AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What do you mean?” she asks with genuine curiosity.
I go on to explain the whole man behind the curtain thing, and all she does is cluck her tongue. “Maybe you have a ghost. I mean, you did tell me yesterday about Derek’s brother. What was his name again?”
“Neil.” I glance at his picture still hanging by the cheval mirror. I hadn’t taken it down. For some odd reason, it felt wrong to, like I was disrespecting the dead.
“That’s right. I remember when that was huge news, but at the time, I didn’t pay much attention to it. Maybe he is actually dead.” A wicked smile makes her cheeks puff out. “Maybe he’s haunting you.”
“Ghosts aren’t real,” I say as I lower my gaze and look in the cheval mirror. From where I stand, only half of me is reflected in it. The other half shows the pasture out back, visible through the nearby bedroom window. But even my own voice doesn’t sound convincing. “I should go. Tomorrow is a big day.”
“Right!” she exclaims. “Remember the berry cream donut. White frosting!”
I nod and disconnect, but I can’t help but stare at half of my reflection. I came here to escape death. Death has followed me. Could it really be a ghost? Or was someone truly in my house?
I’m not sure I want the answer to either of those questions.
“Death is a natural phase of life, Tegan,” Dr. Lynn always said. “Learn to live with that fact and you’ll have a much more fulfilling life.”
Chapter 6
Cole Garner
I turnmy truck into the cemetery. I wasn’t going to come, but I went home for the night and couldn’t stop thinking about her.My sister. She’d been on my mind all day, our memories whispering in my ear while I worked with Tegan. She would have wanted me to be nice to her. She would have wanted me to give the girl a break, and she’d be right. But try as I might, I couldn’t come up with anything that would be ‘nice.’ Not that there weren’t nice things to say, there were plenty, but I couldn’t figure out how to word them right.
So I kept silent.
I tried to forget about this day. Working out until I maxed out did nothing to pull my sister from my thoughts. This day, three years ago, I got notified in my jail cell that she was dead.
She was the entire reason I went to prison in the firstplace, to protect her. I’d do it again, but imagine my heartbreak when I couldn’t protect her from death.
She was young. Too young to leave this world. And the way that she went . . .
No one should be so far gone that suicide is the only way out.
They told me that she hung herself in her closet. Closet bars aren’t that high up. She could have stood and put an end to her death wish, but she didn’t. She had to have bent her knees and hung there until she was gone.
I had beat the shit out of my cellmate that night. Even after all the details the guard gave me, he had asked if my sister had been hot. I saw red. My fists went flying, and guards had crowded into our cell to pull us apart. I was put in solitary confinement for a month because of it too. Him? He didn’t even get a slap on the wrist.
She was though, always had been. She was stunning, and because of her doll-like looks with wide brown eyes and pale skin with rosy cheeks, she’d been taken advantage of at an early age.
The cemetery is pitch black, but the bright moon makes the tombstones cast big shadows. Unlike Derek’s rental, the cemetery is surrounded by great openness. Hills and wildflowers, and beyond is a small mountain that I can barely make out. It’s a nice final resting place, one I hope to eventually be buried in when my day comes. Right next to my sister where I belong.
I pull up to her row and shut the truck off. My fingers grip the steering wheel so tightly that the worn leather squeaks. I’ve only been here once before. It was the first place I stopped when I was released because some part of me didn’t believe it to be true. But as soon as I saw her name on the stone . . . I knew. It was certain. She wasburied six feet underground, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
Looking beside me, I stare at my leather wallet for a moment before picking it up. I carefully open the flap and dig into a hidden pocket. It had taken a while, but I had convinced the funeral home to print me an obituary. I cut out her picture and stuck it in my wallet, and in moments of weakness, I pull it out. I do so now, careful not to bend the edges.
The moon provides enough light in my truck to see my sister’s smiling face. It’s her school portrait, and she’s a lot older in this picture than when I was arrested. She had lost her baby cheeks, and her lips went from a pink to a rosy red. Her brown hair is less ratty than when she was a ten-year-old, her age when I was taken away. It was more smooth and silky. Even the camera captured that.
Her smile, however, doesn’t reach her eyes. It hasn’t since before she was ten, but she looks so dead inside. It makes me wonder if my leaving her did this to her or if it was what happened to her in the first place.
I run my thumb over her face. We have similar looks. Not all foster kids who are related know what their parents look like, so I have no idea who we take after. I was old enough to remember when we were placed in a foster system, her a baby and me at age seven, but I couldn’t picture my parents’ faces to save my life. I have no memories of them. I just remember the badges coming and taking us away.
Sighing, I carefully slide the picture into my wallet and set it back onto the passenger seat. I step out of the car, and a chorus of crickets greet me. For a few seconds, I tip my head toward the sky, inhale a deep, calming breath, and then put one foot in front of the other along the soft, short grass.
I read the headstones as I go along, old family names that have been here since Fairview was founded in eighteen-fifty-nine. There is only one reason I remember the founding date: Our foster parents kept some literature, so if I wanted to read anything to my sister, I had to choose from their history books. One was about Fairview, and that date had always stuck with me.
When I reach her headstone, I stop and stuff my hands into my pockets. There are no flowers or wreaths here like some of the other graves have. I never bring her anything. She’s dead; she wouldn’t know if I did. No, I come here for me. When things get so confusing, I need a little reminder, a little perspective that even a ten-year-old could give me in my teens.
Memories surface. All the times that I had to feed her because our foster parents were ‘too busy’ to feed anyone else but themselves. The bullies I used to chase away when we were in grade school and I’d pick her up before heading home. One time, those little bastards had cornered her against the side of the school building. All it took was me thundering in their direction, and they scattered like dust in the wind.
