The house was dark except for the sudden bright flashes of light that shone through the windows every couple of seconds. It was nighttime and there was a terrible storm outside. Dark gray clouds controlled the sky above, casting shadows across miles and miles of land. White crooked streaks of lightning were the flashlight for outside surroundings. There was rain beating down on the ground, bouncing leaves up and down and creating large puddles here and there. Mr. Aarons and his family were home and watching the lightning from their window as it struck. Although Mr. Aarons was enjoying watching the lightning and the expressions on his children’s faces as another lightning bolt struck, he was a little worried.
The rain was coming down fast and hard and the area his house sat was known to flood during terrible storms. He didn’t feel like dealing with the levels of water after the week he just had. Mr. Aarons, at forty-five years old, had just found out from his parents that he was adopted. To make matters worse, no one could find his real parents. He had hired an investigator to search for his parents, but there was no news yet. All he knew of his real parents was that their names were Abby and Roger Adams, which he had found out from his adoptive parents. On top of this devastating news, his wife’s friend of 20 years had just died from pancreatic cancer. The funeral was in the next few days. His troubling thoughts were dashed when a lightning bolt’s flash illuminated the sky and the face’s watching, and the crack of thunder and his children’s excited cry settled his wandering mind.
“Dad, that lightning bolt was really close.”
“It is alright Johnny, lightning never strikes the same place twice.”
As soon as Mr. Aarons finished those words, another lightning bolt struck in what appeared to be the same exact spot as the one before it. The kids looked up at their father in confusion, amusement, and a little bit of fright. Even Mr. Aarons noticed that the lightning seemed to have struck in the same exact spot too.
Seeing his children’s worried faces made him feel prompted to say, “Don’t worry, lightning always appears to be closer than it actually is.”
A few days had passed and it was the day of the funeral. Mr. Aarons was driving on the highway to the cemetery where the funeral was being held, which wasn’t too far from his home. He was feeling down, not only because of the death of a friend, but because there was no new developments over his real parents and where they were located. It had only been a week, but he was still very anxious. He was born at Loving Hands Hospital, which was located several miles west of his home. He was hoping his mother and father still lived in the area surrounding.
The Aarons family arrived at the cemetery in solemn moods. They walked amongst all the desolate gravestones, blackened with age. Some were cracked at the corners from rot, some were covered with the dead stretched out overgrowth from a nearby tree or shrub, and some had the remains of withered flowers set by some visiting nostalgic, melancholy family member or friend. Rows and rows of tombstones sat where the Aarons family’s feet walked; each gravestone separated only by a foot or two. Each had a different design, or a different saying on each; a preservation of the way a person was and how he or she will forever be remembered.
As the family was making their way towards the ceremony, Mr. Aarons saw two tombstones that had a different and strange appearance from the other gravestones in the row. He stopped walking and stood in front of the markers. The tombstones sat side by side, with an inch apart between them. Both tombstones had a deep crack right down the middle that stretched all the way down to their end. The cracks had created two parts of a whole. Mr. Aarons was shocked by the deep crack in the tombstones and wondered how such a deep crack could have occurred. But then, he was shocked by something else.
The names on the tombstones had read: ABIGAIL MARY ADAMS and ROGER FRANK ADAMS.
Mr. Aarons couldn’t believe his eyes.
Meanwhile, the gravedigger was on the grounds just a few yards away from Mr. Aarons. He saw the look of shock on his face and he decided to venture over, assuming he had seen the prominent deep cuts on the stones and was wondering about their occurrence.
“I see you have noticed the cracks in the tombstones. Lightning struck the tombstones only a few seconds apart from another during that terrible storm a few days ago. Strangest thing I ever seen, thought lightning didn’t strike the same spot twice.” With that, the man walked away and finished with his duties.
It was later confirmed that the two graves were his real parents. Now that Mr. Aarons knew the permanent residence of his mother and father, he decided to visit often like he would if they were alive. He had the tombstones fixed; he felt that maybe that was kind of like a favor equivalent to fixing a leaky roof or a broken window.