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It was overcast. It had been all week. The clouds were gray and heavy and threatened to pour their frustrations onto the shoulders on unsuspecting residents at any moment. The air was thick with humidity like it was hanging on by a thread and the temperature wrapped itself around each person warmly as if to hold the sky together. There was something brewing in the atmosphere and Derek Hale knew exactly what is was.
He knew when he woke up that Sunday morning and got dressed. He knew when he took the keys out and the rose out of Braeden’s hand and started the engine. He knew when the car passed under the familiar archway.
He knew.
Turning off the ignition, Derek and Braeden sat for a while in the stillness of the jeep. Safe. Protected by the fact that she understood what this meant for him, for them, and she wasn’t going to push him before he was ready.
Facing him, Braeden slid her callused hands from her lap into Derek’s on the driver’s side. He stared straight ahead and said nothing. She had never seen that kind of pain in him before only glimpses but she knew who was responsible for it.
“You don’t have to do this today.” she whispered.
“I do.” He said taking a deep breath. He removed her hands and kissed her forehead. “I do.”
She shook her head and gave him a small smile in return. She knew he was right as she watched him get out of the car and stare at the seemingly endless row of memories he was about to walk down.
“I’ll be back.” He said off into the distance, already crossing the sidewalk.
She never had the chance to say. “I’ll be here.” but she had a feeling she didn’t have to.
As she sat in the car watching his broad form retreat into rows of cement columns and floral acknowledgements getting smaller and smaller, she couldn’t help but think about her own experience with her parents. Braeden ran her hands through her curly hair, in an effort to stay still and not run after him. She knew how he was feeling because she would feel like this in less than one month and two days. So she sat and silently willed him to keep walking when he stopped from nervousness until finally, Derek disappeared from view altogether.
“You can do this.” Braeden mumbled while she swallowed past thick tears in her throat she would have to shed at a place just like this in one month and two days.
The Beacon Hills Cemetery was no different than Derek remembered it. After years of coming to stand on its lawn to say goodbye to countless members of his family and friends, the iron archway still had a flawless black paint finish and the cursive name of so many’s final resting place was so pristine it was hard to believe that it was 160 years old. A part of him wished that it had changed, that maybe the paint chipped or the grass needed to be cut. He hoped beyond hope that the maintenance crew had forgotten to remove the dead flowers or sweep the mausoleum floor because maybe if they had then none of it was true.
No one was buried here. Not one person died.
No one.
Definitely, not her.
His walk through the sodden earth housing row upon row of gravestones with the last information ever to be read about the entirety of someone’s life, proved his desperate theory wrong. The stones were spotless, shining and reflexive. The flowers atop them were vibrant and happy; contradicting the very atmosphere. To the public eye it might look like a inviting place but Derek knew better.
Beacon Hills Cemetery was a beacon of tragedy and it always would be.
Reaching the doors of the mausoleum, Derek stood outside with his hands pressed against the cool surface. He didn’t want to open it because he knew what he would find inside and it was threatening to tear him apart just as the clouds protesting above him attempted to ruin the sky.
Any other day,he would be able to handle the sting of her not being here but it was different today. Today,it was hard to breath and blink and each step felt like lead trapped in his bones. Every anniversary of this particular day for the rest of his life would be this hard.
Pushing open the heavy stone entryway, Derek was met with the gleam of a solitary shoulder height marble platform in the dim light of the mausoleum. The glow from the overhead bulbs was just enough to cast an angelic haze around her name on the bronze plated tomb.
Talia R. Hale
April 1965- September 2008
Beloved By All
Closing the door behind him, the echoes of silence in the room made Derek cold inside as he stared,dazed, at her name. He had seen it many times before,even helped his priest choose the finish of the plate but he had never seen it on a day like today. Year after year, he refused to see it like this, avoided every opportunity to catch a glimpse of that name, in this light, on a day like today. He knew there would be no escaping the reality of this day not being celebrated and it was enough to keep him 46 miles down the road, 2 right turns and 1 street away from her since the day she was left here.
That name was the only flicker of life in the hollow room that housed nothing more than a lifetime of dark memories, it shined like the heat of a thousand suns. Burned to look at.
Derek reached out to touch it and that’s when he realized he was crying. As tear after tear hit the floor, he heard the rolling thunder of the clouds clash outside right before the torrential downpour that followed. The cascade of water hitting the roof sounded angry yet lost, as if the droplets were trying to find a perfect way to hit the ground and failed each time. Every crash of thunder, Derek let himself cry harder with sunken shoulders and a raw throat until his legs wanted to give out and he slid to his knees.
His heaving got harder, the second he felt the vibration of the most violent bout of thunder the sky had to offer. It made the whole room shake and for a moment Derek thought that maybe it was her. Maybe his mother was telling him to be strong and hold onto hope. Maybe she was trying to touch him like he tried to touch her everyday.
For the next fifteen minutes he continued to believe that it was her but as he listened to the storm passing overhead, his belief evaporated into clouds that were no longer as angry but would always be lost. Just rolling along until they find a place to call home.
Derek could relate as he wiped his tear stained stubble with the back of his hand and sat straight up against the cool marble, his massive legs outstretched. He could feel the temperature through the thin fabric of his shirt. It was soothing, like her touch would have been.
He sat for a while, easing out of the hiccups that followed his crying. He sat, waiting for the words to make themselves appear. He sat there, until he could envision her sitting right next to him. Glancing over at the vacant spot on the shiny linoleum floor, Derek could see her as clearly as the last time they were together.
Her piercing almond shaped brown eyes so full of love.
Her luminescent smile so warm and tender.
Her dark locks falling in waves around her shoulders,not a strand out of place.
Her hands, riddled with soft cracks and running lines were a testament to her wisdom and why she was respected as a woman of excellence to all of Beacon Hills.
But that wasn’t why Derek loved them. Her hands fixed every broken toy, soothed every sickness,hugged away every nightmare. Her hands were stronger than any metal, sturdier than any anchor and safer than any lock & key.
Derek closed his eyes,remembering her touch. These were the hands that slipped themselves around Derek’s face and held him close, kissed his cheek and wrapped both hands in hers waiting for him to say what she knew he was going to tell her.
Opening his eyes, releasing a shaky breath, he stared down at his own dry and cracked hands wishing they anything like hers.
“I- I um.” He cleared his throat. “I know I haven’t been here in a while. I’m sorry. I’ll do better, I promise.” He said looking over at the tiles next to him.
“Beacon Hills has been kind of crazy lately, I’m in danger all the time and I won’t lie to you. It’s terrifying sometimes, to know that I could die at any moment just because of what I am. It used to keep me up at night. Remember? Those nights I would talk to you for hours because I couldn’t sleep.”
He scoffed solemnly. “I’d like to think you were listening but just in case you weren’t, I’m okay now. Ma,I’m okay.” he shifted as he continued. “It took a long time and a special girl for me to find this truth but I did, and I’m okay.”
There was a lump fixing itself at the base of his throat but Derek bit it back and vowed to ask her that one question he needed to.
“So,that special girl that I mentioned, her name is Braeden and she’s incredible. She is brilliant,funny,selfless,complex.”
“She’s honest to a fault.” He laughed quietly himself.
“Sometimes people don’t appreciate her honesty but she is the only person who has ever been so honest with me that I was forced to be honest with myself. At first I didn’t want to believe it Ma, that losing so much had me so..so..” He trailed off.
“I was a work in progress,still am. But she didn’t give up on me. Can you imagine two stubborn people trying to fix each other?” He wiped at his nose.
“If I hadn’t lived it, neither could I. Her walls were just as hard to break through as mine were. But I didn’t give up on her either.”
He smiled as a tear rolled down his cheek. “She made me a better man, Ma. You’d be proud that I found a woman like her. You would love her.”
He could see his mother’s agreeing smile as he looked again to his left.
“Ma, she’s..” Derek looked skyward as he tried to describe her and couldn’t think of the perfect words but picturing Talia’s patient face he kept going.
“She gorgeous, absolutely beautiful. Is there another word for breathtaking because that’s Brae? She could have any man in the world and she chose me. Me? She never once used me or her looks to gain the upper hand. She made us equals and I could never repay her for that or all she’s done for me but I’d like to try so I wa- was uh-wondering what you thought of her becoming a Hale.”
Derek waited for a response he knew would never come as his bottom lip trembled and his chest started to ache.
“She stopped me dead in my tracks the day I met her and I haven’t been the same since. Can’t imagine my life without her honestly. Ma, I’ve never felt like this before and she is the reason why. Don’t tell her I told you this but she’s the reason I’m alive right now. I would have succumb to my wounds,emotional and physical, quicker if it wasn’t for her. She taught how to fight for myself. A lot like you did.”
Two more tears cascaded down his stubble, passing over his lips as they dropped onto the denim of his jeans.
“She is so much like you. Sometimes when she laughs, the sound feels like that blanket you made me for my 5th birthday. That one I kept until Cora spit up on it as a baby and you couldn’t get the stains out.” A pause. “I still have it, what’s left of it. I showed it to Braeden and she didn’t ask about Cora or why I still had such a ratty old sliver of fabric, she wanted to know about you. You, Ma.”
He reached over and pressed his hand to the floor expecting it to be ice cold. It was warm,like she had been sitting there the entire time.
“That’s when I knew she was different. A Hale if I ever saw one, she even has the scowl down pact.” He smiled through the tears that were now consistently streaming down his face. “Her strength reminds me of yours and if you could meet her..”
Derek dropped his head to his chest, it felt heavier than it ever had before. Full of everything and nothing at the same time.
“You would tell me she’s Hale material.” his voice cracked as he recalled their inside joke. "Not everyone is Hale material", his father used to say, and after he died, the family started saying it too.
“I love her. God, I love that woman and she loves me. It makes sense for us to spend the rest of our lives together Ma.”
He sniffled, getting up on his knees. He turned around and laid his forehead on the bronze plate. “You’ve been the only woman in my life for such a long time, I don’t want you to think I’m replacing you. I’m not. None of us can.” He gripped the corner of the platform with shaking hands.
“She fixed me, Ma. You left, Cora left, Laura left, Dad left and leaving was all I knew. I expected it, waited for it. But Brae didn’t leave Ma, when she could have walked away she stayed. For me. Day after day all those broken pieces were dusted off and put back in place by someone who was also broken like I was. She put me first. Not her job, not her duty to service or anything else. Me.”
Derek’s chocked sobs began to rock his shoulders and he gripped the surface of the tomb harder. “I just need you to tell me if this decision to marry her will make her leave…like everyone else. She’s never been in one place too long and forever is a long time, Ma. So help me please, because I’m scared.”
His left hand slipped and landed with a heavy thud on the floor, dragging the left side of his body with it. With no energy left to pull himself up, Derek stayed bent at this angle. It felt as if the questions he was asking her were trying to find a physical outlet, a way to make themselves known to him in this world, so they pushed from his bones to his muscles and from the muscles to the nerves that told him, he could finally let go. He had his answer.
The sobbing was now bawling as Derek struggled to catch his breath. He could practically feel the warmth of his mother’s arms wrapped around his shoulders in a tight embrace. His body relaxed into the feeling and his right hand slipped from the marble and his body collapsed beneath him. Every tear that fell, every whimper he made was cleansing Derek in a way that only Talia was capable of.
A mother’s love transcends time, space and distance. Right now this little boy felt the closest to his mother as he had since the days of old when he was small enough to snuggle in her lap as she read to him.
The air began to shift in the room. A noticeable density replaced the earlier chill as the tears ebbed away into soft sniffles. Derek took his time breathing into a pattern that made him remember he was strong. That he had survived everything from death to misfortune, that he had lost and gained so much more than he realized. That he was a Hale.
A lone tear slipped from his eye as Derek shook his head in silent confirmation that soon there would be one more Hale added to the list.
“Thank you, Ma.” he whispered, biting his lip.
Sniffling again, he wiped his face and stood on shaking legs that didn’t feel like they belonged to him. The support they gave him,Derek wasn’t so sure he deserved but he was grateful they refused to listen to the rest of his body. The guilt that ate away at the meat of his bones each time he thought about visiting this place. A heavy looming dread directly underneath the surface of his skin that he covered with dark clothing and an even darker perspective. The weight of being 46 miles down the road, 2 right turns and 1 street over.
Today. The first time in 8 years that he has set foot inside the cemetery his family has owned for one and a half centuries.
“I just need you to know that I lo-“ he said brokenly under his breath, fighting with the rising lump in his throat.
He couldn’t finish it because if he did then this was it. It really happened. She was really gone, never to come back again. There was never a conversation between mother and son, this whole day had been imagined. So Derek held onto his words with a vice grip like Talia taught him to grasp the monkey bars as a child. He wouldn’t let go because once the moment passed, she would be in past. Forever.
With each word that pressed itself behind his full lips he swallowed them forcefully, tasting the memories in every syllable. He’d saved these for next time. The air is all of a sudden too warm like Talia has been holding him for too long when Derek feels a small weight on one of his shoulders.
He looks up,green eyes glittering with unshod tears.
Braeden is standing behind him. Her gray pants and sleek black boots gleaming with rivulets of water from the hair sticking to her face. There are droplets attached to each of her eyelashes as she stares knowingly at him. The white shirt she’s wearing clings to her smooth skin as the detail of her bra is seen underneath. She’s drenched.
The stray strands of curly hair matted to her face, stay there at wild angles. She’s takes a step toward him and holds out a single red rose in front of her.
The flower is immaculate, dry as a bone. No moisture has touched this beautiful intricate long stemmed red rose, she’s holding in her hand. The petals are as soft as silk, the vibrant red color as potent as the blood pumping in her veins. The shock of green in the leaves and the warm undertones in her fingers, a visual juxtaposition of life and death itself. It is untouched by the elements of wind and rain. Perfect. She must have brave those same elements to get it here.
“She knows.” she said opening Derek’s hand and placing the flower inside.
“I would have loved her too.”
Closing his fist around the stem, Derek gave Braeden the strongest smile he could muster.
She nodded, kissed his cheek and headed toward the stone door.
Placing the rose on top of the tomb, he stared at it. Alone. Singular. Never to be met with another of its kind. One.
It was equally fitting and heart shattering.
Gathering all the breath he has left in his body, Derek turns to leave only to be stopped by the sight of his girlfriend alone in the doorway.
Braeden, is leaning on the stone frame with sad, sunken eyes Derek has never seen on her before. This usually strong, resilient girl who has yet to find a fear she can’t conquer,looks like that monster she’s been trying to shake for years just caught up to her and swallowed her whole. As she stands in the doorway looking out into the abyss of gravestones, each heavy breath she takes indicates she knows a ghost or two by name. That maybe she’ll have to face them again sooner than she’d like to.
Derek watches Braeden with worried eyes he inherited from his father and patient eyes he got from his mother as the water drips continually from her stringy dark brown hair. She never wipes away the water, letting it splash onto the tiles and pool around her boots in an attempt to box her inside. She swallows hard and shivers when a cold breeze passes through the air and straight into her bones. She doesn’t move an inch. Statuesque in her silence as her visible pain deepens with each passing second, the lost rain drops have returned and found a home in her eyes.
That’s when he remembers. She has exactly one month and two days until they switch places and it is Braeden who will talk to the air and hug memories like they are family. Then, it’s her turn to ask questions and wait for the answer to speak through the soul. She will sob,cry,scream if she has to. Stand up on two shaking legs,take the ache with her, put it back in her heart and drive…46 miles down the road,2 right turns and 1 street over.
He can’t do it for her because he know that some things, painful, healing things,are best experienced alone. Derek smiles at her, though she’s too rapt in the clutches of the angry clouds rolling overhead to see that the light has returned behind his gaze.
He pivots,leans down and kisses the marble softly noting the cool of the surface is absent again like she was there this entire time.
“Happy Birthday Mom. I love you.”