Courageous Love - Jerry Cole Page 0,16
want to tell me anymore and I agree with her. I want to hear it from you, but only if you want to tell me.”
He was silent for a moment and looked out over the graveyard. “I’ll tell you.”
“Okay” I didn’t think he would want to but I was glad to see he was comfortable with telling me.
“But.”
“But?”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “You might hate me after.”
“That can’t be true—” I started.
He raised a hand to cut me off. “Please just wait until you hear it.”
I sighed. “I will.”
He led me into his house and I followed. Inside it was huge. It had high ceilings and rafters. My grandparent’s house was older, but this house was old. The paint could have been original; it was a cracking and peeling white and the wood floors were tarnished. Over each of the large arching windows were the dark shades I saw from the outside. The whole place was lit with antique looking electric chandeliers but I could just imagine them being candle ones just as easily.
“Sorry it’s a mess,” Cecil muttered next to me. “I don’t really know how to fix it up, and well, you know how the town feels about me.”
I wished I knew anything about home improvement so I could help. “Maybe some flowers would help spruce up the place,” I wondered out loud.
“Not all problems can be fixed with flowers,” Cecil added with a little more color in his voice.
“So far all of my problems have been fixed by flowers,” I shot back.
He shook his head and led me into a sitting room. The chairs and couches looked like they belonged in the last century with their pastel flower upholstery and dark velvet. They looked like they had been sitting there since the house was built and no one dared move them.
I sat next to Cecil on a small couch and waited for him to collect himself.
He took a lot of very deep breaths before finally looking at me. “Adam, I killed my parents.”
I must have died right there because I could have sworn my heart stopped beating and my lungs stopped taking in air. My eyes must have widened because as soon as Cecil looked at them, he turned away.
“You? What? How?” I asked. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. I didn’t know how to take that statement. How was anyone supposed to react to that?
“Beth will say it’s not my fault but it was my fault. I was angry with them. I don’t even remember why. They went out and told me they would be back in an hour. They weren’t back in three and I knew I could have called someone. My parents knew everyone. I could have called the sheriff or the mayor and I knew I should have. But I was still angry. I thought they had abandoned me. I didn’t call. The next morning, the sheriff came to my house and told me the news.”
I waited, my heart pounding.
“They had crashed a little way out of town on their way to a farmer’s market. No one passed them all day. They were alive for hours trapped within the car. They found them only an hour too late.” He balled his hands into fists. “If I had called even three hours after I realized they were late, they would still be here.”
“How old were you?” I asked.
“Seven,” he answered.
“Cecil,” I said, disbelief in my voice. “You were a child.”
He shook his head. “That doesn’t make it better. It doesn’t change what I did.”
“No one would blame you for that. It was a mistake. An unfortunate mistake. You can’t say that you killed them. It was the crash.”
“I could have done something. And the town does blame me.”
I was horrified. “That’s why they call you the grim reaper?”
He shook his head sadly. “I told everyone what I did. I felt so guilty. At first, they said the same thing as you. But then it got worse.”
“How?”
“I was passed around from family to family to take care of me and keep me in the city for when I would inherit the graveyard while my parents’ workers took care of it for me. But every time I entered a home, after a few weeks, someone would die. People thought it was coincidence but it kept happening.”
Jordan’s parents saying talking to Cecil would kill them suddenly made a lot more sense.
“Finally Beth’s parents brought me in and after a few days her