Lucy's Trust
By Eliot Halverson
Petrified, Lucy peered down at her mother's motionless body. Silently she inched closer and touched her mother's cold hand, as sorrow seeped suddenly into her tender heart. While tears consumed her eyes, she felt a soft hand grace her back and rest lightly on her shoulder. Her watery eyes soon met with her fathers and they fell into eachothers arms.
"She's in a better place, Lucy. It will be okay." calmly cooed Lucy's adoring father.
"How can everything be okay when she's not here with us? Things will never be the same!" screamed Lucy, while an ambulance stopped loudly in front of the crime scene. Before the tragedies of the day unfurled, the meek young girl and her mother strolled along the dodgy downtown sidewalk of St. Louis only to end in disaster. Pointing a loaded gun at their awestruck faces, a tall, hooded man loudly demanded their money. Lucy's mother, shocked, stood still and clinched her daughters shaking body. When the man heard no response to his demand, he abruptly pulled the trigger and released the deadly bullet into the air, meeting the frightened mother's chest.
Lucy sat in her stuffy bedroom, staring outside the sparkling windowpane, silent as a statue, thinking of her mothers loving memories. When the door gradually opened, her father's warm face met her gaze.
Balancing a tray topped with warm soup and crackers, while grinning lightly, and walking gingerly, the plump father caringly questioned, "How ya doin' hun?"
"I'm so...so...afraid." at this, Lucy's tear stricken face turned a shade of red never seen before. "I never want to leave this house. I never want to leave my room, and I never want to leave my bed. I'm so afraid to do anything without mom. Everything seems impossible!" Despite her father's greatest efforts to halt the salty liquid from pouring down his rosy cheeks, the water began to flow and they once again wrapped themselves in eachothers warmth. Intertwined lovingly, they hugged until each fell asleep, and dreamed of the woman who always smiled.