Chapter Thirty-Five Aletta
Chapter Thirty-Five
Aletta
They’d been told they had to leave at eight, so Aletta and her mother had risen at dawn. Chloe’s body had been taken, wrapped in a white sheet for burial, but neither of them had felt right about leaving without marking the spot where she’d passed.
‘Here,’ her mother said, stopping at the place and staring down at the ground.
The lump in Aletta’s throat swelled, and she took a shuddering breath, trying to block out the memories of the day before, not wanting to relive that moment ever again.
They stood side by side until her mother took her hand, and Aletta followed like a child beside her. In her other hand, her mother held a small cross that had been made for them by the camp volunteers.
‘Why don’t we place it here, by this tree,’ her mother said. ‘I think Chloe would have liked it here.’
Aletta had cried so much during the night, her body so used to having Chloe’s beside it, the loss of her warmth a constant reminder that she wasn’t with them any longer, that she’d thought she wouldn’t have any tears left.
But they still fell, slipping down her cheeks, the salty taste on her tongue.
She bent when her mother did and they dug the cross into the ground, kneeling in front of it for a moment before slowly rising.
‘Chloe, you were my daughter in every sense of the word,’ she murmured. ‘We will never forget you.’
Aletta found that she couldn’t say anything, so she stepped forward instead, kissing her fingers and pressing them to the cross.
I love you, Chloe, and I don’t think I know how to live my life without you.