Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BELLATRIX
Do you know what they do when people can’t afford a headstone?
Nothing. You got nothing. Just vague directions to a sliver of grass.
You had no choice but to take their word that your mother, uncle, sister, whatever was buried underneath it somewhere.
Unless you wanted to spend an arm and a leg paying to dig ?em back up—and let’s go out on a limb and assume you didn’t have money for that either.
At fourteen, I didn’t. And when I finally did, my funds were better spent elsewhere.
Weapons, medication, tac gear would do what an expensive piece of granite couldn’t.
Put more bodies in unmarked graves. Sometimes right here.
In this same cemetery. Most of the time down the street in city-sanctioned potter’s fields.
That was the thing about shitty men… no one cared about them once they were dead.
Sure, a handful of them got extravagant funerals, mistresses and bastard children throwing themselves on caskets for the attention of it.
But shortly after that, they were forgotten. Life moved on.
We’d moved on after my sister had killed herself too. For a completely different reason. Common folks didn’t have the luxury of mourning. Not when there was work that had to be done. Bills that had to be paid. Other children who needed to be fed. Like me.
It should have bothered me that my sister was as forgotten as those shitty men. That I was the only one who visited her. But if I were being honest, I kinda like the fact nobody knew where she was buried but me. I didn’t have to share her anymore.
“Got another one, Alls.” I lifted my bottle of water towards the sky before pouring a few drops for her and downing the rest myself.
My sister would have preferred something a little more fancy, like the stuff she used to sneak out of Mr. Prescott’s liquor cabinet when Mama wasn’t looking. But you didn’t get to be picky when you were dead. Or poor. Or dead and poor.
Water was better for the grass anyway. I glanced around at the old cemetery behind St. Mary’s Church. Spotting the various brown and yellowing plots. At least Allie’s was green with little dandelions popping out the top.
I dropped to my knees and plucked up as many of them as I could find. Allie hated dandelions. Said they made your lawn look cheap. I should have kept them there just to spite her.
But my sister wasn’t cheap. The diamond necklace that had cost her, her life was worth upwards of twenty grand.
Much less when you pawned it at an unreputable cash-for-gold shop that didn’t want to ask questions any more than you wanted to answer them.
And twenty grand was a lot for a couple of girls who had nothing.
I shoved the crushed flowers into my jacket and headed back towards the bike I’d left parked on one of the footpaths. Threw my leg over the side and started her up, weaving between a few headstones and metal plaques before making my way onto the road.
I used to visit Allie weekly. Daily when her death was still fresh and her body was still rotting.
Now she was a box of bones, and I was lucky if I got out here once a month.
My relationship with my sister had always been complicated, though.
We were closer with one of us dead than we ever were with both of us alive.
I couldn’t see shit. But I couldn’t chance turning on the lights and getting caught snooping through Vee’s desk. I moved a couple of files aside and started tugging open each of the drawers.
I never really cared to question what Vee was hiding in here. We all had things we’d rather not share with the rest of the group. Like the fact I fucked the guy I killed last night. And the fact Gabby hid half her income in a duffle bag under a loose floorboard she didn’t know I knew about.
Allie had given me the idea to come here.
Okay, more like me thinking about her had given me the idea. Allie herself couldn’t give me anything but dirt. The specifics weren’t important. Point was, I’d forgotten how much my big sister liked to snoop through that old rich guy’s house.
Usually, she was looking for liquor or jewelry or drugs.
Occasionally, she found blackmail. Secrets Mama’s boss didn’t want anyone else to know about.
Affairs, illegitimate children, foreign bank accounts.
And Alls would use it to her advantage. Playing both smart and dumb as she tried to climb her way out of poverty.
She climbed her way into an early grave instead.
That rich old guy had a desk just like this one, back in that fancy mansion of his. With a bunch of drawers and—I felt around until my fingers skimmed a metal lever—a false bottom.
A notebook plopped into my hands, at the same time the office lights flicked on.
I stuffed the book into the front of my shirt, crawled under the desk, and scooted myself as close to the one corner as I could get without knocking the chair back.
Then I watched a pair of black heels and ankle-length slacks cross the room, stopping short and turning as the person attached to the other end of them appeared to glance around. Pivot and walk back out again.
I was well aware I was too old to be hiding under a desk like some teenager in a cringy horror movie. I was also young enough to want to avoid getting yelled at by my surrogate mother.
When I was as sure as I could be that the coast was clear, I crawled back out, careful to leave everything (except for the notebook) exactly how I’d left it. I made it three steps outside Vee’s door before a hand was landing on my shoulder and spinning me around.
“Thought I’d find you here.”
My eyes dropped down to the shoes and pants before flicking back up to Gabby’s face.
“What do you got there?” She extended a finger and poked at the noticeable bulge in my shirt.
I rolled my eyes and pulled the notebook out before turning to a random page. “I… I think it’s Vee’s diary.”