Page 21 of Rage's Solace
She immediately speaks up, “The life I was meant to live was with you, Rage. Until…” her words trail off.
“It’s too bad that ship sailed long ago, Prissy girl,” I respond sadly.
“I’m sorry, Rage, sorry for it all.”
I glance away, crushed by the weight of this new information we’re sharing back and forth. Getting a hold of myself, I suggest, “Let’s go look for my grave. I want to see the lengths your greedy parents went through to separate us. We’ll take my truck.”
“Okay,” she says. Her voice is small, and it looks like she’s deep in thought.
Ven walks up. “Tex is on his way.”
“So is Siege and the other club officers. I have something important to do. Can you wait for them and let them in the shed?”
“Of course. You going to look at security systems?”
“No, believe it or not, I’m going to visit my own fucking grave and look at my headstone.”
Shock registers on his face. “What the everloving fuck?”
“I’ll tell you all about it when we get back,” I assure him.
Priscilla was healed enough to climb in and out of my truck now, so we both hopped in, and I headed for the cemetery she told me about. Although, I had long been looking forward to her being able to ride on the back of my bike, right now that was the furthest thing from my mind.
Our conversation put me right back there eleven years ago as her parents berated me and told me I was nothing, obviously clearly not good enough for their only daughter. The old feelings of helpless rage and humiliation rise in my mind,
On the way we talk about what poor soul was buried in that space and what they’d done with his headstone. Once we pull into the cemetery, Priscilla leads me straight to the grave.
I look around and realize that my grave is by far the nicest one in the general vicinity. Priscilla immediately drops to her knees and meticulously begins picking leaves off the slab. I reach out and grab her hand. “It’s not me, Prissy. I’m right here.”
She throws her arms around my neck and sobs. I gaze over her shoulder at the headstone. It was my correct name, date of birth, and the date of death was when she disappeared from my life. After getting the fabricated note, I joined the military and left this small, sleepy town behind. When I came back, I avoided every place we’d ever gone together and made a point of not checking up on her once I heard she’d moved on and married some rich bastard. I hadn’t wanted to know his name or anything about him.
Everything about this situation is heartbreaking. Eventually, I see a caretaker in the distance. I ease Priscilla out of my arms and wave him over. I introduce myself to the old man and ask, “Can you tell me anything about his headstone?”
“I know about everyone buried her for the last fifty years. This was strange request. The gentleman was cremated, and his urn is buried here. It’s called an internment of ashes.”
“No, he’s not. I’m Raymond Anderson.” Pulling out my wallet, I show him my driver’s license.
“Maybe this man was simply someone with the same name.”
“It’s not, though. Can you verify that an urn is buried here?”
He removes a small handheld device from his belt. “This is a ground penetrating scanning device. We use them to make sure caskets and urns don’t shift following flooding. Sometimes the water table rises and will move them slightly.”
We watch as he moves it slowly over the entire grave. Then we watch him do it again. “There doesn’t seem to be anything here.”
I just decide to lie to him. “I was in a motorcycle accident at this time and was in a coma for weeks. I think my parents were preparing for my last resting place. Fortunately, I woke up and didn’t need it.”
The older man asks suspiciously, “Why does it have a date of death carved into the stone.”
“Look, I don’t know but this is my headstone, and I don’t want it out in the open confusing people.”
“I can’t let you just take it,” he insists stubbornly.
“My parents passed, so technically it belongs to me,” I lie some more. When he doesn’t immediately agree, I suggest, “How about if I pay you for it and give you my contact information in case anyone complains?”
I quickly open my wallet and count out five hundred-dollar bills and hand them to him. Without giving him time to object, I give the headstone several hard jerks to dislodge it. It takes all my strength to drag it over to my truck and wrestle it into the back of my truck bed. This one is relatively thin I realize, like they cheap-skated out on it because it was just a prop.
We immediately get into the truck and leave. We’re both a little shell-shocked as we drive home. I roll the information Priscilla gave me around in my head. The woman I loved, literally thought I was dead. She grieved for me and never forgot me. I clearly meant as much to her as she meant to me. It was this warped situation her parents created that separated us. All it took for me was a fake letter. For my Priscilla it took death. I let that sink in for a minute. That meant that regardless of her parents pressuring her into marry another man, some small part of her heart stayed loyal to me.