2. Death
Chapter 2
Death
Winnie
My focus is split between my parents and my best friend, Truie Cochonette. This isn’t new, nor is the fact that Tru is going to win out, if you can call anything about this situation a win.
I drop the folded wad of cash I made in tips tonight into the pocket of my coat and turn my back on my parents.
“Tru, look at me,” I say as soothingly as I can manage. “No, babe. Don’t look at them, focus on me. Just look at me.”
Her entire body trembles where she’s perched on the landing of the stairs, her view into the cramped living room unfortunately perfect. I shift to the side in an attempt to block the scene behind me. Even as I die a little inside, the relief is undeniable.
This is the biggest loss I’ve experienced thus far.
It’s certainly the most final, and if I were a normal twenty-two-year-old, I’d probably be falling apart just like Tru. Sadly, neither of us are anywhere close to being normal. We’re both broken. Tru just a little bit more than me, and maybe irrevocably so, I don’t know.
“How long have you been sitting here?” I gently place my hand on her knee, fully blocking her view of my mom’s arm hanging over the side of the sofa. Lank blonde hair that only hints at a time when it shined like mine does nothing to obscure the needle still stuck in her vein, dirty rubber tubing coiled on the floor next to her.
I have no doubt that my father is in a similar state.
“Have you called the police?”
The question is rhetorical; there’s no way Tru dialed 9-1-1, and not just because she’s shaking like a chihuahua that’s downed four shots of espresso. Not all cops are heroes, at least not the ones here—not the ones who found Tru, dragged her through hell and left her alone in the dark.
Her only response is a small shake of her head, one that if I’d not been fully focused on her, I would have missed with the way she’s quivering. The outline of her is almost a blur.
“I have to call them, Tru. We need them to come in and take Mom and Dad away.” Jesus, what are they going to do? What are they going to say? “Do you want to be here or?—”
“I w-w-want to d-d-disappear,” she whispers, anxiety causing her stutter to rack her body. Tears run down her cheeks like rivers overflowing their banks.
I stand, pulling her with me toward the back of the house. I hold her close, shielding her from the macabre scene in the living room.
Tru reaches for the door leading to her perceived safety, completely oblivious to the fact that she’s barefoot and not at all dressed for the woods.
“Boots, Tru.” I dig into the closet and grab a worn sweater in deep, dusky pink, wrapping her up in it. I frame her face between my palms. “I’ll come get you when it’s done, okay? When it’s safe and they’re all gone and…” My voice catches for the first time since walking through the front door after working a double shift at the diner. “And it’s just us. Then we’ll figure out what’s next, okay? It’s just us now, Tru, you hear me? We’re free,” I say, hoping the words are getting through her fog. Hoping she understands.
Darkness swallows her as she silently steals away from the end of our nightmare. We’re finally free.
I turn back after closing and locking the door to get the first, unfiltered look at how my parents chose to leave this world. And the simple answer is they did it in the only way that fit their lives. Expensively. Selfishly. And leaving behind a huge mess for me to clean up.
Disgust washes over me as I approach the room that for other families is the center of their home. Where they watch TV together, read books, share the happenings of their lives. Just not my fractured family.
As with my mother, a hypodermic needle hangs from my father’s arm, the plunger depressed completely. Their faces are slack in death, lips tinged blue. Drool pools on his chest, staining his worn, dingey t-shirt. His wallet lays open on the coffee table in front of him, credit cards askew and completely devoid of cash.
Even in death, they left me with nothing.
I stare hard at their lifeless forms, digging deep, desperate for a tender moment that we shared, for a single happy, carefree memory as a family, but there’s nothing. Not a damn thing. I lean against the fireplace mantle and catalog the waste laid out before me, and the only thing swirling through my mind is the massive pain in the ass it’s going to be to plan their funerals. My gut tells me that the budget for their sendoff will be about what I have hidden away from waiting tables, and my escape from this town will happen a little later than I had hoped.
I turn my thoughts to Tru and pray she can hang on for a little longer. Just a little bit longer until I can save enough in tips to replace what it’s going to cost me to plant my parents. That thought is almost enough to bring a tear to my eye, but I need more .
Never had a pet whose loss I can reach for to find the emotion necessary for this phone call, because relief is not what the world expects from me as I stare at my dead parents.
My only true friend is still with me, at least in the only way she can manage after all that she went through. The fact that Tru survived…
Distracted from my lack of emotive childhood memories, my fingers drift to my lips and though the charm bracelet broke a long, long time ago, the heavy silver honeybee remains, lashed to my wrist with a worn black leather lace, exactly where it was first placed.
A laugh erupts from me first, cold and hard. I was a foolish, love-struck child all those years ago, but the inkling of emotion, the hint of feeling is real. I close my eyes and let my heart drift back to the hope I felt then. The excitement, the way my pulse raced with that first kiss, with all the hopes and dreams and wants that filled me in that precious, naive, golden moment. The way it settled in me as I carved a rough heart into the bark of that tree, to stamp such a big emotion on the world in a physical way. One I could see and touch, visit as I waited for him to come back to me. One that ended up serving as a permanent reminder of what a fool I’d been. That I was discarded and left behind. That my childhood dreams would never come true. That as it turned out, the one person I’d thought I meant something to, who I’d thought saw me as something more than the rest of the world did, in fact did not.
A simple kiss, from a childhood crush, then I was cast aside and forgotten.
That’s the thought that finally brings me to tears. I allow those innocent emotions past the armor around my heart and let them take me on a ride. I close my eyes and feel them, really feel them with everything I have, and everything I am. I allow the pain and heartache to amplify and grow and fully take control because I need them. I need the desperation of a first love, crushed and lost, to masque the relief I feel of finally being free.
Tears gather in my eyes, stinging and burning, until they fall down my cheeks in rivulets of remembered misery.
I cry.
I sob.
I mourn the boy I thought was different.
I mourn the fact that he wasn’t. That I was just a game. A plaything to help him pass time sequestered out in the woods, away from his real life. The life I wasn’t, and would never be, a part of.
When my throat is thick with it and my speech is sure to be muffled and broken, I place the call that sets the final chapter of this part of life in motion.
Hours pass before the commotion dies down and the house is clear, purples and pinks of the dawn of a new beginning leach into the dark night sky. Tru steals back in before the transition is complete.
“A-are you o-o-okay?” Her words barely register above a whisper, but the stuttering has eased. The stillness of the house and knowledge that, for now, all threats are gone seem to have settled her.
I lean in to where she’s perched beside me on the creaky old porch swing and lay my head on her shoulder. For the moment, I allow her the illusion that she’s taking care of me.
“I’m better than I have a right to be,” I say, pulling a light throw blanket around both of us. “What about you?”
Her cheek gently shifts against the top of my head. “I’m…I’m okay.” Just a pause, not a single stutter.
Thank God, because now comes the true test. I sigh but keep our connection and give her a pass on the funeral.
“You don’t have to go, Tru. You don’t have to be there with me.” I always give her an out—a choice so she knows she’s got a say in what happens to her. Always. And honestly, the only reason I’m going to show up is because I have to. I have a part to play, a role to see through to the end in the charade that is my family.
“Y-yes, I d-d-do. You n-n-need me there. I’ll…I’ll b-be okay,” she says carefully. “Y-you’re all I h-h-have.”
I tilt my head back to see grim determination on her face. The look is foreign on Tru. But I like it; strength looks good on her.
Twin caskets lower into the ground as the wind whips out of the woods, lifting my hair and swirling it around my face. The priest says his final prayer and I step forward, conjuring the tears that have become my shield over the past week. Each time I’ve reached for them for cover, they’ve come just a little bit easier. Practice makes perfect.
And now it’s done. One more performance nearly completed and checked off my to-do list. One step closer to getting away from here.
No matter how hard I try, I feel nothing more than relief at saying a final goodbye to my parents. Conventional wisdom says I should, but this whole situation—my whole life—has never even hinted at conventionality. Relief feels so much more genuine even as my facade of mourning stays firmly in place.
I drop a handful of dirt on top of each pristine casket and turn my thoughts to who their benefactor might be, because a double funeral does not just happen. These are the thoughts distracting me as people file past the pit offering their condolences. Who they are and how they’re associated with my parents is beyond me, but I dab at manufactured tears that represent false emotions.
“Miss L’Ourson? I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Please accept my heartfelt sympathy.”
“Honey, they are with the good Lord above, watching over you now and keeping you safe.”
Again, that shit might be appropriate at a normal funeral, but not here. And the more people approach with their bullshit sentiments, the more I want to run. Escape and get the hell out of here.
I glance over my shoulder, scanning the cemetery as I shake yet another hand. The icy feeling of being watched prickles up my spine.
“W-we should g-g-go, Winn,” Tru mumbles to me as she, too, scans the area. Her gaze pauses on a copse of trees at the edge of the clearing, stalling on a tall figure tucked among the shadows.
“Shit.” Somehow, I think this has something to do with the financier of the pomp and fanfare and the pricey twin boxes hovering above a gaping hole in the wet earth.
Dark glasses flash with the tilt of the stranger’s head, reflecting the meager rays of the sun, pulling my focus to a lone figure dressed all in black. The man is completely alone, hands casually tucked in the pockets of his crisp suit. Burnished hair styled perfectly back revealing a chiseled jaw and high, patrician cheekbones, full lips, and an aloofness that radiates out with authority.
Familiarity floats around him, hinting at recognition but dancing just out of reach in the blink of an eye. It’s his sneer, though, that makes my blood chill. The cold dismissive twist of his mouth as the stranger stares directly at me.
“Who is that?” I ask, my gaze intent on him as he approaches.
Tru’s voice trembles as she struggles to form her words. “C-c-can we j-j-just g-g-g…” Her nerves dig in and take hold, her renewed display of anxiety spearing me straight through the heart. It’s telling that though she’s evened out since the initial shock of stumbling down the stairs and finding my parents’ dead bodies in the living room, all of her trauma is crashing down on her.
Years of therapy helped but at a time like this, anxiety just rolls over her, throwing her back to when things were bad. She slides her hand into mine, fear trembling through the connection.
“I don’t know.” Intentionally or not, I shift to the side, placing myself between my timid friend and the monster who is slowly approaching.
My heart stills and my breath freezes in my lungs. My hands curl around Tru’s. What are the chances that my muse for the engineered tears this week would be standing in front of me? In a cemetery.
All I need now is a sappy soundtrack and for the spotty clouds overhead to get their act together and open up the taps.
“Winifred.”
That’s it. All he says is my name, but that’s all it takes. The way his lips purse as he forms the syllables, curling at the start and pouting at the finish, has me frozen in place. My bravado is gone, leaving me nothing more than a scared baby animal caught in the sights of an apex predator in the dark and scary woods.
He stops in front of me, completely disregarding my personal bubble. Instead, he effectively dismisses the remaining mourners, tilts his head and glances around. “You did well with your allotted budget. Bravo.” Any question about who bought and paid for this circus dissipates.
I stare straight ahead, too rattled to meet his gaze. Instead, I note the strain of his crisp, white dress shirt as each of his measured breaths expands his chest beyond the shirt’s ability to contain him.
“Look at me,” he rumbles, his voice low and full of promises. The promise of something dark. Debts and dues. The promise of regret, though not his…certainly not his.
When I don’t move, don’t do as instructed, he reaches out, grasping my chin, and lifts my face to his. I resist, every muscle rigid, almost trembling, because I’m so damn tense.
“Winfred, I asked you to look at me. We can do this the easy way or the hard way, it’s up to you. But I assure you, we will do it. We have a lot to discuss. Years to make up for.” His dark, classic wayfarers shield his eyes, making him appear even more intimidating than he already is.
A tall, broad wall of muscle, steel, and torment. Because there is no mistaking the fact that Christophe Robicheaux looks like he’s going to get great pleasure out of tormenting me.