I was up early the next morning, truth was I couldn’t sleep. My grandfather’s words went round and round in my head. Maybe that was why these people had targeted me, I was such a horrible person that maybe they thought I deserved it. They hadn’t actually taken Robin, just threatened, so maybe it was possible.
We went through the usual motions of getting up, getting dressed and eating breakfast.
I tried to play and keep her entertained waiting for the clock to click over so that I could go to the grave yard and follow out my instructions. It was hard, I had already vomited twice and I was pretty sure I was on my way to a third time. The closer to noon we got the more my emotions stepped up. I felt a mixture of relief that it was about to be over and fear that maybe it wasn’t.
The taxi arrived at eleven thirty; I didn’t trust my self to drive. The last thing I wanted was to end all of this and then crash on the way home.
I sat in the back of the taxi nervously tapping my foot to the tune that was playing on the radio even though I had absolutely no idea what it was, something depressing about lost love and all that rubbish.
The cemetery was bright. The sun shone down along the white head stones and the grass and flowers reached up to touch it. Lovingly placed flowers were dotted in different places indicating like a bright coloured beacon which graves had been visited recently and which hadn’t.
I clasped tightly onto Robins hand as we made our way to my parent’s graves. They were buried side by side in the middle of the cemetery. A weeping willow hung over them protecting them from the bright sun. I hadn’t been there for years but I still knew the way.
I stopped as we approached. I could see the top of the two headstones. A man stood next to them. His brown hair brushed back, it rested nicely on his shoulders. Even from this view you could see that his body was well defined. Muscles bulged at the arms of his cream t-shirt and his jeans hugged to his body like they had been made especially from him.
Robin looked up at me waiting for me to make a move towards the graves. She had been here many times, my grandfather always brought her. She gave up a long time ago asking me to come with her. Luckily I was always to busy with a painting to go, coincidently.
“Hi.” I said as we approached.
Mark just moved his head to look at us, his tanned skin seemed to be glowing as the sun hit it, and his deep blue eyes were pools of sadness.
“I used to come here and lay flowers for you, you know.” He said. “I used to imagine that if I could get to know your parents I could get to know you. Stupid now when I look back at it. I remembered this morning that it was your dad’s anniversary.”
“Not his anniversary, he doesn’t deserve that. It was my mothers wedding day.”
“And your fathers anniversary Vanessa.”
Robin ignored us and started placing her flowers in the pot on my mother’s grave. She was so pleased when I had told her where we were going; I hope she didn’t expect this to become a regular thing, because it wasn’t going to be.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Remembering. And you? Do you visit them now?”
“I’m here for Robin, my daughter.”
“Ah.” He said looking at her as if it was the first time he had seen her. “She has his eyes you know?”
“Whose?”
“Keller’s.”
I frowned at him and almost gasped. How did he know? Was he the one doing all this? Was it his revenge?
“Don’t look at me like that Vanessa. I know she is his.”
“How?”
“I came back, about a year after we had all left uni. I stayed with my mother. She told me you had a baby, she had even saved me the announcement from the local paper. “He laughed and it was not a happy one. “I can count nine months Vanessa.”
“I’m sorry I hurt you.” I whispered and it sounded so pathetic.
“You know you could have just ended it with me, you didn’t have to sleep with my friend to get rid of me.”
“Would you have gone?”
He thought for a moment before answering. “Probably not.”
“I’ll be seeing you around Vanessa. You two take care.” He lent over and kissed me on my cheek lightly. The smell of his cologne swam up my nostrils and brought back so many memories. It was the one he always wore. It was his smell. My throat felt like it was closing as a lump settled in the pit of it and my eyes threatened to fill up.
I watched him walk away from me again. I wanted to shout his name and call him back, but I didn’t. He glanced over his shoulder at me and smiled.
Robin was still occupied with arranging the flowers, everything she did had to be prefect. I guess she had inherited some of my not so finer qualities. While she wasn’t looking I bent down to the pot on my mother’s grave and reached in. There was an envelope with my name on it. Inside was a piece of paper with typed on, I guess that was where I had to send the money and then it would be over.
I let Robin do the flowers on my father’s grave too, just because I hated him for what he had done didn’t mean she had to too, after all he was her grandfather. We went to the bank after that.
My personal banker looked less than pleased when I told him I wanted to move some money, but he did it anyway, it wasn’t his place to judge.
