Chapter 16
Daisy Peonia Mary Parker
July, 2025
Silver River, South Mississippi, USA
Senator Jones' nails may have been short, but they were sharp enough to cut into the skin of my arms. She dug them deep into my flesh, pulling me out of the vehicle as soon as the engine shut down in the last place I ever wanted to go back to.
“Let me go!” I struggled, digging the heels of my boots into the ground to stop her, but it was futile.
Senator Jones was a tall woman, and although lean, she was built like iron, as if there was nothing else in that body of hers besides muscle and bone. In addition, there was that immense anger and resentment she carried everywhere and that I was now feeling in my own flesh, while she was pulling me towardthe railroad tracks where Lester died twelve years ago as if I were a child.
“Please, Senator... Please...” I panted, gasping for air, sweat sticking the clothes to my body. Being there, so close to the railroad tracks, was something out of a horror movie. It was the same helplessness I felt twelve years ago. Seeing Lester's frightened face again, seconds before the train reduced his body to a mass of bones and flesh. Touching the warm remnants of what he had been with my hands once more. And smelling the scent of his human flesh filling the air. “Please!” I shouted this time, pulling my knees up to my chest to gain momentum.
Senator Jones staggered in her heels and that was my chance to escape. I elbowed her in what I hoped was her stomach and started to run. I ran toward the railroad track, illuminated by a full moon that looked the exact same as the one from twelve years ago. But everything else was different. Because this night I didn't know where to go.
Twelve years ago, I ranalongthe line until I reached the train. I ran toward Lester, clinging to a miraculous hope that never came true. Now, I was runningstraight towardsit. To that damn railroad track where not a single train had passed in many, many years.
I stopped before the soles of my boots touched the metal. Crickets and cicadas filled the night, heralding a hot summer, but I felt cold. I couldn't move. Reason told me to cross the damn line and run far away from the Senator, but I couldn't. The dread was too much.
A click fractured the night behind me. I closed my eyes tightly, before getting the courage to turn around and face my past that had taken the form of Madeleine Jones.
“Day after day...” she began, breathlessly. Her arm stretched out in my direction, a small pistol held in her bony hands. “Twelve years of watching you live, smile, carry on while he rotted beneath the ground.” I didn’t say anything. Clenching my fists tightly at my sides, I let silent tears roll down my cheeks. “Do you know what that does to a mother, Daisy? To imagine the baby she once held in her arms being eaten by maggots while she can do nothing? While the person responsible remains alive, free, and healthy?”
I took a deep breath. The sweat dried on my skin, making me even colder and nailing me to the spot and to the reality I was facing at the moment.
“I loved him, Senator Jones.” I simply confessed, but not to dissuade Madeleine Jones or to avoid a bullet. During those twelve years, I wished I had the courage to do just that, to put an end to my miserable existence. But I had an aunt whose unconditional love anchored me to life and a best friend who made me follow what I had preached to her once.Wait for the next chapter. I waited. If death was my end, then so be it. If it was there, I would at least leave with the fantasy that Lester, and my Papa, were already waiting for me on the other side. “If I could, believe me, I would have traded places with him.”
Madeleine Jones, always stoic, always haughty in her posture and unshakeable in her emotions, broke down with a scream.A crazy, animalistic sound that startled me and confirmed that that raised gun was not a simple bluff.
“But he was the one who traded places with you! HE DID!” she shouted, falling into an uncontrolled sobbing that stopped mine. I had no more tears, fear, or words. I stared with deadly calm into the Senator's blue eyes, identical to Lester's, and felt myself being slapped at every millisecond. The pain in her gaze was the same he had in his last moments. It was fear, and sorrow. “What kind of mother can allow her son's murderer to remain free, unpunished, happy?”
She steadied herself, hatred flooding back into her face as her eyes narrowed on me. The hammer was already cocked. One pull of the trigger, and it would be over.
“Turn around,” she ordered, and I shut my eyes, obeying. “Raise your arms.” I did so, feeling the warm night air on my skin, breathing in the scents of the sparse vegetation that dotted that open field one last time, having as my only company the songs of the animals and the distant hum of a car engine.
I felt a twinge in my chest. I would have liked the chance to say goodbye to Aunt Lizzie, Olivia, and Oliver, but I knew they would be fine when I was gone. I had left nothing unsaid, and that was perhaps a luxury few could claim when meeting their death.
“Do you still remember the exact place where he died?”
My eyelids lifted slowly, and I found myself face to face with the vast moon.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Walk there. Let's go.”
My legs were shaking, but I managed to move them. More than twelve years had passed, yet I knew exactly where the train hit Lester.
I walked to my right, arms raised, the senator's shadow following me. I moved as fast as my body allowed and stopped at the exact spot where the tragedy happened, turning to face the moon once more, giving my back to my tormentor.
Madeleine Jones managed to close the railroad line after her son's death. No more trains ran there, and as such, no one had bothered to repair the damage our accident had caused. I could still see the indentations left by Lester's car on the tracks, even though time had erased everything else.
Sharp pain spread through every bone in my body. My brain was warning me that I was about to die.
I took a deep breath.
“A worthless diner waitress, drunk and killed on the railroad tracks. No one's going to investigate, Daisy.” The senator's voice was like the hiss of a snake, spat through clenched teeth, filled with all the resentment she felt. "And to think my boy even wanted to marry you... All those dinners where he talked about nothing but you. ‘Flower Girl’, that's what he used to call you."
