Page 92 of We Already Dug the Grave

The shiny blond girl with happy eyes in these pictures was so different from the quiet girl I’d spent my youth protecting and the broken woman who’d showed up on my doorstep yesterday.

In another photo, Frances wore an oversize sweater and ratty ponytail, grinning with her arm around a short girl with shiny dark hair and a wide, toothy smile.

In the next photo, Frances held one side of a collegiate mathlete trophy, and that same girl held the other. I plucked it from the mirror and looked closer, then frowning, I set it aside and picked up a stack of photos and cards and folded pieces of notebook paper.

I flipped through the stack. Blurry pictures of my sister at a dance. Birthday cards from friends. Notes with doodles and inside jokes.

These were the kinds of experiences I’d never really had. They’d always seemed just out of reach, even when I was in high school.

The only best friend I’d ever had besides my sister was Casey.

Thinking of him while sitting in this house almost undid me. In middle school, Casey and I had often done homework in this very room, with Ruth yelling from the living room for us to keep the door open, even though at thirteen, we’d had zero interest in each other in that way. Not yet. I’d been the shortest girl in our grade, but Casey had been the shortest person. It hadn’t yet occurred to me that he’d grow, sprouting into someone cute. That even if he hadn’t, there were more important things for a boyfriend to be. He was simply Casey. My friend.

And if he hadn’t been, he’d still be alive.

I pushed the thought away. I’d be unable to do what I had to do if I allowed my mind to linger here. Ghosts weren’t real, but memories could be just as haunting.

I opened a folded newspaper clipping. There in black and white was a photo of the girl with shiny dark hair.

The candlelight vigil for Matilda Cook will be held Friday, April 2 at 6:00 p.m. on Cater Lawn. At 6:30, attendees will light their candles, followed by a prayer from Pastor Eric Moore of University Christian Church.

It clicked. That’s where I’d seen this girl—this Matilda Cook—before. Matilda was Frances’s college roommate, until she’d gone missing from a bar near campus.

Frances told me it was right after that when she met Burt.

Any lingering envy of my sister I had been harboring was replaced by guilt. I should’ve tried harder to reach out to her. If I’d been there when she needed me, Burt wouldn’t have stood a chance.

While I’d struggled to keep my own life together, my sister had bounced from tragedy to tragedy until she was scooped up by someone with dimples, the right last name, and a hunger for hurt.

I set the newspaper clipping aside and pulled open one of the vanity’s two small drawers. Inside were more papers, some trinkets, and a silver ring with a cross etched onto the band. I scooped it up.

No.

No, this couldn’t be the same one.

But it was. It fit perfectly on my index finger. Casey’s ring. The one I’d buried with him.

He’d given it to me when I was hurting, but guilt and shame had kept me from keeping it. Right? Suddenly, I wasn’t sure.

I closed my eyes and tried to remember, but the moments after discovering Casey was dead were distorted, like photographs left in the sun or rain. Think, Milly. I’d pulled the ring from my own finger and slid it back onto his. Hadn’t I?

But if it’s here, I must be remembering wrong. My breathing hitched.

“Whatcha doin?” Frances’s voice came from behind me. I startled and caught her eye in the mirror. She was wrapped in one of Hattie-May’s old-lady floral housecoats, with her hair twisted into a towel.

When had the shower turned off?

“You scared me,” I said.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to.” Frances’s gaze traveled from the open drawer to the ring in my hand, her smile tightening in a way no one but me would’ve noticed. She nudged the drawer closed nonchalantly and nodded to the ring. “What’s that?”

“I found it in your vanity.” Through the mirror, I looked into my sister’s questioning face. “Where’d you get it?”

Her brows steepled, and I turned on the stool to face her.

“I don’t know. Let me see.” She held out her hand.

I considered not giving it to her, but that was ridiculous. There was an explanation here that would make sense. Besides, Casey’s ring had sat in this vanity for a decade without me ever knowing. I dropped it into her palm.