Page 575 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

My gaze falls on a teddy bear. Black, with a white star on its chest, the fur not yet rubbed off, the eye still intact.

Gomer.

My knees buckle and I crawl to the bed, yank it from the pile. Press it to my face.

No. No…no…

I’m shaking now, the world coming at me in splinters.

The wound.

The missing swing set.

My empty bed.

Eve on the porch with Silas.

And, on my daughter’s shelf, a picture of my mother and father, grinning in a cruise line photo frame. They look happy, not a hint of my mother’s stroke in her eyes, her smile.

She’s dead, and you can’t bring her back.

No.

I close my eyes and cling to the only fragment of all of this that makes any sense.

The only thing that offers the slimmest filament of hope.

Oh, God,please.

Let the watch work.

The End

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