Miranda

Chapter One

"Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation." -Khalil Gibran

~Miranda~

I watched my mother's casket sink into the muddy ground with the help of the wench. I was standing in the cold spring rain with only the pastor, the funeral director and his wife, who's names I can't remember. I sigh and tuck the tendril of curly hair that has escaped my bun behind my ear.

"Only princesses get fairy tales" I repeat the bitter words my father would use to remind me, when things didn't go as I thought they should have, that for us, nothing came easy.

"What was that dear?" the directors wife, her name is Cheryl I think, must have heard me.

"Nothing" I give her a weak smile and stare down at my hands, I am fidgeting with the skirt hem of my simple black dress. I don't cry, all my tears had gone by this point, mom had been sick for over a year and on hospice for over a month. It had given me time to come to grips with it. Unlike at Dad and Elliot's funeral.

They too had died, the summer after I had graduated high school and was about to start college. He and my 3 year old brother had been hit by a semi-truck after the driver had fallen asleep at the wheel. The police said it was instant, they felt nothing. Unlike mom who felt ever second of her death, despite the drugs they gave her.

I had nearly dropped out of that first semester, but my mother had yelled at me that my father hadn't worked three or more jobs to save for me to go to college for me to just quit before I had even started. Her grief had made her angry, mine had turned me into a mindless zombie.

I don't even remember those first few months of school, not until Ian came along and woke me up.

I look up as I realize that Cheryl, or was it Carol, is trying to talk to me again.

"I am sorry, what?"

"I asked if you had plans for lunch, Stephan and I would like to take you out to eat."

I smile at her, Mom and Dad had worked for them a few times, Mom in the office helping with the filing, and Dad doing grounds maintenance and sometimes grave digging. They were saddened by Mom's passing and had helped me make her arrangements, to include my purchasing her casket on Amazon and having it shipped directly there. By the way if anyone ever needs to know, you can buy them and they will ship for free with Prime... who knew. They are even going to let me make payments directly to them for the remainder of the bill. I would have had her cremated in Texas, because it cost less, but she had begged me in her last few days to bring her home and lay her with Dad and Elliot. How could I say no?

But now I was broke, worse than broke, I was in debt up to my eyeballs and since I still had a mountain of medical bills to pay for and was now the sole caregiver of my grandma I was going to have to start working full time and possibly get a part time position somewhere to make up the difference, even though I had promised mom that I would return to college to finish a degree, when I finally picked one. But I didn't see that happening any time soon.

"Yes, that would be nice, thank you" I told her. I was in no position to turn down a free meal, probably my only meal until I got back to Texas, had to save the last of my cash for gas.

"Its the least we can do darling, your parents were wonderful people."

They had been wonderful, hard working people. I had recognized from an early age that we were poor, poorer even than most of the people in our small Alabama town usually were. And it wasn't due to addiction problems or gambling debts that most of the poorer kids in my school dealt with.

Mom had met Dad when she was 16 at a party for the football team winning the state championships. Daddy was a Junior on the Varsity team trying to play for a scholarship to college. Mom was a poor country girl who's parents co-owned a tree nut plantation with 9 other families, but she was pretty and Daddy was looking for a dance partner. A few months later, both had dropped out completely after Mom found out she was pregnant in order to raise me.