John Lambert (from The Girl in Boxcar # 3)
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I knew there was something fishy about that young man and his bride the moment I opened the door to em. It just didn't make no sense to me that they'd be out in the cold in the middle of the night on their wedding night. I mean a man don't marry such a sweet young thing and then waste his wedding night out in the cold like that. But my missus has always had such a soft heart, and when she insisted on letting em in, well I lost that battle before it ever even got started.
But what that young buck done to me and the missus the next day, I won't never forget, and I sure as the devil himself, won't never forgive. He came barging his way into our home and accused us of stealing more money from him than we'd ever seen in all our lives. When I told him straight out we didn't steal nothing belonging to him, and demanded he get outta our home, he went after me like some kind of maniac.
But even that weren't the worst he done...
Now the missus and me had been married for going on fifty years. She was almost ten years younger than me when we married, and some folks today might say she was a child bride, but she was fifteen on her wedding day. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on, and to my way of thinking, she still is.
We had planned on having a whole parcel of children, but that just weren't the Good Lord's intention for the two of us. Oh, we tried hard enough and had a few near misses along the way, but something went wrong early on every time, six times total, and each time something went wrong, the missus weren't just disappointed. Her sadness went so far deeper than that, and there were times I think she would have preferred to follow them babies to heaven.
It was her idea to keep all them reminders in that room. Every bonnet and bootie, and baby blanket she had knitted was placed in that room, along with every toy and gift we was given, and the cradle I had made, the missus tucked all that away in that room. After a while it became a sort of shrine to all them lost little souls. And as the years passed, my wife would add things that matched the age each of them babies would have been. Then, after the missus quit having her cycles, she locked that door and it was never opened again.
Until that man showed up at our house.
When he and his wife saw what was behind that door, they both realized they had crossed the line of decency, and he promised to fix that lock before he left. But the damage had been done and my missus... she ain't been the same since. It's like she lost the link between her and them babies that never saw the light of day, never took a breath of air, never suckled a drop of milk.
Having all them things in that room and keeping the door locked for all eternity was her way of protecting what she never had. Her own soul died the day that man showed up.
He apologized, and he did fix the lock before he left, but the damage had been done, and three years later, I buried the missus on the hill behind our house. I call it a house now, cause after that man opened that door, my missus never thought of it as a home again.
It's been five years now since that happened, and I know now the kind of anguish the missus went through losing them babies. I know, cause that's just how I feel having lost the missus.
And like her, I'm just waiting for the day I can join her, and we'll have the family in heaven that we never had on this God forsaken earth.
Maybe you can understand now why I can't never forgive him.