Free The Broken Lake by Shelena Shorts

without the part, and slightly curled at the tips.
    “We match,” he noted, as I approached.
    I looked down and saw he was right. I had chosen a fitted navy blue quarter-sleeve dress that fell to my calves. The dress had a wide ribbon around the waistline that was the same pale blue as his shirt. Oddly, we looked like we were going to a homecoming dance. I smiled softly, getting that we-belong-together feeling, and reached up to give him a kiss.
    We filed into the church and sat near the back. I elected not to go up to the front and look into the open casket. I had no desire whatsoever to see Ms. Mary’s lifeless form. Some people believe the viewing gives them closure. Not me. Remembering what Ms. Mary looked like when she was alive was all the closure I wanted.
    The funeral service started out a little bitter, for which I couldn’t blame anyone. I would be angry too if my family member had been brutally murdered. Ms. Mary’s son read a letter, which challenged anyone who was considering taking someone else’s life to look inward and reconsider. He read about how the family missed their mother and grandmother, and could not understand why someone had taken away the best-hearted person they had known.
    The pastor preached a eulogy that piggybacked off the idea that this was not for us to understand, and then the momentum and mood quickly picked up when the pastor invited everyone to raise their faces toward heaven, because this was a celebration of a “homegoing,” a homegoing to heaven. By the end of the service, people were almost applauding.
    Strangely, I didn’t realize my situation until the interment. The only other funeral I’d attended had been my grandmother’s, and I had managed to block out the actual sadness of it. Maybe if I’d allowed the sorrow to come out then I would’ve accepted that a death had actually occurred.
    The small crowd of mourners gathered on the hillside beside the church. The bumpy slope made it difficult to walk in heels, so I clung to Wes the entire time. His hold on me as we walked was comforting, but nothing out of the ordinary.
    What was different was the weighted feel of Wes’ arm around me by the end of the service. He usually held on to me with a comforting and secure hold, but this felt different, heavy and limp. It was enough to cause me to look up at him. His face was pained and his head was tilted slightly to the side, as if he was having a hard time holding it up.
    I turned back to see what had him so entranced. Ms. Mary’s children had stepped up, one at a time, to toss a flower into the grave. When I looked back at Wes, I saw him blink slowly, releasing one small tear.
    I watched it roll all the way down his cheek without him flinching or attempting to wipe it away. By the time it dripped onto his jacket, I realized that Wes was not just crying for Ms. Mary. A brick pulled my heart to the ground as I turned back to the grave.
    In slow motion, the next flower left the hands of Ms. Mary’s loved one and disappeared into the deep hole where her body would lie forever. I was very sure at that moment that this hole resembled the ones where Amelia and Lenny lay. A hole similar to where Wes may have dropped a flower for Lenny. A hole that Wes would surely never want to see again. And, unfortunately, one that I wasn’t so sure I could avoid.
    I wrapped both arms around Wes’ waist, and tears escaped my eyes as I squeezed them shut. Wes pulled me to him in the firm hold that I remembered well and kissed me on the top of my head.
    I refused to open my eyes but instead pressed my face against his side, absorbing him and every ounce of hope I held on to and feared losing. In reality, we are such little beings, insignificant to the greater powers of the universe, and suddenly I felt like I had no right to defy fate. No right to think I could beat the odds to remain in that moment, forever, with the one I loved.
    I shook off all doubt, wanting to believe that a different