Chapter 26
Venetia
Saturday
Venetia can’t open her eyes. It’s the sleeping tablets. The chef from Bar Four arranged them when news of Aimee’s death broke. Venetia doesn’t quite know how. Her colleague isn’t a doctor, but it doesn’t matter. She got them, and they work.
Felipe was worried at first. What if the sleeping tablets were a gateway back to…
he didn’t finish the sentence. There was no need; they both knew what he meant.
But if she went back to her old habits, it wouldn’t be because of sleeping tablets, it would be because her sister is dead.
And god how she’s craved it over the last five days.
The fix that would give her oblivion. Lend her oblivion, at least. The sleeping tablets, for their part, give her dreamless sleep, six hours of peace.
Until she wakes up, as she has just now, groggy and confused, before it all hits again.
Aimee is dead. Her only family in the world.
The weight of it. The sheer weight of that pain.
Like a lead shroud covering every inch of her body. Every fraction of her mind.
A movement beside her tells her Felipe is here. She’s on the couch, she realizes, not in her bed. Scraps of something filter into her mind. A visit. A woman.
She turns her head, twists on to her side and curls her knees to her chest.
“The woman. Susan.” Her voice is croaky.
“Yes.”
“She was here?” she asks, though she knows; the memory is clearer now.
“Yes.”
It doesn’t add up. “And she sent the message? The one about Aimee and Warren Geary?”
Her eyes are still closed, but she senses his nod.
She opens her eyes now and looks at Felipe’s face. Misery etched all over it.
“I did some googling while you were asleep,” he says. “And there’s something you should know.”