Purple was Lucerne’s favorite color.  The deep, blue-tinged color reminded her of the blueberry pancakes that Roger made her on their first anniversary, going on ten years now.  He never made them for his wife again, instead she made them for him nearly every week. But now the color reminds her of Roger’s frozen skin, almost black at his fingertips and the red staining his palms.  

    The red staining his palms.

    January 22, 1957.

    The day Roger was found in the McArthur Preserve.

    Roger has been dead for eight months now.  Thirty four weeks. Two hundred thirty eight days.  Five thousand, seven hundred twelve hours. Found just twelve days past Tommy’s fourth birthday party.  He gave his son a new big wheel, bright blue wheels and a red seat with yellow ribbons on the handlebars.  

    Roger was found dead in the forest just past where Circle Avenue and the train station met.  Cause of death, unknown, with his clouded eyes and his nearly liquefied innards, seeping out of the giant hole in his chest.  

    It’s also been exactly two months since little Tommy found the growing collection of empty liquor bottles shoved in the corner of the shed where Mommy kept her gardening tools.  

    Lucerne laid in her oversized bed, restless.  The aubergine silk sheets tugged at her legs as if they were wanting her to stand up and go to the window in her bathroom.  She gave in, drudging along and fumbling for the silver lighter that Roger always kept on his dresser when he was home. She didn’t even bother turning on the overhead light; she knew exactly where she kept her stash of cigarettes.  There was nothing that Roger loved more than coming home and filling his lungs with their radioactive smoke. She never smoked before Roger died. Maybe that’s all she really inherited after he died: his love, not of her, but of something so deadly.  Now she stood here, sending the lilac ashes out the open window. She could just make out the dark outlines of the forest over the rows of houses. That forest was never good to her. It terrified her the second she laid eyes on it. Thinking back, it was like it warned her not to stay.  It was Roger that insisted they stay for Tommy’s sake. That forest was never good to her, she always knew that it would come for her. And now it had.

    Tommy sat up in his bed, clutching his favorite stuffed animal.  “Daddy,” he whispered into his empty room, “Daddy are you here again?”  When he heard only darkness, he decided to slip on his slippers and check outside, even if he had to sneak past his mother’s room.  As he made down the carpeted hallway, he could hear Lucerne’s wailing and smelled the toxic scent of familiar cigarettes. He knew that his mother smoked, no matter how much she tried to hide them.  He wrestled in his mind if he should approach her and wrap his arms around her, or go down to see if Daddy visited again. Instead, he moused his way down stairs to the kitchen and stopped just before the door.  The glisten of the maroon cap caught his eye, it was the drink his father had after dinner every night. He didn’t know that Mommy liked it too. He pushed the yellow curtains to the side, viewing the wisteria tinted yard.  Tommy had to strain his eyes to make out his shadow, the shadow of his father crouching down to the left of the nine month old dog house.

    No one knew how Roger died, or what could even cause such a ghastly state like his.  Sergeant Stein concluded that it had to be a gunshot wound to the chest, and his inevitable death quickened by frostbite.  A hunting accident gone wrong, he told Lucerne a week after her husband was found. Lucerne wailed, moaning through her tears that her dear Roger didn’t hunt, that hunting was prohibited in the forest until the spring thaw.  Sergeant Stein didn’t believe what he had told the widow either: there were no shells found anywhere near the body, no poison or chemicals that could have liquidated his guts like that. The mortician couldn’t even begin to describe what had happened, or how to mend the body for the open casket funeral that the family insisted on.  Stein was a young cop, approaching his fifth year of graduating from the police academy down state. The mysterious death of Roger Johnson was one of his first solo murder cases, and his first case where the victim was so close to his own age. Only three years older, thirty-five. Every so often, he would pull out the case file from the record room and review his notes and the photographs.  It was still an open case since they never did find the killer, or anything really, but no one in the station really bothered to take a gander at it. Almost every cop in town had known Roger except Stein, since Stein had grown up in Madison rather than way upstate Wisconsin. They had known Roger as the studious football player who could’ve gone all the way, but none of them had really known him as a friend.  Maybe that was why Stein was put on that case, because he had no connection. Now he sat at his desk, later than normal and after everyone had left. He flipped open the case file, thinking that maybe tonight he would find something new. Something that would take him from being the runt of the force, maybe even a detective soon. One day, but now they were all dreams. The young cop took a sip of his bland coffee in hopes to wake up to reality again.

    Lucerne didn’t hear the scream.  

    Even most of the dead didn’t wake up from it.

    October 7, 1957.  11:30 p.m.

    Laurie Marks sat in her small apartment.  Too small for her to be happy with, but it was all she could afford on her secretary salary.  Her tears had removed most of her makeup already, and she wiped off the rest with a wet green towel.  She spent the day in the forest, sitting just a few feet away from the tree where Roger’s lifeless body was propped up so long ago.  Every month she had gone out to the same spot with one of her books, one of Roger’s books, and would read out loud, just like before.  She never wanted to go this far, she knew of Lucerne, she loved Tommy like a little brother too. At first she only did it because she needed someone to help her get back into school, and she was willing to do anything.  But when she got an acceptance letter in her mailbox, Roger kept pushing it. She never wanted to go this far. She looked back at her book, thoughts of destroying it filled her mind. Destroying it just to get rid of his cologne that she had memorized each time he got a little closer.  Was compromising everything, ruining everything, really worth it? Laurie Marks sat in her small apartment, the letter to her parents shaking in her hands. Explaining everything, how she was leaving and never coming back.  

    She never got to mail it.  She never got to leave Roger behind like she wanted to.

    She didn’t even hear the scream coming from her own lips.

    October 8, 1957.  

    Another body found, same disgusting state as Roger.  The body of a young secretary. From the doctor’s office next to Roger’s work.  Her body was found only two blocks away from the two story house of Lucerne and Tommy Johnson, the one with the morning glories still climbing up their white fence.

    Another body, another trip to the Johnson household.  Stein pulled up in his black and white car and sighed before taking a sip of slightly better coffee than what he had last night.  As he walked up the sidewalk, he saw the weeds. Their purple petals were still facing up towards the sky. It was too early for a murder, especially in the middle of nowhere.

    Roger had talked about Laurie Marks before.  All he had mentioned to his family that she had applied to his firm before the doctor’s office, not the fact that they went to lunch every Friday.  Lunch at Lucerne’s favorite restaurant, on Circle Avenue.    

    Lucerne wailed again, this time she faked it a little.  She knew what her husband had done with the young woman on Fridays at 12:30; she knew that she couldn’t say that she was happy not to hear that blonde-tinged and green-eyed name again.  

    Stein stood at the door and watched Lucerne cry.  He couldn’t tell who she was crying for, and it seemed like she wanted to keep it that way.

    Tommy overheard the police officer tell his mother that another person was dead.  Miss Laurie, the blonde one who sometimes gave him candy when Daddy took him to work.  She always made a point to visit Tommy whenever Roger brought him, even though she worked next door.  Sometimes he wished that he could’ve had a sister, so she could grow up like Miss Laurie.

   He remembered crying over his father, but it was all a blur.  At some point, his mother cried enough for both of them. He cried now, silently, as he was supposed to be playing with his toys.  Both the mother and the son cried now, but for once, Tommy learned to cry for himself.

    He knew what killed Miss Laurie, he heard her scream.  He knew it was Daddy, but it wasn’t really him. When Daddy first came back, he was the same. 

    Almost.  

    He still wore the suit they buried him in, but he didn’t have on the deep jelly colored tie anymore.  Tommy picked that one out from the Sears and Roebuck catalog for Christmas. He picked it out again when Lucerne had to send in the clothes for Roger to be buried in.  Maybe Daddy had to tear it up into tiny pieces to drop behind him so he didn’t get lost in the forest, just like Hansel and Gretel in the one story book that Mommy gifted him on his birthday.  Just days before his father was found dead.  

And now Daddy was back, wearing  the same suit. But now the black of his pants and jacket were scuffed gray rather than black, and his white shirt stained, like cherry Kool-Aid that he and Tommy would make when it was still warm out.  

    But now that suit was all that remained the same, even without the deep, blue-tinged tie that reminded Lucerne of blueberry pancakes.