The guttural response makes me feel even more pain. A mother buried together with her child.
“Why?”
“Because she would have wanted it that way. Angel was her life.”
He looks lost in thought. I wonder what she was like, this sister of Stone. Everything about him screams loner, solitary. It’s hard to picture him with a sister. Someone he grew upwith. Someone who irritates you, but also someone you turn to when shit goes down. He loved them, and again I feel a sense of sorrow. As much as Jace gets on my nerves, and Adam gives me his sullen silences, I love my brothers. I know they would be there for me at the drop of a hat.
Looking down at the freshly cleaned grave, I stand and walk to the edge of the forest. I spot some flowers with small, delicate white blooms, featuring yellow centers that fan out from the top. I have no idea what they are, but they are the only ones I see. I head over to them and try to pull them out, but it’s tough. When he stands next to me. I turn to him, frustrated. “I can’t get them out.”
He pulls out a knife, and I’m reminded of what he said about using a knife on me, and I wonder if it’s this one or one like it. It looks deadly, but he handles it expertly. He hands it to me, handle-side first, and I take it. It’s heavy, but it feels comfortable in my hand. I cut thirteen blooms and lay them on the grass before returning the knife to him the way he gave it to me.
Picking up the flowers, I head back to the grave and rest the blooms in the newly cleaned space. “I don’t know what these are, but they feel right. And they smell good.”
“Common Yarrow.” Stone utters, watching me.
“Yarrow.” I finger the blooms and fuss with them, rearranging them. “Never heard of it.”
“It’s used for healing,” he says while watching the flowers. The way he says it makes me pause.
Once I've laid out the last stem, I brush the rest of the soil away from the bottom of the tombstone. “Thirteen blooms for how many years they’ve been gone. When I was little, around three years old, my nanny took me to my mother’s grave for the first time. We brought her flowers. Bright yellow Marigolds. I don’t remember it, but as I got older we kept doing it, and when I was around eight, I remember asking here why we broughtthem. She told me that brighter flowers like yellow guide souls from the burial place to their families’ homes. And that by giving a bloom each year of their death is a way to honor the passage of time. She was Mexican and always set up a Day of the Dead altar for me, even though I wasn’t Mexican.”
I smile, remembering. “My fascination with the concept that my mother was a spirit that could visit our house. I would always leave my door open when I lit the candle on her altar, hoping that she would come visit me. As I got older and I learned about my Korean Culture, I saw the similarities and made an altar for her. I put newspaper clippings of her and the few photos of her that Maria was able to find for me. I set out candles. She told me that my mom’s favorite food was tomato sandwiches. For a long time I made them and put them next to her photo. When the bread got moldy, I’d make her a new one. My father never knew about me visiting her grave, but he found my altar and?—”
“And what?” He asks, crouching beside me.
I close my eyes and remember the day he came into my room. He never did that. Never bothered to find out about me. “He destroyed it. I wipe a tear away, hating that I still cry about the day I came home to find everything in the trash. My mother’s pictures and clippings are gone. “He had a habit of doing that. He would rip up Jace’s drawing books, have Adam’s LEGO sets thrown out. It was his way of controlling us.” It still is, I say to myself. He may not be destroying my childish, hope-filled altar or Jace’s book filled with drawings, or Adam’s Lego creations. Now he tries to destroy my spirit, my choices that I made for myself. He tries to control our lives now, destroying anything that we want for ourselves. And for most of my life, I let him.
“I confronted him at dinner. When I asked him why he told me that it was foolish, and irresponsible to have candles burning. Disgusting to use smoky incense to damage the walls. Unsanitary to leave food out. Maria found me crying. I nevermade another altar. I was enrolled in boarding school a month after that.”
I wipe my face again, and when the blanket goes up over my shoulder, I look at him, shocked that I said so much. Stone doesn’t say a word, just listens, and I realize he’s the first person I’ve ever told this to. No one knows about the nights that I stared at my mother’s picture while I looked in the mirror, cataloging our facial features. I looked just like her, with the same nose shape, lips, and eye color. Those belonged to my father.
“He’s an asshole.”
Laughter sputters out. Of all the things I expected him to say, that wasn’t it. “That he is.”
The silence stretches, and I inhale, feeling something peaceful settle in me. “What does it mean? The transcription.”
He repeats it perfectly. “Innocentes hic iacent. Angeli capti sed in caelum reversi. Mortem tuam uliciscar Esto in pace.”∗ The innocent lie here. Angels captured but returned to heaven. I will avenge your death. Be at peace.”
“Were the people who hurt them found, put in jail?”
“In a way.” He doesn’t say more, and I’m left wondering what he means. “Most of them have been taken care of.”
“Most of them? There was more than one?”
“Yes. Seven men tortured her and my niece.” It comes out so matter-of-factly. A simple fact. Seven men. Seven words.
The horror of it keeps growing. I’ve watched enough true crime documentaries to get an inkling, but with those, I could separate the crime and form a sort of detached empathy because I didn't know the victim. I never met his sister and niece either, but I know him. He’s the string that pulls on my heart. It’s then that I see him and her growing up together. It’s then that I see him playing with his four-year-old niece. That is what makes the hurt more knee-jerk.
I stand and take his hand, mine covered in dirt from their graves, his covered in their names. “I’m so sorry.”
He looks down at our joined hands, his jaw moving, eyes shadowed. The wind blows, and I shiver, the wet ground cold under my feet. I tug the blanket more securely around my shoulder with one hand. “Come.” He tugs me back toward the house, and I let him, enjoying the warmth of his hand in mine.
∗ The innocent lie here.Angels captured but returned to heaven. I will avenge your death. Be at peace.
Chapter 57
The last thing I expected when I woke up thirty minutes ago was find the side of my bed she slept on, to be empty. I sat up, confused and yes, worried that she may have left in the middle of the morning. Her alone walking through the woods is enough to give me a heart attack. Not to mention, I wasn’t ready for her to leave. I wasn’t done with Camryn Park and not having her next to me irritated me.
