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“I kept hearing you tell me to fight. Fight, Fran. Fight.” I felt the wetness of tears on my chest, and I knew that she was crying again. “And I knew that I couldn’t do that to you. I couldn’t let you find me like that. So I fought.”
Thank God.
Thank God that she fought.
“I’m selling my house,” I told her. “I can’t… we can’t stay there anymore.”
She sighed. “I don’t think I want to, either.”
We were quiet for a few long seconds and then, “I want to kill him.”
She sighed. “I know you do. But just think, Grandmother is going to do things worse to him than killing him. Just let her do her thing.”
At her words, I realized she was right.
Pearl Pope had already done her best to make the fool’s life a living hell.
Pasqual didn’t have any idea what was coming. Pearl Pope was a force of fucking nature.
CHAPTER 25
Pinning book ideas should give you some kind of developmental credit.
-Taos to Fran
TAOS
There was nobody at the service.
Nobody, that was, unless you counted the two quiet women, and the babbling little baby at my side.
Sure, Chief Wilkerson, Madden and even Schultz, had offered to come, but I hadn’t wanted them there. I’d wanted to do this alone, yet two females hadn’t allowed me to have what I wanted.
They were being nice. I knew.
But I didn’t want false platitudes on a day like today. A day that felt dark and deep and didn’t really feel like there would be an end in sight.
I just wanted my girl.
And my girl had a sister that had insisted on coming, too.
So, though it was a sad affair, the giggles of Vlad filled the air despite the darkness.
It actually felt more right than anything.
“Would you like to say a few words?”
I looked up at the man that was helping officiate the service.
Though my grandmother went to church, she never went to the same one two weekends in a row.
I swear she was at every single church in the area, and never let on that she liked any particular one better than the rest.
So we’d decided to have just the funeral home put it on at my grandmother’s house, and not tell anyone when and where.
It was… freeing.
I didn’t have to deal with the false platitudes. And my grandmother’s true friends, the ones that lived thousands of miles away, were all too old to be traveling themselves. So we’d done a video conference of the service, and that particular torture had just ended.
“No.” I paused. “Can you give us a few minutes? Then we can wrap it up?”
The funeral attendant, a man in his late fifties, smiled. “Everything is already taken care of. Since you have no body to transport, if it’s sufficient, we’ll leave you to your own devices?”
I nodded. “Actually, that sounds wonderful.”
After he left, I stared up at the spray of flowers that dominated the front of the room.
“Your grandmother will never be underdone, will she?” I mused.
Mavis snorted. “My grandmother had to have put a small fortune into that. You’re lucky your entire damn living room isn’t filled.”
I flashed a quick grin, then got up from my position between the two of them.
“I think the worst part now is going to have to be going through all of this,” I mused.
“We’ll help,” Fran promised.
I knew they would.
It was like the two musketeers. They were each other’s best friends. If one needed help, the other would always be there.
I looked to the table of food that had been delivered from the gym members.
“What the hell am I going to do with all of that?” I wondered.
“You’re going to eat everything that you can in two days.” Fran got up and walked to the table, pulling back a few pieces of tinfoil. “Then we’re going to throw it all out and never think of how many calories we just consumed.”
We all had a chuckle at that.
Then a sparkle caught my eye.
I moved toward the shimmer and found myself staring at a shelf with photos of me.
My grandmother had a single shelf that was exclusive to only me.
On the shelf over were the rest of our family.
But something brand new caught my eye.
It was a photo of just the other day. Of Fran, my Grans, and me.
We had full plates of spaghetti in front of us, and it was a Polaroid photo sitting on her shelf between photos of me when I was twelve and fifteen. It was taken using my Grans’ new camera that she’d gotten for her girls’ trip.
Next to that photo was a Post-it Note that said, “Give this to Tay.”
And next to that Post-it Note, there was a black box.
I reached for it and felt my breath catch.
It was my grandmother’s diamond ring.
The one that she wore. The one that my mom wore.
