Once we reached the car. We noticed another car pulling up into the parking lot. Once the other car was parked. The door opened and a woman with flaming red hair stepped out from the driver's side. And from the other side, a girl around my age did as well. The women with flaming red hair was the first to speak.

“Hello there Kayla and Madeline, it so good to see you two lovelies again.” She women with flaming red hair said as she walked over and wrapped Kayla and then me into a tight hug. Once she was done, she stepped back and smiled as she called the girl over to her side. “Come on Linda, there somebody I want you to meet.”

The girl snuffled to the flaming red hair women, who quickly wrapped her arm around her shoulder. The girl kept her eyes glued to the frost covered ground. Slowly she lifted them up and I noticed she seemed to have the deepest, baby blue eyes I’ve ever seen. In a way, her eyes seemed to match her jet-black hair and her hourglass figure.

“Hello.” She said at last as she shifted her head back down to the ground.

My sister Kayla was the first one to speak And I’m glad for it, see, Linda had made a name for herself in and around Benton. Now, most of this information came to me second hand through Lily and my good friend Jamie, but it seems that Linda, yes the girl standing in front of me had a dozen or so nasty rumors flying around her. One rumor said she attacked a girl and put her in a hospital for a few days, and another, one that made my blood turn cold said she had even worked on getting the whole football team to rape another girl.

But watching her, her head bowed down, her soft voice politely responding to each question that Kayla asked, made me question those rumors. I closed my head and pushed those thoughts away, there was enough negative energy floating around.. And dwelling on such rumors would only increase the amount of negative energy. And that’s the last thing my life needed.

“Madeline?” A voice said the voice caused me to snap out of my daze. The voice belonged to the red-haired women who was standing next to Linda. After a few seconds, I remembered the woman's name, Isabella. Or Aunt Isabella, silently I scolded myself for being slow to pick that name up. She was after all my aunt and the wife to William, my uncle who was helping with the legal matters of my transformation.

“Yes, ma’am?” I said.

“Would you do me a favor please?” Isabella asked as she opened the trunk of the car and pulled out two bundles of flowers. She handed one bundle of flowers to Linda and the other to me.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said reaching out and taking the offered bundle of flowers. Of course, they were not real flowers. But plastic ones. I can’t name all the types, but I could tell by the weight of the bundle there must have been a good twelve or fourteen all tied together.

“Could you please go with Linda and lay these flowers at your mothers grave. Your sister and I have some business we need to talk about.” She said in a motherly tone of voice. I folded the flowers to my chest and nodded my head. I shifted my gaze around and noticed Linda had taken her own bundle of flowers too.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said smiling softly as I shifted my gaze toward Linda. Who was still peering down at the ground?

“We’ll come on,” I said as I started to walk back into the row of graves. Linda followed like a lost little puppy and upon the wind, I could catch bits and pieces of the conversation the two where having.

“Really darling, William and I would love to have you and Madeline come over for Christmas. We have plenty of extra room in that old house. And the formal dining room can sit at least a baker's dozen people.” I could hear Isabella telling my sister. Her voice was soothing, gentle if not a tad bit commanding.

“I don’t know.. The roads are rough between Vicksburg and Benton. And I don’t like traveling at night. There so many hairpin curves too between Benton and Vicksburg. Unless one drives to from Benton to Yazoo City then to Vicksburg.” Kayla said in a thinking tone of voice.

“The train darling, the train. We still have that old wooden station on the property, The Yazoo-Valley Railroad still owns that section of railroad. Catch the morning express in Benton and by midmorning, you’ll be having brunch with us.” Isabella said.

“Sounds good, but what about you know.. Madeline’s condition..” Kayla asked.

“Darling, there nothing to worry about there. Your family and family sticks together.” Isabella responded.

I turned toward Linda once we were out of view.

“So any idea what all that’s about,” I said pointing with my thumb over my shoulder. I was pointing toward the general direction where Kayla and Isabella were sitting and chatting.

“Aunt Isabella’s putting on a big Christmas dinner. She wanting everybody to come up a few days ahead of time, something about having a really big sleep-over.” Her tone of voice was meek and mild. She looked down at the ground again and took a deep breath.

“Hey, I’ll like to say I’m sorry Madeline, Back when you still being Mark. I was really rude to you. I mean, like really meant to you and stuff.” As she spoke, she gathered the flowers and pressed them to her chest and sighed. “I said a lot of stuff, stuff that I should have not said I guess. And I did a lot of things, things I think I should not have done.”

I sighed and hung my head down. I had been hoping to avoid talking about that. Since I became Madeline I had learned to stand up for self a lot more than I had when I was being Mark. Part of me wanted to reach over and bite the girls head off, another part of me wanted to reach over and punch her.. I had been fighting that urge ever since I remembered who this little witch was.

“You were a little bitch,” I said in a matter of fact tone of voice. “A very mean and cruel bitch.” I tried to hide the anger in my voice but failed to. I turned around and fixed Linda with a look.

Linda flinched and drew back. Her eyes started to mist and she sniffled as she started to cuddle the flowers.

“Last time we talked, you shoved me into the bathroom and flushed my head down the toilet over and over again. All the while calling me a ‘Sissy’ a ‘Faggot’ and the cherry on the sundae ‘Queer’. Kind of hard to forget that. Kind of hard to forgive that you know.” I said in an honest tone of voice.

At this point she paused and tears started rolled down her eyes. Her chest started to heave up and down as she used the sleeves of her sweater to blot away some of the tears that were running down her cheeks.

“I know, that was really mean of me.” She said through her voice thick with tears.

I stopped, turned around and peered toward Linda. I took a deep breath and walked up to her, gently I placed my arm on her shoulder and then, reaching down into my pocket, I pulled out a few tissues, I’m always caring tissues around in my pocket. They come in handy and have all kinds of uses, they're good for cleaning away make-up stains, for removing lipstick stains and in this case, drying the tears of a clearly emotionally damaged girl.

“Linda. We can’t change the past. But we can learn from it. And if it means anything, I forgive you for being an utter bitch to me back then. I know there some really bad rumors going around about you, and I know those rumors caused you to leave Benton Academy and move to Vicksburg. But honestly, that does not concern me.” I told her as I reached down and wrapped my hands around her hands. “Now, lets put these flowers on the grave and get home.

Linda nodded her head and dried her eyes. I smiled and then blinked, behind Linda, I saw her again, the gray and white sector form of my late mother. This time, she appeared more solid and I noticed that chains, heavy iron ones were cuffed to her wrist and around her ankles too, the ones on her ankles were attached to heavy iron balls. She tried to lift her arms, but the chains weighed her down.

I blinked and blinked again. Linda was looking at me oddly, but I knew what I was seeing, my mother was trapped in purgatory. The chains, those wrapped around her where the sins she had committed in life, the sin of abounding a child must have been a great one for as I peered down at the balls, I saw my name ‘Madeline’ and on the other I saw ‘Kayla’ engraved on the two heavy cannon-ball size balls of iron.

“I’m so. Proud of you… you’ve become such a wonderful young women..” I heard my mom whisper before she vanished again. I shook my head and the ghost had vanished yet again. This time leaving me with a more profound sense of sadness than before.

“Hey, Madeline?” A voice echoed. “Are you okay?” I noticed a hand being waved in front of me. “Cause you look like you just saw a ghost or something. Come on snap out of it girl, you’re scaring me here.”

I slowly focused my eyes on Linda, taking a deep breath I nodded my head.

“I think I just did..” I felt my voice trailing. “Come on, let's get this over with.:”

And with that, we resumed our hike toward the grave.