ONE

Dark grey sky.  Repeated groans of thunder interspersed with brief flashes of lightning rumbled from within its underbelly.  A spatter of rain fell upon the world.  Constance Loftus stood five feet away in solemn silence staring at the open grave that was her husband’s final resting place.  She was dressed in black with a shawl over her face; her earnest driver stood behind her holding an umbrella to her head.  Rain drops splattered all around them.  The wind kicked up and ruffled their clothes.

The ceremony had come to a quick end.  Most of the invitees had their umbrellas open and sauntering steadily towards their parked vehicles.  Not Constance though.  She remained where she stood staring at the grave site.  Her eyes gave off no tears but in her heart, she cried.  In her heart, she mourned and cried.  There lay her husband Emmett G. Loftus in his coffin.  Sixty-one years old, dead of a cardiac arrest.  City magnate and industrialist; vain workaholic; imperious to his staff; proud and aloof husband and father.  There was a smaller hole dug out for where his gravestone would stand.  Constance took a couple steps backwards and watched as they lowered his coffin into the grave.  The rain splattered on its pristine smooth surface.  Never would it see the dawn of light anymore.  And wasn’t that just sad?  

A gravely hand touched her shoulder just as an old man’s voice spoke to her—the Reverend.

“Mrs. Loftus, please, the rain’s getting heavier by the minute.”

She switched her gaze from her husband’s grave to the sombre grey sky.  “Yes, yes, it is so.  Thank you, reverend.  It was a most brilliant sermon.”

“Your husband will be missed, Mrs. Loftus.  I will continue to pray for you both.”

“Yes, thank you.”  She said despondently and seemed lost for what next to say, with whatever measured words that best qualified her thought.  Everything about herself seemed dour resigned to the weather and the moment she was in.  She knew he meant well, and she too had meant well about his sermon.  Beyond that, she couldn't care less.  Ashes to ashes, as they say, yes, there is where her husband lay rested.  Never ever more to return from the grave.

She shook the Reverend’s hand one last time before turning around to take her leave.

Her limousine was one of few remaining vehicles around; everyone else had toddled off, as the saying goes.  The driver came forward and opened the car door for her and she held onto her hat as she slipped into the comfort of the vehicle while he closed the umbrella and went around and got into his seat.  He started the car and drove out of the cemetery driveway.  Constance’s eyes followed the train of headstones on the rolling fields of the cemetery with the various trees that dotted the scenery acting like watchful sentries over the dead.  The headstones looked to her like sentinel soldiers anxiously awaiting a regimental call of activeness.  She raised the shawl off her face, opened her handbag and rummaged for a handkerchief which he used to wipe her eyes clean.

Goodbye, Emmett.  See you in the next life.  Johnny would have loved to see you.

She must have dozed off because when next she opened her eyes the limousine had come to a stop in front of her home.  Someone tapped on the window glass from the other side.  The driver’s voice came through on the intercom.  “We’re here at Loftus Garden, ma’am.”

“Oh, of course, Bill.  Thank you.”  She replaced the shawl over her face then opened the door.

Her top servant Nigel was there to welcome her as well expressed his condolences for the hundredth time.  He had an umbrella ready and walked alongside her up the lengthy wide steps that led into the huge Victorian-style mansion that was formerly her husband’s abode.  Loftus Garden.  The mansion no longer felt loathsome and depressing to her when he’d first brought her here thirteen years ago.  Her feelings for it had changed and yet not everything about the place had changed at all.  The house looked more like a relic, a throwback to an age that’s long faded from human existence.  It was a symbol of man’s zenith over others, if one could see it that way.  No one had been expressive at such forms of extension than her just departed husband.

The house servants lined opposite sides of the steps leading into the house, all donned in black attire from the chief housemaid to the lowly caretaker of the stables.  Their feature was expectedly solemn and some even teary-eyed as Constance shook hands and exchanged hugs and kisses with each of them, accepting their condolences and consoling wishes at the departure of their employer.  Her senses noted a slight bit of hesitancy in several of them, the way their body gave off some imperceptible discomfiture.  Perhaps they wondered what would become of them now she was lord and mistress of the manor, or maybe she was just reading into things out of spite.

She entered the foyer and someone came to help her out of her jacket and her hat.  She went up the stairs while Nigel dismissed everyone back to their duties.  She went in the direction of Johnny’s bedroom, wondering how well he was resting with his fever.  She thought later she would call for a doctor to come by and check on him again.

Constance opened the double doors that led into his room and brought a smile on her face as she went past his toy room toward his bedroom.  The smile went away when she went inside and saw his bed empty.  She called out his name and went looking in his bathroom but he wasn’t there either.  Constance returned to the room and saw a white envelope lying on his reading table.  It bore the word ‘Mum’ on it.  She picked it up and took out the single sheet of paper inside.  She sat on the bed, crestfallen.  The sheet of paper fell from her hand to the carpeted floor.  The tears that earlier filled her eyes, the same ones that never seemed to pour forth the whole time she was at her husband’s funeral, suddenly poured forth like a river down her cheeks.

“Johnny . . . Oh Johnny,” she muttered as she cried.

Outside the bedroom window, the rain continued its relentless downpour.