A Grave Goodbye: a sneak peek beneath the black oak

Some ghosts wear shadows and chilly air.
Others wear the memory of someone you loved more than life itself.

In Beneath the Black Oak, grief doesn’t come gently — it lingers, whispers, and takes root deep in the bloodline of the Lockwood family. A family that has always been part of Bridgewater, Alabama’s story, woven into the very warp and weft of the tapestry.

But it’s not only heritage that ties them to this place —
It’s not even the truth of what happened on that one awful day.

It’s the dark secret that lies buried beneath moss and rot, at the threshold of sorrow and anger. A place known only to the two women who sealed that grave under a dark moon.

I won’t tell you those secrets here.
But I will tell you where it begins —
with a daughter standing at her father’s grave,
the weight of his life heavy on her shoulders,
the salt in her tears.

⸻

Evelyn Lockwood felt the full weight of grief’s paradox as she stood alone, shivering in the all-but-forgotten little graveyard, the earth blanketed in moldering leaves and brittle acorns that cracked underfoot. The smell of dank forest compost fought hard against her Chanel No. 5, as if nature itself were saying she no longer belonged here.

She looked down at the three snowdrop bulbs clutched in her gloved hands, a tear escaping to splash on one of them. Her father’s favorite flower.

A breeze stirred—not enough to moved her perfectly bobbed hair, but it felt like someone’s fingers had traced over a single raven strand. She shivered — but not from the cold. It was the memory of that one moment that chilled her bones again and again.

She had replayed the scene in her mind for years, and it always seemed to move in slow motion: His lanky, denim-clad frame walking down the dirt road with a sack of collards tucked under one arm and his green lunch pail in the other. His coal-black hair, so stark against the bluest morning sky, as he walked toward the sunrise and off to work at the foundry.

His face — she could barely remember that anymore. But the haunting tune of his whistle as he walked away would stay with her always, that song he always sang: "Swing low, sweet chariot..."

Evelyn never saw her father again.