The tree in the corner of the yard

Looking out her window, Gloria couldn’t help but let her gaze wander to the corner of the yard. Even at two pm in the middle of June, that corner of the yard remained dark and ominous. The rest was so well lit, the vivid green of her well manicured lawn, the reds, blues and yellows of her flowers in the gardens. The lush rusty reds of the maples stood out in stark contrast to the black shadow that was the spruce in the corner.
Jack had always hated that corner, he said “it just doesn’t feel right”. Twelve years in the grave now, Gloria often wondered if Jack now knew why he hated it so much. They had been married in June of 1980, Gloria a widow, Jack a former cook in the Navy. They had met at the local church during a spring picnic and after a whirlwind romance were married less than two months later.
Being a solitary sort Jack never questioned or bothered Gloria about her past, and she never volunteered much. Jack knew all he needed to know, and that was fine by her. She spent her days tending to the gardens (almost obsessively) and he spent his days in the workshop, crafting fine handmade furniture of all sorts.
Once, when he was really drunk, he had asked Gloria about her former husband and life. That was when she had told him about Darrell and the life they had sought to build. She never made mention of their failed attempts to start a family, nor their interest in helping unwed, pregnant teens seeking sanctuary and help.
How blissful Jack was in his ignorance, spending his days in the shop, his evenings in the parlour, listening to the radio because “TV was a waste of time”. Had he been bothered to pay more attention to his wife’s past or investigate her sewing room in the attic, things may have gone very differently for them. But Gloria was great at keeping secrets, and it was those secrets that kept Jack alive for as long as he had.
As far as he knew, he had enjoyed 13 loving years with his wife, and no one would be able to say otherwise….no one except Gloria that is. She alone knew that Jacks blissful fairy-tale marriage was a front, to keep prying eyes from seeing what dark horrors were right in front of their eyes.
You see, Gloria, as Jack had said quite often, was “one hell of a cook” and she had a penchant for always winning best in class for their local church’s chilli and stew cook offs. People raved over the beautiful mixture of spices combined with the absolute tenderness of the meat. Often she was asked “what’s your secret? I won’t tell” and “is it veal?” to which she would always reply “a good cook never gives up her secrets” and they would laugh and carry on. Little did they know…
When Darrell had been alive, he had some peculiar tastes, and he had been a very decisive and sometimes cruel man. When the pregnant teens would come knocking, he would always answer the door with a gentle smile on his face and a kind word on his lips. He would tell them that what they were there for was not evil, and that God would forgive them their choices.
Then after the work was done, sometimes it would take several days to as long as a week, the girls would go off again, convinced they had done the right thing and feeling as if they had a new lease on life. Darrell would wander all the way up to the attic, into his wife’s “sewing room” and open the large freezer with the false bottom and stare at his prize.
Within a day of the girls departing, Gloria would have on a large pot of stew (or chilli if that’s what Darrell wanted) and the smell of delicious spices and veal would fill the home. And once they had enjoyed their meal, the leftovers put in her garden compost or distributed to the neighbors, Gloria would take her bag of scraps out to the corner of the yard and bury the small bones and bits of cartilage around the base of the ever black spruce tree.
Jack would rave and the Church goers would rave and even the Priest would rave over how delicious her cooking was, and once she was even complimented by how vivid and beautiful her flowers were! Stem cell research in Glorias mind was the modern equivalent to what her and Darrell had begun all those years ago, and no one would ever know the secrets to her cooking, the quality of her gardens nor the darkness of the tree in the corner of the yard.