A few days later, there was a fair in town. My mom had all negative things to say about it, which made me less interested in going. After the event and the new mayor, the town had fallen into pieces. However, with a hope that I would see Josh, I decided to go. I reached there, and I had 100 reasons why one shouldn’t have gone there. I grew up in this town, and I had a whole different image of the fair; I was disappointed. By the end of the day, I was about to return home, and luckily I saw Josh. We sat in the nearby park, and I found out that he used to be a secret lover of Janet. He used to work as a clerk in Mayor’s office. There he met Janet and fell in love with her. He explained her in a way I hadn’t heard before from Marilyn. However, the love was one sided, he never had a chance to confess to her. After that he started talking about the affair story and he screamed in anger and said that she deserved it.
With the weird conversation with Josh, I had nothing but a hint of suspicion. So now I had the mayor’s family and Josh as my suspects.
Determined to uncover the real truth, I decided to investigate further. I revisited the old stories, gathering more details from the townsfolk, piecing together the puzzle. As I dived deeper, I had nothing more but the harsh words from townsfolk and they all concluded it as a suicide. Then, with hopes of finding something, I went to Sheriff of the town, who was uninterested in digging down the old case. After lots of begging, he agreed to provide me with the description of incident. Janet had took her own life by burning herself, deep in the woods, in the abandoned graveyard.
I returned home and told my mother about it. And she said, “Janet was a cold winter that came into our town and it is still haunting us dear. We have somehow moved on so, it is better for you to do the same”. I was very depressed. I couldn’t accept the fact that it was suicide. It kept me thinking for weeks.
After a while, one rainy night, I was returning home from work and decided to visit into the woods, determined to find answers. The darkness was suffocating, and so the silence. As I approached the graveyard, a figure emerged from the shadows. The same shadow that started my search. I decided to approach her this time.
My eyes couldn’t believe what it saw, it was my mother. She was holding a shovel, standing over a freshly dug grave. My heart raced and I was astound. I couldn’t move for a while.
© Saruna Maharjan 2024-07-04