Chapter Four - A Place of Shadows

A/N: I sincerley thank everyone who has reviewed this story and I hope you enjoy this last part and that Elizabeth is a well-rounded original character, and not a Mary-Sue! For explanation about the title, see the end of the story.

It looked as she had remembered it despite all the years that had passed. Her brain blocked the broken bench and the rusting plaques on the walls and she mentally ignored the yellowing photos of nameless dead. In her mind, Elizabeth had just died and it was the following horrific months where she cried for days in her bedroom as Mark partied till he was clinically dead and her father worked all hours of the day, forgetting the existence of his now passed youngest daughter. He had steadfastly refused to remember her, deciding that her choice of death was a betrayal to him and even their mother who had loved life and her children. But even he in his confused grief, shed silent tears. Now was different though, now things had changed. The three remaining Carters rejoined to reminisce on both Marie and Elizabeth, remembering them without feelings of regret or disappointment, but with cherished memories that would never fade.

Her feet still remembered the way to the grave even if her mind didn't, walking mechanically to the spot where she would spend so many hours, sitting and thinking about everything she had never done and had never said. Lizzie wasn't buried with her mother in the crowded graveyard several states away, mainly because when Marie Carter, morbidly in her husband's opinion, bought the grave spots in the beautiful cemetery overlooking a blooming forest, she didn't think either she or Jacob would be in need of them for many, many years. Neither did she think that her youngest daughter, full of childhood innocence, would kill herself in a fit of grief, and then would need to be buried miles away from her mother.

She looked down at the slab of granite stone, carved in the traditional shape of gravestones. Several lines of gold swirling script created a striking contrast with the dark background, and bore Elizabeth's birth year and the year in which she died, fourteen years later. Sam's eyes traced over the letters, taking each one in as though they were as important as the whole word itself.

Elizabeth Carter

1964-1978

Much loved sister to Samantha and Mark

Adored daughter of Marie and Jacob

"All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,

and to die is different from what anyone supposed."

Sam's mind clouded with remorse as she noticed the fresh flowers adorning the grave, several unfamiliar vases crowding the small space allowed for each grave. It was neither she nor her father who'd tended to her sister's grave and so, she concluded, it had been Mark that had overcome his guilt and grief to help Elizabeth in death, if not in life. Kneeling down on the dry grass, she placed the single white Tiger Lily across the bottom of the headstone, wiping a tear away as she stood back up. She didn't need to turn around to know where the bench sat, still in the same position but more weathered, and she backed towards it, collapsing onto the wood as it caught her form.

Her eyes drifted to the park in the far distance, her ears tuning to the yells and cheers of children that played, blissfully unaware of the pain of life. Sam remembered strolling past the park to and from school, occasionally peeking over the fence of the cemetery to see mourning relatives crying at loved-one's graves. That had been in the first few months in Holdenbrook, Ohio and the third move in the two years since her mother had died; after the first transfer she had become used to the fact that even thought her mother's grave was in one place, her father wasn't concerned with staying there. Gradually she gained in confidence as she walked past, watching for minutes instead of seconds and feeling something inside of her desperate to have somewhere she could remember her mother.

"Don't you think its kinda creepy?" Beth whispered as they walked through the cast iron gates, gravel underneath their sandals and perfectly pruned hedges guiding their way to the non-existent grave.

Sam glared at her sister silently, not wanting to disturb the ethereal peace that the graveyard possessed. As they reached a quieter spot where neither could be seen, she dragged Beth to the side, her eyes like daggers. "You don't have to be here if you don't want to be." She replied simply, having no time for thirteen year old dramatics. "Go home if that's what you think is best. But I'm staying here."

Beth looked around, her eyes glancing over the surroundings as if something they concealed a hidden evil behind the solemn flowers and respectful scenery, "I'm not going home," She replied quietly, "I just think we should tell Dad what we're doing."

Sam snorted quietly, brushing the hair out of her face with a hand, "If you're going to be as deluded to think Dad cares what we do then I'm going to leave you right here…" She answered, her wedge shoes creating the only sound as they impacted on the small stones covering the ground. She'd walked several metres; more than she'd expected, before Lizzie caught up.

"Wait," She called, her tone quiet yet concerned. "Don't go without me."

Sam's hands automatically reached inside the back pockets of her trousers, a habit she had incurred when trying to impress teenage boys down her avenue, much to annoyance of Mark and her father. Lizzie would just sit on the porch, oblivious to her sister's actions, drawing the outlines of the trees and the birds, before running inside when realising that the washing had been done and needed to be dried. Sam felt the letter inside her pocket, the paper old and worn, the edges yellowing and the writing pale.

The bench was hard beneath their bodies, hugging their knees to their chest as they stared down at the grave of an unknown woman whose name they did not care about, their minds drifting as easily as leaves in the breeze. Neither had spoken for an hour at least, sitting in complete silence, lost in their own thoughts. Sam had been right; it felt better. If she blurred her vision, and forgot that it was supposed to be cold, it felt like she was at her mother's grave. And at that moment, it didn't matter that it wasn't Marie Carter's body that they were sitting above but just that they had somewhere to grieve for the mother they had only a few precious years with. And it was better than laying in bed with a photo clutched to your chest, or staring out the window at school, or bursting into tears in the shower.

"Do you ever wish that it was you?" Lizzie asked suddenly, her voice startling Sam out of her daydream, "That it had been you Dad had forgotten to pick up?"

Sam's brow knitted in confusion, her eyes glancing to Beth who wore a serious expression indicating that it wasn't just a question to break the ice, "Of course not," She replied, her voice more gravelly than intended, "As much as I miss mom," She paused, a knot forming in her throat, "I know that she and Dad would miss me a hundred times more."

Lizzie nodded solemnly, her head moving so slightly that Sam wondered if her physical assertion was a figment of her imagination, "Maybe it's just me."

Sam unfolded the letter, her hands wobbly and shaking and the paper waved in the wind as she tried to focus her teary eyes to read it. The creases in the paper were as sharp and clear as when she'd first found the note, scrawled in Lizzie's neat script on the paper that the paper their father brought home from work so they could draw cartoon animals and stickmen. She'd found it underneath Lizzie's pillow as she was laying there, her heart ripped to shreds, her ultra-responsible sister making sure that, even in death, her family knew exactly what to do.

I'm not sure what to write or what to say that will make this any easier for you to understand because there are no words. We've all been through the same gut-wrenching mornings as we wake up and realise that mom isn't alive anymore and that she won't be in the kitchen, singing along to the radio as she makes breakfast or that she won't ever comfort me after a bad day at school. As much as I love you all, and I do love you more than words can express, the grief seems to wipe all that out, make it obsolete and only leave me to concentrate on that she's dead, and isn't coming back.

Tell Dad that I love him, and that he should be strong and that no-one thinks any less of him if he cries at night because he misses her, because we all do. I know you and Mark will be OK in the end, that you'll make up with Dad and realise how much you need each other; I know it seems unlikely now, but for me, one day, consider loving him again.

I can feel in my heart that you and Mark are going to be wildly successful; before you know it, you'll be in NASA, shooting up to the stars and doing everything you've ever dreamed of. All I ask is that you don't forget me. Tell Mark that I love him, won't you? And tell him I don't hate Therese that much and I give him my permission to marry her (as if he wouldn't anyway)

Well I guess this is it, isn't it?

All my love, forever and ever,

Elizabeth

He sat down next to her slowly, his movements hesitant and wary yet strangely comforting at the same time. He knew how to treat her, how to act around her, after everything he'd been through he knew that actions said more than words ever could. "Everything alright?" He asked, his voice soft and reassuring, not expecting anything in return.

"Mm," She affirmed quietly, leaning to kiss him gently on his lips, warming her very soul as they touched, "Thanks for being here. For helping me."

"Wouldn't be anywhere else." His hand drifted over to where hers sat on her knee and he squeezed it.

And he didn't let go.

Fini
In the Old Testament, after death souls gathered in Sheol, which describes either the grave itself or "a place of shadows" where they waited for resurrection day.