To say it all started with the move to Milton would be a lie.
To say it started long before Milton would be an understatement.
Truthfully, it started with her parents; her mother, an artist, and her father, a man of faith. He was older than she by almost ten years, but she would always insist that her soul was ancient, (thereby making her a cougar in spirit). No one could contradict that. Maria seemed to see twice as much as the average person, understanding in a glance what some might overlook for a lifetime. Richard was a perpetual student at heart, his thirst for knowledge keeping him forever young.
They seemed an odd couple, but that only bothered her sister, whose opinion was not enough to derail the course of true love. Maria was only twenty-one when they married and they welcomed their first child, Frederick, by the time she was twenty-three. Their little family was completed four years later with the arrival of Margaret.
That year also brought the move to Helstone. It was a small farming community nestled in the Bible belt. Mr. Hale took a position teaching at a private Lutheran school and the family occupied a money pit on the edge of town. Mrs. Hale always had some improvement project underway, Margaret always had her nose in a book and Fred was always trying to stay one step ahead of the nearest authority figure. Those early days had been idyllic.
Mr. Hale threw himself into his job with the same gusto he had previously dedicated to his studies. He lived and died by his students' failure or success. Mrs. Hale didn't care to immerse herself in the community as her husband did. She remained an outsider among the farmer's wives, preferring solitude and her studio.
Despite the four year age difference, Fred and Maggie were inseparable. Between her imagination and his ability to get into trouble, they were never bored.
When Margaret was fourteen, she was sent to live with her Aunt Linda and Cousin Edith. The Shaw's lived in Chicago and seemed to think that the companionship 'Mags' provided 'Eddie' was a fair trade for the expensive tuition to a private school. She didn't want to leave her family or Helstone behind, but her father insisted that it was an opportunity that shouldn't be wasted.
While living in the city, she grew very close to her cousin, discovered a love of photography and graduated a year early with highest honors. At the same time, her mother lost her health, her father lost his faith and Fred nearly lost his life.
Maria had never been described as a hearty woman. She was known to skip meals in favor of her canvas when she was deeply inspired. She was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at age forty two. The disease took its toll on her thin frame, but she continued most of her usual activities with only slight modifications.
Less than a year after that, while Frederick was away at college, his predisposition for trouble came back to haunt them all. The details were kept maddeningly vague when Margaret was told of the ordeal. All her parents would ever say was that Fred was a poor judge of character and because of that he witnessed a crime.
It must have been a large crime and an even larger criminal because the twenty-year-old was taken into the Witness Protection Program in less than twenty-four hours. He didn't even have the chance to say goodbye to his sister. She received a letter that was disappointingly short, and gave her no further details of the incident.
The changes in his wife and the abrupt (and likely permanent) removal of his son broke Mr. Hale's guileless heart. He might have withstood one or the other, but not both. And, so began his slow turn away from the church.
Thankfully, with the bad came some good. After graduation, Margaret was accepted on partial scholarship to Bryn Mawr College. Eddie, with some last minute extracurriculars and excellent letters of recommendation, got into Haverford, more to be near her cousin than for any educational reason. Aunt Linda even rented a house in Philadelphia to be closer to the girls.
Four years later, Margaret was heading back to Helstone with a Degree in Urban Studies, while Edith returned to Chicago a few credits short. Not that she minded, of course. The engagement ring on her finger and the swell of her midsection was a superb consolation prize.
Has it really only been two years since Eddie's wedding? Margaret wonders in the quiet cemetery. She smiles remembering the grand ceremony, too grand by her standards, but entertaining to be sure. The champagne tower, the chocolate fountain, and they practically had to shut down Michigan Avenue for the horse-drawn carriage. She might have mocked the whole gaudy splendor if Eddie and Max hadn't looked so sublimely happy.
The memory reminds her that there are still one or two people in the world who might worry about her. She takes her phone out of the black clutch that is too small to hold much else. Switching it on, she has two missed calls and five text messages. The calls are from Henry Lennox, Eddie's brother-in-law, and also Margaret's lawyer. He is currently helping her deal with her Father's will. It's tough to split everything with your brother when he technically doesn't exist anymore.
She dismisses the calls and the voicemails, turning to the texts, all from Eddie.
"Remember to wear waterproof mascara."
"How was the funeral?"
"Do you want me to come to Milton?"
"Crap! I keep forgetting I can't travel." How could Eddie forget? She reminds everybody of her fast approaching due date every chance she gets. She is convinced that since her first pregnancy was smooth sailing her second go around will be a disaster. "When are you coming home?"
"Are you ok?" The last message reads.
Before Margaret can respond to any of them another pops up. This time Eddie has sent a link to a travel website showing flights for tonight.
She wants to know when I'm coming home, Margaret muses bitterly. Home? If I knew where it was I wouldn't be sitting in a graveyard talking to a hunk of stone.