Original Fiction: White Carnation
This is a very short one-shot, written a few months ago for practice and fun. I just realized I never really posted this anywhere... any feedback would be appreciated.
This is a slightly more grown-up fiction, so I'd appreciate some maturity as well.
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People expect funeral days to be dark and dreary, the ground soaked with the rain and the sun a distant memory. And why not? After all, half the time, people get their impressions of graveyards from horror movies. The graveyard is a place where the dead bodies of loved ones are kept, and where both the happy and bitter times come back in a flood of memories to the living visitors of the cemetery, and the sun would always choose to hide. After all, introspection was easier on dreary days.
So why was today totally different?
The burial of Jon A. Ritz took place on a beautiful sunny day, only a few hours after a rainfall, with leftover clouds skidding across the sky and glistening water droplets slipping from the leaves of trees providing shade from the summer sun. Angela breathed deep the crisp, clean scent of the after-rain air as she observed the people around the casket being lowered. Friends and family for the most part, and a few of his coworkers she remembered meeting before. His wife and two teenaged sons stood by the priest, grieving in silence. Angela wanted to tell the woman she knew exactly how she felt, but how could she? She, Angela, was the mistress, the other woman, and had Jon’s wife known, he would have lost everything, even his sons.
His sons. They were young enough to be her brother’s. In fact, she did have a brother a little older than them. But she did not dare approach; her words would be unwelcome, and they did not deserve to have their father’s memory tarnished.
Her time would come after they left.
The service was over, and the people started leaving. Angela shifted slightly so she was hidden behind the large oak, knowing her beloved’s family would want a last few minutes with him before they went home.
In a way, they were lucky – they had each other to turn to for comfort, as well as their friends and acquaintances and anyone who ever met them who would find out about Jon’s tragic accident. But Angela had no one. There was no one to comfort her, no one who knew of her loss, for he was her dark secret, as she was his. No one would comfort a woman who lured a husband from his wife. For the first time in years, she was truly and utterly alone.
She pulled a white carnation from her purse. It had been the symbol of their secret love; her apartment had filled with so many she eventually started mixing it in with compost for her mother’s garden. The one she held was fresh, bought just before walking through the cemetery gates. It would be her last gift to him.
She glanced around the tree. Jon’s family had left. She approached the grave with words spinning in her mind, trying to decide what to say to him one last time. But when she stopped by the tombstone, her mind went blank. There were no words for her to say. All those worth saying were used by those privileged with them.
Angela silently laid the carnation on the stone of her dead lover and left without a word.
