Ballistic Trauma: Cause of death

"I've been calling you, Amy." He sounded antagonized. He also sounded pleading and relieved. "I came back to my apartment and you had vanished. All your things were gone. That was six months ago. And I've called you every day. I've left messages."

She sat on top of the wooden park table with her legs crossed Indian-style, staring out across the wide grassy range in front of her.

"I don't want to make you angry. God knows I hope it wasn't something I did. I thought we were good."

She wasn't facing him so he didn't see the small smile that lifted one side of her mouth, the vanished back into the grimace that was her permanent expression.

"Amy?" His voice sounded closer.

"Don't come near me."

There was a long silence. She couldn't see him but she knew she'd murdered him a little bit more with those words; the first words she'd spoken to him in six months.

"...okay Amy." Another long pause. "Listen Amy, you know I would do anything for you, anything in the world. And if...if I'm making you angry by being here...if you are uncomfortable...then...I'll go...Amy."

He was still the same gentleman she'd fallen in love with. He was still accommodating and considerate even in this moment, at the risk of never seeing her again; loosing the woman that disappeared from his life without giving notice or reason.

"How did you find me?" she asked, choosing not to address his last statement.

"I looked everywhere. Everywhere you were known to have spent time. I And I had a thought yesterday about that little place you told me bought a few years back, but never mentioned again. And I was on a plane this morning. I drove around, and when I didn't see your car in any of the neighborhoods, I just sat in my car at the park. You walked by about an hour later."

He always listened to her. He always remembered what she had said. She had appreciated that the most about him.

"You've wasted your time," she said flatly. "I don't want to be with you anymore."

The silence said she sliced into him again, probably rupturing a lung.

"Okay...okay then."

There was long silence then. Amy stared across the grass into the woodsy part of the park.

"I just wanted you to know," his voice cracked, he coughed over his cry, "that I love you. I still love you."

She did not respond. The wind blew a chunk of her uncombed hair across her face. She brushed it back and watched the school of crows fly out of the park.