Seasons

Seasons

by Kimberley A. Cone

Jennica Niles stood at her clothesline taking in the refreshing early spring air. She appreciated the hint of warmth as a long cold and for her, an extremely emotional winter had just come to an end. The sights and sounds of the neighborhood caught her attention this particular night. She enjoyed the tweet of the robins and the buzzing of the traffic of the nearby highway. The distinct sound of the ice cream truck caught her off guard, however. She thought it still too cold to enjoy ice cream.

Jenni looked forward to later in the spring when she could enjoy the smell of her neighbor’s freshly budded lilacs. They reminded her of the two lilac bushes in her childhood yard and her grandparents’ row of them across the street. A tear came to her eyes remembering that heavenly scent of her treasured past.

She also missed the warm summer country breeze carrying the smell of freshly mowed grass and the oil from the tar road that ran in front her Grandma Price’s white farmhouse.  She found her grandmother's house and the over twenty acres around it to be so peaceful. She loved just taking in the beauty and thinking about life.  

What she did not like was walking by the hornet's nest above the barn door. She got stung quite frequently as a child. Even as an adult, one day just watching her husband Adam swing at a beehive behind their garage, a pesky bee flew across the yard straight into Jenni's face. She found it both comical and frustrating as her sting throbbed with pain.

Fall brought back memories more painful than any bee sting, any physical pain for that matter. The sting of her mother’s death hit her like a knife had stabbed her too. Jenni could not fathom why anyone would want to hurt her dear precious Mother. Fayette Hampton Price had no enemies that Jenni knew about. However, one night about after an especially fun weekly family game night in Mom’s living room, Jenni received a phone call from her sister.

“Jenni, come back quickly!  Someone just broke into Mom’s house and stabbed her!”

“Is she…” Jenni could not bear to finish her sentence.

“Yes, she’s….dead!”  both ladies started to scream in agony.

Thankfully detectives arrested Fayette’s newest neighbor Conwell Perry quickly after finding a bloody knife in his bushes just an hour after the murder.

A few seasons went by before Conny’s trial started, but it only took two hours for the jury to find him guilty. It happened on the coldest day of winter, which Jenni found appropriate. Relief came over her that justice had been served. She could look forward to another spring and beyond knowing her mother’s killer would be behind bars for the rest of his life.