Ryder’s eyes dropped to my mouth over and over again, making my heart race and my face burn. “Not like this,” he whispered, but I could see the hesitation. I could see his desire.
I closed the space between us, and he did not move away. “You asked what you could do, and this is what I need.”
I pressed my lips against his and for one brief moment, I flew. I flew high above the pain and the torment, the guilt and the anguish of loss and grief. With his lips on mine I could be anyone, do anything. With him, I was invincible.
Strong arms pressed me back again, breaking my connection to his power.
“No, Lindy, this isn’t right. I can’t do this for you. I won’t be your distraction.”
I tried to meet his lips again, but he pulled back with resolve. The pain returned and crippled me once more.
“I don’t understand. Isn’t this what you’ve been chasing all along?” My broken body collapsed against the corner of the couch and my arms crossed defensively over my chest. I was rejected, and it cut into wounds that were not yet healed.
“I want you to want me. I don’t want you to use me to forget.” His eyes were pleading as he continued, “Please understand, if we have a relationship, I want it to be based on something real, not an escape route from your pain. I really like you, and I don’t want to mess this up.”
He glanced at his watch and groaned. “I have to go. I have work in the morning, but I’ll call you tomorrow night to check in.”
The words didn’t register at first. Work. What work? Then it dawned on me with horrible clarity.
“You can’t,” I commanded as he slipped his leather jacket over his shoulders. “You can’t go back there.”
“We don’t have any other choice at this point, Lindy. They’re letting me in on a big project. It’s all happening after hours. This is it. This is what we need.”
I pulled myself from the couch and took his hand before he could leave. “It’s too dangerous. You can’t do this. I can’t be responsible for—”
The tears cut me off before I could finish. “We have to let this go. They won. We lost. The cost is too high any other way.”
Ryder pulled my hand from his then lifted it to his lips and kissed it softly. “I have to do this now more than ever. Stella deserves justice, and I want to help you get it.”
On impulse he pressed his lips to my forehead and whispered, “I’ll call you tomorrow. Try to get some sleep, Huckleberry.”
Then he was gone. Because of Stella, I wondered if it was the last time I would see him. Because of Stella, I wondered if I had said everything I wanted to say.
**********
True to his word, he did call. It was short and cryptic though. Since he was in his father’s house, I understood why. “I saw something today that was interesting, but I can’t talk right now.”
I had spent the entire day with Uncle Shane making funeral plans. We would dress Stella’s body for burial in the morning. I could feel the funeral looming, and I was not sure how much more I could bear.
“When will you come back?”
“In three days, I think. It depends on the workload.”
I did the math. It was the day after the funeral. The thought devastated me. I had no friends, no one to speak of other than my aunt and uncle, and Ryder would be working the case that had gotten Stella killed. I did not need to burden him. It was better that he kept his distance.
“Lindsey, are you there?”
He used my alias, and I knew his father was listening. “I’m here.”
“I’ll see you soon, okay?”
I said goodbye, hung up the phone, and collapsed back into the grief that had swallowed me whole.
Chapter 19
I had never seen a dead body before. Well, none that I had known personally. I had seen murder scenes, horrific acts of violence, but I had always been able to separate myself from the emotions. They were strangers, people that had met true evil and had lost. My emotions would not help them. It was my quick eye, my attention to detail that the corpses needed to avenge their death, to find justice and to stop the evil from ever stealing innocence again.
As I stood in the room, staring at my Aunt Stella’s body buried beneath a clean white sheet, I doubted my strength to continue. It was different when it was someone I knew. Uncle Shane was nearby, and yet I could not bring myself to look at him. I knew he had a white dress in his hands; we had picked it the night before. It had been one of Stella’s favorites, all white with tiny purple flowers embroidered on the bodice. Last night it had felt only natural to accompany Shane and give him the strength he needed, but as the reality of the moment loomed over me, I wondered where I would find strength to give him.
The funeral home had done beautiful work. Stella’s cheeks were rosy, a far cry from the pale woman I had crouched over on the lawn in front of her house. Her skin was the wrong shade. Far too tan but still lovely. I waited. I waited for her eyes to open and for a silly laugh that would tell me it was all a joke, a big prank to end all pranks. But she did not move, and it left me standing near her body frozen in time.
“I don’t know what to do,” Uncle Shane finally admitted. He had wanted this. When the funeral director discussed the arrangements, dressing her ourselves was one detail that Uncle Shane had been adamant on, but now he wavered just like I did. He was the strongest man I knew. If he could not do it, how could someone as weak as I was manage?
“Maybe we should have the professionals do it,” he suggested
We had both seen so much worse than this and yet lacked the gumption to follow through. It was not the body that weakened us. It was Stella. It was admitting she was gone. But she was. She was stolen from us, and that was a fact that we would both have to face.
“We can do this,” I whispered with very little resolve, but those words moved us both into action, and the work began.
It was unlike anything I had ever done, a last tribute to the aunt I had loved as if she were my mother. My love for her helped me to slip the dress over her delicate skin as Uncle Shane took the weight of her body. My hands shook, and my lip quivered as the tears dropped onto the white chiffon of her dress. But I could feel a quiet peace, like a nod from Stella that she approved. My simple gasps for air between sobs shattered the stillness. It was not physically nor emotionally easy work to cover her flesh in the simplicity of that dress.
I pressed a hair comb that had belonged to her mother into her hair. The silver gleamed against the red curls she had forged from a box, though she never admitted it. As I saw the tiny bits of dark brown outgrowth at her skull, I felt an overwhelming urge to dye it one last time. But that time had passed, and the natural growth would have to remain in death.
Uncle Shane handed me a bottle of perfume. “It was her favorite,” he managed before he had to turn away and hide the tears.
Unsure of how to proceed, I sprayed a small amount on my own wrist and then dabbed my wet skin against the loose muscles of her neck, just like she had taught me. The room smelled like her again, roses, violets, and just the slightest brightening of ginger. I clasped her frail hand in mine, struck for the first time by how old she looked. As I spritzed one wrist and then the other, I remembered the care she had taken to control the disappearance of her youth. In death she had relinquished that control, and somehow that saddened me even more.
We paused for a moment when the work was completed, both silently grateful we had been able to perform one last service for a woman we had loved deeply. I watched her hands carefully, waiting for a twitch or the slightest movement. But there was nothing.
As Uncle Shane bent to kiss his wife one last time, I lost control. My knees buckled, and I collapsed into the stiff carpet. I barely heard his whisper through his own choked voice.
“Until we meet again, my beautiful Stella Belle.”
I felt his arms lift me from the ground, my own strength gone, replaced by the weakness I was accustomed to. I could not manage a goodbye, just one la
st look over my shoulder and her scent to follow me from the room.
Uncle Shane pulled the door closed with finality, as if he could lock all the pain and hurt inside that room. But he couldn’t. I could feel it seeping out the cracks beneath the door, the spaces between the hinges, dripping and oozing all around us until it clamped down and refused to let go.
My uncle’s grip on my arm tightened until it was painful. I was about to reprimand him when I saw the object of his rage. Joel Edwards stood talking to the funeral director near the entrance. Uncle Shane then released my arm with such force that I fell back against the door.
“Stay here,” he snarled over his shoulder.
I was not willing to stand back and leave him to his own devices, but I was not as quick as he was either. My grief slowed my reaction time, and I did not make it before the storm exploded.
“Shane,” Joel began as if they were old friends, as if he had had no part in Stella’s death. “I was just telling the director that I was planning on officiating at—”
Uncle Shane’s fist collided with Joel’s face, and the preacher slammed into the wall behind him. Shane recoiled to throw a second punch, but I wedged myself between the two men, placing my body in the path of his fist.
“Stop!” I commanded, my voice ragged and cracking from days of crying.
“Shane, I can’t believe you would—” Joel started.
“Shut up!” I yelled at him. I wanted to knock his teeth out myself, but prudence won. I would do me no good if I were charged with assault. My voice remained low and steady as I glared at him, still plastered against the wall that he had collided with. “If you think you are welcome within 50 feet of my aunt’s grave, you are sincerely deranged.”
Before he could say another word, I strong-armed Uncle Shane from the room and out to the parking lot. It was raining. Of course it was raining. But the cool water felt good against my hot skin. I longed to be back in Ryder’s arms, back in the comfort he had given me when I had nothing left within me. He was not around, and I had to be strong enough for my uncle and me.
“You should have let me hit him again,” Uncle Shane seethed as he opened his car door.
“And when he pressed charges…”
He turned away from me. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
The drive to his house was quiet. I knew my parents would be there, and yet I did not feel excited. I had not seen them since before I found out the truth about my memories and my sister. I was not sure how I should act.
As my mother hugged me, I felt like I was floating above myself, a spirit just like Stella, watching and observing but not interacting with the living. My father slugged my arm a little too hard, just like he always did, and told stupid jokes to try to cheer me up. It was Eleanor’s job to laugh at those, not mine. I managed a smile but nothing more. I was sure they just chalked it up to Stella’s passing.
None of my cousins planned to attend the funeral. They were Shane’s kids, not Stella’s. With Eleanor stuck at school working on her bachelor’s, I was the youngest mourner. I could hear my parents and Uncle Shane in the next room discussing plans, making decisions about his next steps and what he would do with Stella’s things and the house.
“It’ll sell quickly,” my dad said. “And for a decent price. I think you’ll be happy to be around family again.”
“I think that is what I need right now,” Uncle Shane agreed. I could hear the rattle of ice cubes in his glass. The scotch was missing from the shelf.
I held the needlepoint pillow in my hands. It was the only hobby that Stella allowed herself that might label her as old. The tiny pink flowers were little knots, little knots tied by the dainty hands of my favorite aunt.
“You can stay with us for a little while. With the girls gone, the house feels pretty empty,” my mother said.
It was something about the way she said, “with the girls gone” that drove me to my feet. I had made the decision not to let them know that I had found out the truth about Jackie, but that phrase changed my mind in an instant. They were talking, but I could not focus on the words. It was a jumble of phrases, words that were too happy for the feelings that crushed my heart.
“Which girls do you mean?” I asked, not caring if I interrupted their conversation.
The talking stopped abruptly, unfinished thoughts and sentences crashing into each other and landing in a confused heap.
“What, Lindy?” my mother asked sweetly.
She and I looked a lot alike. We both had dark hair, blue eyes, and the same skin with a splattering of freckles. It was something I hung onto over the years of tomboyhood. She was beautiful, and one day, I would be beautiful like she was. But as she watched my face, her gentle smile folded down into a frown. It was intuition only a mother had that could instantly read her child’s heartache.
The pleading in Uncle Shane’s eyes almost held me back, but something had broken within me. A dam had burst.
“You said ‘the girls’ are gone. Which girls do you mean?”
“You and Eleanor, of course. Did you forget she’s at co—”
I interrupted my father with a sharp tone. “And Jackie. You mean Jackie too.”
I should have felt guilty for the way my mother pitched forward, the pain instant and acute in a way I could never understand. My father’s mouth hung open in shock but only long enough to regain his bearing.
“Don’t talk about her, Lindy,” my father said
That was all I had ever heard my entire life. In my grief it was more than I could bear, a weight I could not carry.
“Fine. Should we talk about our family trip to Germany instead?” I asked hotly.
Both of my parents turned to Uncle Shane. It was not fair to give him the blame, not in the condition he was in.
I pulled the focus back to me. “I would have figured it out eventually. He just had enough mercy to tell me that you let some quack burrow around in my head and rewrite my history.”
Indignant anger burned behind my father’s eyes. He was getting older, gray at the temples but still a full head of hair. As a lawyer he was used to arguing. It was how he fed our family for years.
“Don’t get self-righteous on us, Lindy. You have no idea how hard that was. How much we agonized over that decision.”
“You could have let me fight through it. Let me find my way, and—”
“You were broken!” My mother’s usually distinguished and calm voice was strained and frayed as her volume rose. “You would not talk. You would not eat. You would not even let me hold you. We were desperate, Lindy. We could not lose you both.” She crumpled beneath the weight of her past and the decisions she had made, a sobbing mess of the woman I had loved my whole life.
“So make me stronger!” I argued back, guilt edging into my psyche for the selfish nature of my complaints. What did it matter? I was fine, I had the truth, and I was still breathing. Why did I force the issue?
My father, usually my greatest cheerleader, turned on me. I was the opposing counsel, and he hated losing.
“You were too weak. Jackie was the strong one. You cracked, and we did what we had to do to put you together again. You should be thanking us.” His arm looped protectively around my mother’s shoulder as if I were the enemy.
I could have kept going, but the words hung there, “You were too weak.” He was right. I was the one with the disease, I was the one who had cracked, and I was the weak one.
“How could you do it though?” I asked softly, feeling just as broken as they saw me. “How could you let that scientist cut open my head and experiment on me? How do you know he didn’t cause my disease? How do you know he didn’t trigger some sort of domino effect that would just destroy me in the end?”
My mother looked up, mascara streaked down her cheeks, eyes red and puffy.
“Even if he did, it was worth the years we have had with you. We were robbed of your sister. We would not take that risk with you.”
It was meant to comfort me,
as if drastic surgery were a way of telling me they loved me, but I could not see it. Maybe one day I would, but not yet.
“This is supposed to be about Stella and Shane.” My father’s voice hid his shame and disappointment. “We should focus on that and the future, not remember the pain of the past.”
The room felt too tight, as if the oxygen were slowly being vacuumed out. They had not even asked if I was willing to find Jackie. They had dropped it and forgotten her just as easily as they had in the past. I could not bear it one second longer.
I turned and pushed from the room, scooped my keys from the shell that Stella had set by the door, spilling a few discarded buttons along the way. I breathed in the outside air and relished the cool against my face. The rain had stopped, but the thick mists coated my skin as I walked to my car.
“Lindy, wait!” Uncle Shane’s voice stopped me in my tracks. I was not mad at him. We had shared too much. He jogged a couple of steps, thankfully sober for the first time in days. “Lindy, I need you to know I am leaving. I’ve waited too long on retirement, and now she’s gone and I need family. I have three offers on the house already. I hope to be gone in two weeks.”
I wanted to remind him that I was family, but maybe I was just the girl that had gotten his wife killed. “What about me?”
“You can come back to California too.”
It wasn’t an option for me, not really, and he knew it. To move back home would be allowing me a higher risk of relapse, but I understood the pull for him. He needed family, and that was where they were. All he had in Washington was memories of Stella and the company of the girl that had gotten her killed.
“That will be good for you, but I will sure miss you.”
“Lindy, promise me you’re done. You’ll leave this alone.”
I was good at lying, but that was a lie I could not tell.
“Shane, don’t you want justice?”
Cold fury burned in his eyes like the coals of a dying fire that could be reignited at any second. “I want the dying to stop. Promise me, Lindy. Promise me.”
Caskets & Conspiracies Page 20