Cold Black Heart

Season: Winter
In this post: Virginia Duffy, LaKisha Vincent, Cael Mason, Robin Duffy

Author’s Note: This ended up being much longer than I wanted it to be. You have been warned.

Virginia warmed up her hands by the fire.  It probably wasn’t as cold as she felt but at her age her body temperature was really off wack.  It was always either too cold or too hot.

It was the price she had to pay for getting old.

She snorted to herself, “I’m not old.  I’m vintage.”

Old was what you called people like her neighbor and once best friend LaKisha.  Who was anxiously planning her daughters wedding.  Wondering how long it would take the girl to get pregnant and make her a grandmother.

Virginia felt a strange twitch in her chest at that thought.  Thinking back to the excitment in LaKisha’s voice as she speculated about her future grandkids.  If you let LaKisha tell it she had been waiting for this moment forever, for her children to have children.  If you let LaKisha tell it, it was feather in her cap.  An indication that she had been a good parent.

Stepping away from the fire, she headed to her bedroom to change into her yoga clothes.  She refused to let her mind travel back to the past.  If there was one thing life had though her it was never to look back.  It always hurt a little bit too much.

But this night the past seemed to be chasing her.  As she pulled the sports bra over her head her mind congered up images of  what her room looked like before.  When they, her and Kimberly and Robin, had first moved in.  When the bunk beds they shared took up most of the space.  When the walls were painted dark purple.

“This is all your fault, LaKisha Vincent.”  She accused, fully changed into her workout clothes.

She mad her way back to the livingroom and the fireplace.  Prepared to leave the past behind with the help of yoga.

As she started her nightly rountine, she promised herself she would not let LaKisha”s excitement let her think of what ifs.

What if she had been a better mother?

What if Kimberly would have lived?

What if the baby had lived?

What if? What if? What if?

She signed, giving up.

“Fucking old bitch.”  Virginia cursed, sticking up her middle finger towards LaKisha’s house as she headed to her computer room.

But the computer offered no escape either.  The first news story that popped up was had to do with the investigation into the faulty elevator that had killed two of her neighbors.

For weeks, she had avoided all talk of news of the incident.    The boy lived next door, since his death the house had gone quiet.   She could hear the school bus pull up in the morning but the afternoon noise of children running around was absent.

The man lived right next to the boy, that house had been a lot busier.  Cars pooling up at all hours of the day.  Mostly family, coming to consul the grieving widow.

The past was stalking her, she was sure of it.  It was finding a way to work it’s way into her everyday life.  Banging on the lock that she had sealed tightly shut  over her heart and brain.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 The rest of the week went fabulously.  The past had been safetly locked away, again.  She made sure of that by avoiding LaKisha and the dead people families like the plague by indulging in her favorite past time, dating.  Lots of it.  At least once everyday, sometimes twice.

Normally she liked to meet her dates in Eaton, to keep herself out of small town gossip.  Not that it helped much, she was sure that the whole hood knew more about her “guest” than she did.  That’s why she had left the small town life as soon as she had been old enough to hop on a bus by herself without being asked any questions.

Her date, this time insisted that they meet in Oasis Valley.  He said he wanted to see it, never had a reason to drive out that way and seeing her would be the prefect excuse to head across the bridge.

Something told her to protest more but she didn’t.  Just the thought of sampling on of Susan Schmidt’s tasty little desserts made her mouth water and she agreed.

Only to find herself run smack did into another reminder of her past.

Virginia barely had time to introduced Robin to her date.  When Susan, interuppted and showed them to a seat outside.  Virginia was sure that Susan’s timing was just a coincidence but she was sure that an angel somewhere had pulled some strings for her and done her a huge favor.

For a normal person the sight of their daughter wasn’t enough to ruin a date but Virginia would never call herself normal.  And Robin’s appearance was like a thunderstorm at a wedding.  Am instant mood changer.

“Are you okay, Viriginia?  Your a little quite today.”

She didn’t answer what could she say really.  That the sight of her daughter ruined the day for her.  No, no one would understand that.  She barely understood it herself.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Someone had told her that the prospect of death could make a person re-evaluate their whole life.  If the last few days of her life were any indication that person was a right.  The dead kid and the dead man had not even been hers, yet she found herself looking at her past.  Wondering how people would remember her once she was gone.

The only person that would probably even give her passing a second thought would be the only child she had left, Robin.  She wondered if Robin would have the same reaction to her death that she had to her own mothers:  a slight ping of regret for what could have been but nothing more.

She sat there in the dark with a glass of tea in her hand and let the memories that she had locked away escape their person.  She remember the promises she would make to her doll when she was a little girl.  To be a better mother to her doll than her mother was to her.

Where had that little girl gone?

When had that little girl been replace with the women that was sitting alone in her house with only a glass of tea and a fire to keep herself company?

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Cael and Robin had been watching the nigthly news when the phone had first rang.  Robin looked at the clock to check the time.  Wondering who would call them after ten o’clock at night.  Cael glanced at her indicating that he wasn’t expecting a call either.  He turned back to the television ignoring whomever it was.

Robin got up to check the call id, having no intention to actually answer it.  Whoever it was could call back at a more respectable time.  She was just curious to see who it was.

She had thought that she had read the number wrong.  Virginia never called her, something had to be wrong.

“Robin speaking”

The voice on the phone did not have the confident tone that she had come to expect when talking to her mother.  ”Can you come over?”

That question shocked her, Virginia never invited her over.  ”Now?”

“Yes, now.”

She didn’t know what she was expecting to see when she arrived at her mother’s house.  But all kinds of crazy thing ran through her mind.  She didn’t knock, just let herself in.  She found her mother in the kitchen.

To an outsider Virginia Duffy would have looked like the picture to health, but Robin could tell that something was wrong.  Maybe it was the set of her shoulders or the tears in her eyes.  But Robin could tell that at this moment Virginia needed someone and she had turned to her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

• This update ran away from me.  When I had initially wrote it, it had gone in a completely different direction.  There was pictures for everything.  But somehow when I sat down and to edit, Virginia decided to go emo on me.  I am don’t like her like this at all.

Advertisement