Entombed
So, she returned. She had to. She had to save what was left. She wasn’t sure of their names, the ones who took her there, and why they made such a fuss over her dress.
She sat there unable to move, staring, while thirty years of memories that she wouldn’t immerse herself in, tossed like the waves that crested and fell beneath the cliff.
The chairs they bought in Portugal, covered in blue-green leather like the sea, were so welcoming. She couldn’t bear to rid herself of the seat that lay empty, summer after summer. She closed her eyes, fingering its softness, hearing the last strains his withering voice in the rasp of palm leaves against the weathered stone.
‘Soon they will be here and undo it all’, she thought to herself with agitation.
A stranger in a pink shirt rounds the corner near the pine, his mind full of papers. She was angry at him already. It was a good thing she blocked the slatted doors with a table. The tomb of their memories was not his to rob!
From behind, she felt her husband’s familiar hand, warm on her shoulder, warmer than the sunlight, “Darling, did you leave something important behind?”
As the agent turned the corner, he saw the woman’s head, with its silver halo, fall to her chest. She had turned towards the glistening waves and away from the tomb.
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