Future's Lost



The funeral might as well have been yesterday. She might as well have been standing in front of a small audience of people who never knew him, who possibly killed him, and telling them of the man she never told she loved.

It wasn't. It was ten years to the day she found him on the porch, a bullet from her weapon that her brother planted lodged in his skull. His blood on her feet, on her hands, all over her clothes.

Ms. - long stripped of the Miss - Parker stood over his grave and remembered what she had. It wasn't healthy, if Sydney was alive he might be telling her that. He wasn't and no one knew. Broots had moved on. Other men had come and gone. Tommy still lay in eternal sleep. Waiting for her on the other side.

The gun - the gun that killed Tommy - was still holstered in her back, its firing pin removed from under her pillow last night. Just like last year, the year before that, and the ones that came before them.

Jarod was sitting up the oak tree, waiting for the opportune moment, when she wasn't paying attention to make his presence known. He knew how aware she was of his position but this day was taboo, someone they both knew and cared for was lost on this day and neither of them had raised a hand to stop it.

"Why are we only friendly in graveyards?" she asked him and the world in general.

A small thud as he hit the grass, she ignored it and traced his name with her fingers. T-H-O-M-A-S. A common name, used by everyone who knew him and even those who didn't. He died without knowing hers.

"Out of respect of the many we've lost in the war, I'd imagine."

G-A-T-E-S

Would she have married him? Probably. Changed her name? Not likely. She was a Parker, born and bred, being anything else would have been false.

"War, Jarod? That sounds so black and white, they are the enemy and we fight them to the death. That makes it sound like we don't live in a shade of grey, you're not talking to the enemy and sometimes our own 'sides' are to busy killing our own to fight."

Jarod sighed and dropped his bouquet. She knew every flower that was in it. It hadn't changed for 10 years; unlike him.

The gold he wore on his finger for one, carefully removed lest she see, hidden no doubt in the back pocket, close and safe from harm.

"Why do you come here, Jarod? Why not just forget like the rest?"

Jarod stood a metre from her, both for reaction time and manners sake. He seemed at a loss for what to do with his hands.

"What did you do with the stain glass window I gave you?" he asked abruptly.

I-N L-O-V-I-N-G ...

"It's in my mothers studio, why?"

Giving up the fiddling he just put them in his jacket pockets and kicked a tuft of dirt. "I started that 11 years ago, before I saw the news."

He said it like it was a revelation which it clearly wasn't. So what he started a stain glass window of her missing her heart before Tommy ... before.

"You knew!" she hissed.

Jarod jumped a step back, hands removed from pockets and now waving frantically in front of him. "No, I swear to you, I was making it as a wedding present, I had no idea. Thomas was my friend, I wanted you to be happy!"

A new wave of grief washed over her. No one knew about the ring, the one he'd hidden in a draw in Oregon, no one but her and she'd never even pulled it out of the box.

The grass squeezed between her fingers as the tears did from her eyes, "You knew," she repeated.

From the corner of her eye she saw him nod, "I put him onto the jeweller."

"You."

Another nod.

"What will you do now?"

Two dozen red roses blurred in front of her; one big red blob like the blood she had skidded in.

"I'm going to remember all the good times I had."

"And then?" his voice was all Sydney.

"I'm going to wait until they trust me completely and then I'm going to find a way to make them all pay."

Jarod might have nodded but she didn't look. He might have opened his mouth to say "it's been ten years, nothing's going to change," but she didn't se that either. Now if she did he'd be gone. Going back to his fast and flashy car, his wedding ring removed from back pocket and slipped onto left ring finger, the red-head at home would be loving and all this for him would just become a ...

M-E-M-O-R-Y

That was all it was for everyone else, but for her it was all she had left.