Six Feet Under

chapter five

[ 09/19/2015, Clairmont Cemetery, 0930 ]

Madison perched on a hard-backed chair uncomfortably.

"Any preferences on the stone?"

"Marble, please."

"Of course, give me a second." Kyle replied, messing with his notebook and pencil before scribbling something down. Over his shoulder, Madison watched as the crooked alphabets brought the word to life: Cecile Greene, Contact: Madison Greene. Marble.

"Inscription?"

Madison made a show of squirming for a few seconds before answering.

"Uh, can I tell you that later? For now, just her name and birth and death year."

"Sure," Kyle scratched out something in the notebook. "She's French, right, your ma? Any accents in her name?"

"One," she held her hand out for the notebook. "Here, I'll write it."

She carefully penciled in Cécile Amelié Greene on the line below, and 1979 - 2015 next to her name. Her thin, spidery handwriting looked out of place amongst Kyle's crooked one that filled the page.

"Just out of curiosity," Kyle closed his notebook. "What's her maiden name?"

"Bellegarde," Madison handed back the pencil and looked out the slightly grimy window, her eyes settling upon rows and rows of headstones. Clairmont Cove was a small town, small enough that it only needed two cemetery caretakers who did everything from digging graves to making funeral arrangements or ordering in headstones.

"Nice name, real classy." He commented idly. "Well, I'll settle the burial register today. How fast do you want the headstone? If you can give me the inscription by this evening, I'll ring it in and it could be here in a week, tops."

"Oh, no." Madison smiled. "We're in no hurry. I'll have to ask my sister about the inscription and any embellishes she'll want on the stone. Thank you."

"Always a pleasure, Miss Greene." Kyle shook her extended hand. "And I'm very sorry for your loss. You've lost a lot for someone so young."

It feels like deja vu. A few years back, she was here in this chair, watching Kyle pencil in Robert Greene's name in that inexhaustible notebook of his. And even further back, a much smaller version of her had sat in that corner, twiddling her thumbs and watching then-teenaged Kyle write down Rosalie Greene's name with a shaking hand under the stern, cold gaze of her father.

"These things happen, I suppose." She said sadly, before getting up and turning to leave. "C'est la vie."

"Spoken like a mademoiselle," Kyle teased, trying to lighten up her mood.

"Ah, you forget." Madison laughed. "I'm not French. Bye, Kyle."

The door clicked shut behind her, and she let out a lengthy exhale. People do forget sometimes that Cecile isn't really her mother. In a perfect town, imperfections like Rosalie Greene are quickly forgotten.

She wandered the cemetery for a while after she left the small building, eyes skimming along the headstones disinterestedly until she reached the very back of the property. A lone headstone stood there, its stone face weathered. Rosalie Elliot Greene, it said, 1968 - 2004. Nothing else on the stone, no pretty words to describe the woman she had been. Every gravestone had them, so why didn't this one?

Madison stared down at the headstone, and laughed at the thought. What will they write there? Rosalie Greene had very few redeeming qualities besides her family wealth; she was an embarrassment, and Clairmont Cove knew it. To write pretty lies on her gravestone felt like a disrespect, but to write the truth would be a disservice to the town's general perfection.