I Should Have Known

An hour had passed, and the rain had finally let up. Now the air felt nice, and the sky was a light shade of blue. He didn’t have a chance to enjoy it though, because they still hadn’t found the girl’s mother. He seemed more worried about than her; for she was humming and twirling as though she had not a care in the world. He hadn’t gotten a lot out of her either. The only thing he knew about her was that she was eight years old, she had a younger sister, her name was Anna, and she loved the rain.

He checked his clock and sighed; so much for making it home before seven. He had hoped to complete some paperwork before he went to bed that night, now he would have to stay up until the wee hours of the morning to finish it. He thought for a moment; she had always jibed him for working too much. Now that he thought back on it, she was right. He should have spent more time with her instead of being focused on his work ninety nine point nine percent of the time. What a horrible person he was; but he couldn’t think about that now. Now he had to focus on helping this little girl. What kind of mother, he thought, would forget their child for this long? Originally he had thought that indeed they had just been separated, but the cemetery was not very large, and they had gone through it all at least half a dozen times. He was certain by now that her mother had left.

“My mommy always forgets me,” the girl said, a look of sadness ever present in her blue eyes. They reminded him of something….like a dream that you forget all about when you wake up, but one which you know was pleasant and happy.

He felt for her, he truly did. His fiancée had gone through the same treatment from her mother while growing up. Her father had died when she was quite young, and her mother was a raging alcoholic who was living off of the money that her husband had left them in his will. He had been a successful business man, so they were pretty much set for life. Unfortunately he did not lead a very healthy life, and died at the age of sixty from some problems involving his liver when she was only six and her sister, two. So basically her mother was the only one there for her, and she was barely a parent to begin with.

“Sometimes,” she continued, as they walked nearer to the hill where they had started almost an hour and a half previous. “She leaves us home with our nanny and we don’t see her for a long time. Sometimes she brings us presents, but we still miss her a lot. My little sister, Addie, cries for her at night, and sometimes she never gets back to sleep.”

“How old is your sister?” I asked, all the while pondering what would be best to do at this point. It was doubtful that she knew where she lived; most children her age barely even knew their house phone numbers. But this was the information age after all. Kids certainly knew a lot more than they used to.

She paused for a second to think. “I think she’s four. She’s smart too…I told her how to do the ABCs, and her numbers and all. My daddy taught me how, but he went away before he could teach her anything. He’s sleeping over there,” she pointed off towards a spot far off from where they were walking. It was a small area under a flowering tree where five or six other graves.

“My grandpa and grandma are over there too, and so are my uncle and my auntie, and some of their kids who died a little while before my mommy had me.”

He squinted to where she was pointing. It was funny, his fiancée’s family was buried somewhere in the same general area. He sighed. It was time to get things moving.
He bent down so he could be at her level, and smiled at her reassuringly. “Do you know your mother’s phone number, sweetie?”
He could already tell from her blank expression that she didn’t. He sighed again. “Never mind”

“You know something mister,” she said, gazing up at him with those large blue eyes that immediately captivated him. It sounded wrong for him to say that, but they were truly beautiful. He had only ever met one other person who had eyes, and that was his beloved who lay six feet under the ground that was now only about a hundred feet from where they were walking now.

“I bet your girlfriend watches over you all the time. I bet, even though she’s gone, she still loves you, and she thinks you’re the best person in the world.”

What she said shocked him. It was like she could see right into his soul, his feelings, his head, his entire being. He turned away, and began walking toward the entrance of the cemetery. He still had a hard time talking about her. Hell, he could barely even mention her name without stuttering, so he just refrained from mentioning her all together. It was hard for the man to admit it, but honestly, her words touched him. They brought him a peaceful sort of feeling which he wasn’t comfortable with.

“C’mon,” he said. “I’ll take you to the police station; the officers can help you track down your mother.” He was starting to walk faster, without realizing that she wasn’t following him. When he had reached a distance of twenty feet he heard her say something. Something that was unexpected, especially coming from her small lips.

The wind blew harder as she said it, making it harder to hear her what with the bustling of the leaves all around them and the mixture of sounds that were caused by the animals in the cemetery. His hair blew around his face, wrapping itself across his eyes in a dark brown curtain shielding him from all that was going on around him. He only had the smell of earth after a rainfall, the feeling of his trench coat as it closed in like a cocoon, and the sounds of the wind which almost masked her voice as it said those six haunting words. And there they came, across this mix of senses and feelings.
“Her name was Annabelle, wasn’t it?”

And with that the wind died down, and the little girl was gone.