” on the desolate air, could still feel the moment she had accepted that flag, as if it were the moment she had accepted Johnny’s death. Then the man, someone she didn’t know, a State Department official who had given his name, as if she cared, had said, “John was a true hero.”
So? He was a dead hero, and his widow just wanted to climb into that hole beside him.
She lifted her gaze to the insensitive blue sky, wondering why it wasn’t gray and weeping, the way her heart wept. Why thunder and lightning weren’t rending the heavens the way her heart was rent.
She thought about burying the flag with Johnny. Just marching the four steps and placing it on the coffin. He’d earned that flag, not her, and right now it felt almost like an insult, not an honor. But she didn’t do it. The baby. Someday the child within her might want this flag, all it would ever have of its father except a few photographs. Maybe someday it would even mean something to her.
“Marisa.” Julie’s quiet voice, near her. A touch on her arm. “We need to go.”
“Then go.”
“I think I was including you in that.”
She turned her head, her neck feeling stiff, and looked straight into Julie’s worried face. “I...can’t.”
“Yes, you can. Come on, hon. You can come back tomorrow if you want. You can come every single day. But right now...”
Right now people were waiting for her, waiting to take her home, waiting to put Johnny in the ground. When she came back tomorrow, the turf would still be there, covering the bare, freshly turned earth. But Johnny’s coffin wouldn’t be where she could see it. His final home.
Numbly she nodded, facing the inevitable. Everything seemed inevitable now. She felt like a leaf caught in a rushing river’s grip, unable to stop anything, unable to catch her breath, unable find the shore. Adrift, banging from one rock to the next, helpless.
Despite Julie’s entreaties, she walked up to the coffin and laid her hand on the cold, polished wood. “I love you,” she whispered, hoping he could hear, fearing he couldn’t.
Then, jerking with every single movement as if her body belonged to someone else, she allowed Julie to lead her back to her friends and the row of cars.
It was over. Tomorrow loomed like a devouring dragon. She hoped it devoured her.
