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Someone’s been here since that night. I wonder if it’s Jericho.
Lightning brightens the stained-glass window over the altar catching the ornately carved wooden cover of what at first glance looks to be a bible. I touch the silver etched into it as I lift the heavy tome to have a closer look, but it’s too dark to read by the light of the few candles. I open it, see the fancy script remembering how Jericho had looked at it so reverently that night he’d brought me here. I wonder if it’s handwritten or just made to look that way. As I turn the pages, I realize it’s the former. When lightning next strikes, my gaze lands on the grave of the author himself and I find myself jumping away, as if warned.
My breath catches and I tell myself to relax. No ghosts. Not here.
I take a seat in the first pew to wait out the storm. And I find that same peace settling over me as did when I’d be in the chapel at the IVI compound all those years ago when I was a little girl. Jericho made fun of my mother thinking Jesus would babysit me. Maybe God was watching out for me, though.
Whatever it is, I find myself leaning my back against the wooden pew and just listening to the silence inside as the rain pours outside. I don’t know how much time goes by but when the rain stops and the sun shines, I get up to blow out the candles, noticing the tabernacle lamp burning still, and open the door to walk outside.
It’s bright enough that I have to squint and stop for a moment to take in the beauty all around me. The raindrops have made the green somehow brighter while droplets reflecting the bright gold of the sun drop from trees.
I glance around, seeing how the cemetery is well maintained. Mostly.
My eyes land on Nellie Bishop’s grave and I walk toward it, open the rusting gate surrounding it. She was Mary’s friend, he’d said. Both girls were innocent. I know that in my heart. And as I kneel in the overgrown grass of her grave and brush off the mud caking her stone, I feel a tug at my heart for her. For Mary, and even for Draca St. James. Not for Reginald Bishop, though. There I only feel a chill. The same chill I always felt when I passed his portrait hanging over the fireplace in the living room of the Bishop house.
The Bishop house.
I need to remember I am a Bishop, too. And that house has been my home for the last three years.
But for now, I don’t think about those things. I think of Nellie. Of how she was punished to punish the truly guilty. And I think we have at least that in common.
A chill makes me shudder at that thought. Will he put me in the ground beside her when he’s finished with me? Will he let me be forgotten just as the St. James’s before him have let her be forgotten? No, worse. Let her serve as an example of what happens to Bishops who cross St. James’s.
I find myself pulling at the weeds then, clearing her grave as best I can. And when I’m done, I get up, wipe the mud off my knees and shins and I go back to that wall where the yellow flowers grew. I pick as many as I can carry and take them back to lay at Nellie’s grave. Because I’ll remember Nellie Bishop. I won’t remember what happened to her. At least the horror story Jericho told. I’ll just remember the girl who didn’t deserve her fate. And as I spread the flowers over her grave, I think how beautiful it is now, a memorial to a life.
35
Jericho
Why did I let that bastard get to me? What did I expect going to him anyway? Asking him a question my brother should be answering.
Are you so anxious to know the stock you come from? Because you’re just like him, aren’t you? Even the fucked-up eyes. A carbon copy of dad. I just hope you don’t commit the sins he did. Recycle an ugly past.
I step onto soft grass and bring the bottle of whiskey to my lips. I don’t remember when I stopped pouring it out. Don’t remember when Dex drove me home from the bar I found myself in too early in the day.
The house is dark, and the rain of the afternoon only seems to have made the air muggier, more humid. I make my way to the path that will lead to the cemetery, grateful for the moonlight. Although I know this path. Even though I haven’t lived here for five years I’ll never forget it.
Dad’s funeral was the last one. Six years since then. I didn’t come back to bury Kimberly. I sent her body back for Zeke to take care of while I looked after my daughter. The fact that Angelique survived is still astonishing to me. She’s a miracle. Or she would be if I believed in them.
Before dad’s funeral it was Zoë’s. That was a bad one. I guess all funerals are bad, though. But when at barely eighteen you bury your sixteen-year-old sister I think that ranks pretty high on the fucked-up scale.
She never left a note. Don’t all suicides leave a note? I think that is part of why it’s hard. The not knowing. Not understanding. We were close, the three of us. At least I thought so.
I wonder if her death was worse for Zeke, though. They were twins. He took it badly, but how does one take something like that well? And mom. Fuck. She almost died herself. Dad kept it together. He never spoke of it, but I’d sometimes hear him go down to that cellar after he installed the steel door to keep the rest of us out. He wasn’t taking any chances after Zoë. Maybe someone should have shut off access after Mary all those centuries ago, though, because Zoë hanged herself in the same place. From the same beam. The hanging beam.
Fuck.
Just ask Zeke if you’re not sure what I’m talking about.
I take another swallow of whiskey and round the corner to the graveyard. Before I can ruminate on Bishop’s words, I see something that at first surprises me, then, after that moment, enrages me.
I let the bottle drop from my hand as I stalk toward Nellie Bishop’s grave. It’s been cleaned up. Mud and moss that had obscured the woman’s name removed and wiped up. Weeds pulled. Grass looks like it was ripped out. And lying in a rectangle that would cover the rotted corpse beneath are flowers. Yellow flowers. Some whole, most just petals but bright, somehow holding on to their color as if mocking me as they glow in the moonlight.
Fury burns inside me. Only one person would have done this.
An enemy in my own home.
An enemy I brought into my home. My bed.
