Another gravestone. The empty space was heart-piercingly cold, the first snows of Christmas falling from the sky. In those clouds Gabriel saw the faces of yesterday, his dead looking down on him from on high.
He knelt, took a small metal dumper truck from his pocket and laid it at the foot of his son’s grave, beside a plastic Indian, dead boy’s curls of paint flaking away from the shaft of the Black Foot’s tomahawk.
“I miss you, you know, kiddo. I miss you so much.” He felt arms that weren’t there wrapping around his shoulders, drawing him into a gentle embrace. “It’s not fair, Frankie, it’s not fair…”
No, it never is.
“Why though, what did he do?” Gabriel swallowed, wiping his eyes with the back of a trembling hand. “Why didn’t I die? Why? When you died, why didn’t I die? I didn’t want to be left behind…”
The wind carried the lullaby of her breaking voice: Hush little baby, don’t say a word… The commitment in her imagined voice was a haunting reminder of a midnight promise gone sour. The perfect, unkeepable promise of love everlasting.
Wiping a hand across his broken face, Gabriel stood shakily. “God, why do I miss you so very, very much?”
For that one the wind had no answer he wanted to hear.
Without looking up from his feet he walked back to the Studebaker.