#except for delanie and deodat

[sie-werden-nie-vergessen]

Sarah’s Funeral - An Excerpt

He stares down at the grave, at the little white casket in the newly disturbed dirt. The casket has a viewing window, but his mother had it packed full of flowers to obscure Sarah’s face.

“We don’t need more of them seeing her,” she had said. She ordered the cheapest flowers, and most of them were half wilted by the time they had been laid into the casket.

Ephraim would know. He watched as they were placed inside, and he stood by as the lid was closed and fastened, and he watched as it was carried out to the ground. The grave itself was on hospital property. For all his family’s riches, they were laying their only daughter to rest in a pauper’s grave in an empty field. Her only company were the graves of the other patients who had remained unclaimed or unwanted.

What a fitting place.

This is your fault.

Sarah had been wanted, but not by her family. Emma Fultz stood close to Ethel, her usual sack apron exchanged for a black cotton dress and a wool cape. Ephraim glanced at her, but she only stared past him with empty eyes, her gaze resting on the little white box. It was December. It was too cold for her thin dress, but she barely shivered as she kept her eyes locked onto the grave. Her hat was off-kilter and too large for her head.