The Days Without You...

Bobby walked through the crunching snow, past the dead flowers and crumbling tombstones. He stopped in front of the one of the most recent residents and knelt down. He used his glove clad hand to knock the snow and ice off of his mother’s grave marker, stopping only when he was satisfied that not even a single flake was left A sigh escaped his lips as he pulled his coat tighter around him, shielding himself not only from the cold but from the memories that haunted him.
He placed a small bouquet of roses in the stone vase after he pulled out the dead ones that one of his brothers had previously left. “I’m sorry Ma.” He ran his hand over the engraving reading ‘Evelyn Mercer’ in the cold stone before standing up again. He felt a shiver pass through him when he walked only a few steps, bringing him to his youngest brother’s grave. Bobby felt the tightening in his chest as he relived the moment his brother died. He heard the screams from his brother as he cried out for their mother. He flinched when he heard the gun shot, and the cry of pain from Jack that followed. Jack’s baby face still haunted him in his nightmares.
Bobby sat down gingerly on the long since flattened ground and placed the white tulips into the vase. He held the dead flowers he took from the vase in his hands. The petals crumbled in his grip.
“I figured you’d like some tulips, Fairy.” Bobby forced a smile, but it only came out as a grimace.
Bobby stared at the tombstone for a moment, his eyes reading the words easily.
Jackie was his baby brother; he was supposed to take care of him. Bobby swore to himself the day the scared small boy walked into the Mercer household that he would protect him. But it seems like the one time Jack actually needed his protection Bobby fell through. Now instead of having his little brother he had a bucket of ashes that were buried six feet under.
Jack was dead, and Bobby couldn’t help but to blame himself.

When he started to loose the feeling in his legs Bobby got up. He wiped the snow from his pants and gave one last look at Jack’s grave before looking at their mother’s grave right beside it. “Take care of him, alright Ma?”
Bobby could imagine his mother smacking him upside the head, telling him that of course she would take care of him; he was her baby.
He bid Evelyn and Jack Mercer goodbye, not giving the graves another look as he walked toward the van Jerry let him borrow for the day.