We looked into the hole and wondered at the waxen decaying forms that lay below us.

“I knew her,” my brother Aaron said, then looked away.

My eyes could stay away from the couple in their formal clothing, I estimated from the 1880’s, deep under the house in simple wooden boxes.

This was no cemetery. They were not the usual dead. I looked at the woman and a hint of recognition swept over me.

My niece Laurel stood next to me. “Did my dad date her?”

“He was in love with her,” I said in a half whisper.

“Could we bring them back?”

“Maybe.”

“Would we want to?”

“Probably not.”

I looked over to where Aaron was talking to the Vampire Hunter who’d found the coffins. My high power attorney brother is also a Vampire, as all of us in my family are. Aaron is often called upon in these cases to give advice on what to do. This time he said to seal them up and let them rest.

Everyone thought she’d gone off to Europe with her lover. Aaron was heartbroken that she’d left him, almost on the alter of marriage. He’d since found the real love of his proverbial undead life in my sister-in-law Verity and had two wonderful children. Yet, those memories and feelings, no matter how old, tend to linger on especially when tinged with betrayal and now what looked to be tragedy.

Aaron has always been the most no nonsense and drama free of my four brothers. He is the one who keeps things in order. He is the one who lives by facts and keeps emotions for the bedroom and his children. Things like this don’t happen to him.

Laurel took his arm and put her head on his shoulder. He looked at me and with a quiet smile said, “I’m fine Jewels. I’m ok.”

And so he was.

~ Juliette aka Vampire Maman