He fell in love with her in a graveyard, strange as it may seem, the day before a Valentine’s Day which wold be lonely for them both. Over a mahogany casket strewn with roses wilting fast in the cold, his cast-iron eyes locked with hers; spring green and blood-shot in charcoal smudged hollows. His pulse quickened as his voice rose in prayer over sharp little bell clinks of ice shards shattering from tree-limbs onto the glassy frozen grass.
“For the lot of man and of beast is one lot; the one dies as well as the other. Both have the same life-breath, and man has no advantage over the beast; but all is vanity. Both go to the same place; both were made from the dust, and to the dust they both return…”
Disconcertingly pale, the glaive throw of loss had hit her hard enough to impose upon her delicate features an expression of winded disorientation, hardening her childlike countenance enough to be perceived as womanly beneath a halo of baby-fine blonde hair. Her hands were clasped in reverent affect of prayer; little pink-nailed fingers ungloved & interlaced as her breath billowed out in rebellious steaming wisps against the chill air of February in New York.
He furrowed his brow as he bowed his head, the lines of his face chiseling more deeply into his leathery skin. This is a woman grieving, he thought. Your thoughts are inappropriate. Alas, the acorn of temptation had fallen, and from it the sapling had sprung, lanky and tenacious from the impoverished soil of his heart. He fought to still the tremble in his throat and speak again.
“May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.” His voice was gruff and enervated as he drew the ceremony hastily to a close.
The crowd was small but slow to disperse. He too lingered despite the cold; beneath the stark oak tree which, in the summer it would be a leafy canopy giving solace from the sun. Just now it served poorly at blocking the icy tendrils of the wind whipping in from the West. Still, he lingered, watching as she shrugged off the comforts of her friends and family. So proud, too proud for such a fragile little thing, he decided. The urge to cup her heart shaped face in his hands and brush away the thin trickle of a tear rolling down her swollen cheek made him shudder with revulsion.

He needed a dark bar and a strong drink.

He arrived home many hours later, a little unsteady on his feet, to a house that was empty much as it was on any night. The sunset was rather bland above him, a muddy simmer of grey and deep violet, cloud-muted and unspectacular. As he stuck his key into the lock streetlights flashed to life up and down the street in unison. His skin was burning with windburn and the flush of alcohol, his shoulders sagged more than they had when he had left the house that morning.
How is it, he wondered as he crossed the threshold into his plain and unadorned living room, that the cold fingers of lust and guilt are so adroit as to always find a way to touch us at our weakest, when we lack the burning resolve to stave them off? He took a plain tumbler from the shelf beside his worn easy chair and filled it with amber liquid.
He was taken aback when the phone began to ring. He was a quiet man with a simple life and late evening phone calls were generally not a part of it. He clutched the tumbler in one hand, a thin rivulet of liquor running down his chin as he gaped at the unanswered telephone. Finally, he lifted the phone from the receiver, cradling it in the palm of his hand and raised it hesitantly to his ear.
“Father… I just needed to talk… to someone” her voice was hoarse, tear-ravaged yet still high and sweet as a cherub’s and he knew beyond reason that it was her. The girl from the graveyard.
Words of comfort died in his throat. He hung up the phone. This Valentine’s day would be lonely for them both.