Page 27 of Suck This

I realized, though, as I crossed through the gate and saw the beginnings of the cemetery, that I was going to have to share it with her.

Especially the way she was bent down by my three-year-old daughter’s grave, staring at it with her heart in her eyes.

“Acadia,” I murmured softly.

Acadia’s head snapped in my direction, and her face showed no sign of chagrin at being caught doing something she wasn’t supposed to do.

“I’m sorry for entering your property without permission. I was on the way to your gate when something called me here,” she murmured quietly.

I likely wouldn’t have heard her at all had I not had such good hearing.

“Nola does that.”

“Nola?” she asked.

“Nola, my daughter.” I gestured to the grave with my head.

I felt it the moment she realized that the small grave belonged to my child.

The sorrow was written all over her face.

“I didn’t know,” she murmured softly.

I walked forward on silent feet, the pull of the grave calling to me.

“She died when she was three,” I told her. “In nineteen fifty-seven.”

I didn’t hear her inhale like I thought I would. Most did when they heard I had a child over fifty years ago.

Though, she likely knew my age.

It was in the papers. Everyone who was anyone knew my age.

Thousands of years old was a huge topic of discussion among the folks of Austin, Texas.

Surely someone that old had to be weird… or ugly.

I was neither… at least I didn’t think I was.

“That’s so sad,” she whispered. “I lost a child, too.”

I blinked, turned, and studied her face.

She didn’t look old enough to have a child. Though, I suppose she was older than most of my generation. If she were of my era, she’d have at least six children by now.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I told her honestly.

She shrugged. “I was going to give her up for adoption,” she started. “I had her when I was fifteen, but the night I went into labor, she died while I was pushing her out.”

Emotions roiled through me, and I knew that they weren’t all mine.

I could feel the sadness and fear rolling off of her, and I wanted to reach out and touch her.

I refrained.

“My Nola died in a house fire,” I told her. “She was home with a babysitter while I was out and they set the house on fire because they knew what I was.”

“And your wife?”