Page 1 of Relentless Oath
CHAPTER ONE
Mya
“Do you want to die, too?”
At first, I thought maybe the little voice I heard was just in my head. After all, the voice had said out loud what I was actually thinking—maybe death would be preferable to this…to this hell…to this pain.
The bitterness and grief I felt made the words that would have been my reply get stuck in my throat. I couldn’t say yes, but I also couldn’t say no. Most days I did feel like I wanted to die.
For the most part, I already had.
Turning toward the voice, I looked over at the little girl standing just shy of a foot away from me. Her little plaid dress matched the single ribbon that was placed on the top of her hair. She stared back up at me, her face somber and resigned as if she could see into my soul.
“I—no?I’m just sad.” Sad? Was that the best I could do? My husband was dead. I was more than sad.
I was broken.
She studied my face for a long while and then shrugged and turned away from me. “I’m sad, too. My dad is buried here. Is this where your dad is buried?”
Shaking my head, I stared at the headstone in front of me. Jason Stevens, 1996 – 2022.
I wasn’t going to tell a five-year-old my life story. I stuck to the main points. Sort of. “I actually don’t know where my dad is buried. I never knew my dad.”
She seemed uninterested in my reply. “That’s okay…he probably wasn’t a good dad, anyway. Mine sure wasn’t.”
Once again, I didn’t know what to say, but I was saved from continuing a depressing conversation with a child when someone, I assume her mother, quickly approached, took her by her hand, and whisked her away.
In the peace and quiet, my thoughts shifted back to my reality. A reality where my husband was dead, tragically taken from me way too soon. I bent down and placed the single rose I held in my hand across his grave.
“Hi, Jason. It’s me again.” I studied his tombstone, noticing that it was already starting to discolor. It had only been two years since he’d gone to work that morning and never came back home.
I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. If I tried hard enough, I could almost smell him, the scent of his aftershave used to make me wrinkle my nose in distaste, but what I would give to smell him again.
After he died, I spent weeks in bed snuggled up to my pillow, refusing to change my sheets because they smelled like him, not wanting to erase what little I had left of him.
In the middle of the night, I would wake up sure that he was there with his arm wrapped around my waist but I would turn over to cuddle him and find only empty space.
That’s when the tears would start, a flood of them that wouldn’t end until I was shaking and exhausted from crying so hard that my body ached.
I stood up, dusted my knee off, and whispered, “I’ll see you soon, hon.”
My phone rang and I ignored it. I needed this moment alone with my husband. It was our two-year anniversary, or rather, it should have been.
The day was cloudy and overcast, nothing like the day I had found out that my husband was being brought to the hospital after sustaining multiple gunshot wounds.
Life was cruel. At first, I thought he would make it. I prayed that he would, but ultimately one organ after another gave up on him. Between the bullets and a post-op infection, there wasn’t much the doctors could do for him.
But I didn’t give up. I held his hand the whole time and prayed to a god I didn’t believe in to save him. I wasted my breath.
I remember hearing screaming when he flatlined. It wasn’t until later that I realized those screams were my own.
I closed my eyes, trying to push at the memories that always surfaced every time I thought of my last moments with him. If I sniffed the air, I knew I would smell antiseptic and feel the chill of the cold hospital room on my arms.
I could still hear the humming of the machines that kept Jason suspended between life and death. And then, as if my mind were replaying it on a giant screen, it happened all over again—his last breath, right in front of my eyes.
I still remember the feeling of hands pulling at my arms, trying to drag me out of the room as I sobbed. My knees gave out from under me and the world faded into black.
I woke up feeling as if there was a hole in my soul. When the nurse came to check on me, to tell me the news, I already knew. Jason was gone, taken from me way too soon.
