“Why are we here, Papa? It’s so very quiet, like it’s Sunday or something.”

The man stares at his teenage daughter, his heart aching to see the ghost of Sarah lingering in her quizzical expression.   He fingers the scar running along his jaw, a nervous habit he knows only too well.

“Did you and Mama work here, during the war?”

Bless her, she is as sharp as her mother, he thinks, his heart breaking slowly. He can’t believe it makes no noise in doing so, is incredulous that there is no pool of blood dripping onto the cobbles at his feet in witness to what is about to happen.

It has been ten years, since Sarah died here, in the road, outside this small magasin.

‘Not died,’ he thinks, correcting the lie he had been telling himself for a decade. ‘Killed. By me.’

He hopes his daughter is as strong as his mother had been. She will need to be, once she knows the truth.

——

Here’s my latest entry to Magpie Tales. I couldn’t quite leave my trilogy behind, so thought I would write a kind of post-script. You can read the other stories in order here, here, and here, if you like!

I hope you enjoy it – and please do visit Magpie Tales for more poetry and prose!