Seventeen
o30
I suppose it was fitting that the rain wouldn't stop. Morgan hated the rain, why would the world cooperate for our goodbyes? Sitting in the third row, between an eighty-seven year old woman with fuzzy grey hair, and Rebecca, I didn't feel there.
The pastor who didn't know Morgan was using his loud quiet voice to speak soft words of peace and hope at the head of her coffin. His hair was stuck to his head, because the woman holding an umbrella over it was letting her arm drop. The little black streak on the side of his pale, pudgy face looked like a claw reaching for his eye, and the image gave me the bizarre desire to laugh.
The latest foster parents were in the front row, their gaggle of brats they did and didn't breed fidgeting next to them. It's ironic, how much you act like you care when a person's gone. Filthy hypocrites; they never wanted to have another daughter. She was a test case, someone for them to "fix". You can't fix someone who doesn't want to be fixed; Morgan was not fixable.
The funeral ended faster than it began, and then the parade of food-bearing, kind hearted neighbours walked past the foster family that didn't care enough, murmuring their words of solace. Rebecca and I ignored them; they didn't care enough before, they would recieve no comfort from the people who may or may not have actually known their foster daughter. Instead, we walked to the foot of her grave. I knelt in the damp soil, water running down the shoulder of my suit jacket, and mud seeping into my shoes and knees, and tossed my goodbye into the grave.
I didn't know her, really. I don't think anyone did. Behind the face of Morgan Rogers, was a sad girl, forced to try and be a woman. But she always had her face there; I wish I had tried to know her before this.
Rebecca had her hand on my shoulder while I knelt in the soft dirt at the edge of Morgan's grave, and she watched me throw my note into the dank hole in the ground. She whispered then, two soft words of goodbye.
"G'bye Bob."
The pastor who didn't know Morgan was using his loud quiet voice to speak soft words of peace and hope at the head of her coffin. His hair was stuck to his head, because the woman holding an umbrella over it was letting her arm drop. The little black streak on the side of his pale, pudgy face looked like a claw reaching for his eye, and the image gave me the bizarre desire to laugh.
The latest foster parents were in the front row, their gaggle of brats they did and didn't breed fidgeting next to them. It's ironic, how much you act like you care when a person's gone. Filthy hypocrites; they never wanted to have another daughter. She was a test case, someone for them to "fix". You can't fix someone who doesn't want to be fixed; Morgan was not fixable.
The funeral ended faster than it began, and then the parade of food-bearing, kind hearted neighbours walked past the foster family that didn't care enough, murmuring their words of solace. Rebecca and I ignored them; they didn't care enough before, they would recieve no comfort from the people who may or may not have actually known their foster daughter. Instead, we walked to the foot of her grave. I knelt in the damp soil, water running down the shoulder of my suit jacket, and mud seeping into my shoes and knees, and tossed my goodbye into the grave.
I didn't know her, really. I don't think anyone did. Behind the face of Morgan Rogers, was a sad girl, forced to try and be a woman. But she always had her face there; I wish I had tried to know her before this.
Rebecca had her hand on my shoulder while I knelt in the soft dirt at the edge of Morgan's grave, and she watched me throw my note into the dank hole in the ground. She whispered then, two soft words of goodbye.
"G'bye Bob."
♠ ♠ ♠
Yes, it's the last chapter. I think I'm going to try telling the story backwards.Either it works, and it's amazing, or it fails and confuses the hell out of you lovely reader people.