CHRISTMAS, 2015

Boone Lamoine knelt before his father’s icy grave and wept. Huge, shimmering tears, as if in a parting gesture of consolation, warmed his frosted cheeks before falling to be frozen in the snow. He pulled his scarf tightly about him as his long, dark hair whipped violently in the howling wind. The snow swirled madly around him, and for a few minutes all was white; the world had disappeared just as surely as if he had been struck blind. A deeply religious man, the story of Paul on the road to Damascus flitted through his mind.
“Boone!” came a voice barely discernible above the ferocious wind, “C’mon, let’s go!” The last place Cindi, Boone’s wife, wanted to spend Christmas Day was in a fucking cemetery. She was already a little pissed for having to go with him to the church for the Christmas program, and she probably wouldn’t have if little Celeste wasn’t going to sing a solo–Cindi was a hard-core atheist. As a young child, she’d had religion crammed down her throat, both figuratively and physically, one in the pews and the other in the church basement; it had left a bad taste in her mouth. Oddly enough, the thought that her own daughter may be going through the same thing never entered her mind. “Celeste will kill us if we’re late!”