Beautiful Criminal by Geneva Lee

Author:Geneva Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ivy Estate

Chapter 11

I chose the Belle Mère graveyard because it was close to home. Dad wanted to be able to visit. But he visits as often as mom does. If I hadn’t worried about it there wouldn’t even be a headstone marking her grave. Maybe it would be easier if I could pretend she was just off at school or if I could drink away her memory, but I’d been cursed and blessed to spend the last few moments with her before she died. The run to the cemetery is boring, but it gives me time to clear my head. I run faster until my muscles burn and I’m drenched in sweat. I know I can’t outrun what’s happening, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. By the time I reach the graveyard, the shade trees and green lawn are a welcome site. It’s a bit strange to spend so much time and energy tending to the final resting place of the dead. In the desert, most of us don’t get to look at green grass while we’re alive. It’s not comforting to think I’ll be buried under it someday.

I jog along the path, reading names and dates. Nearly everyone here lived a nice, long life. They had decades on Becca. She didn’t even get eighteen years. We buried her under a fledgling willow tree. A strange choice for Nevada, but rules don’t seem to apply in graveyards. Reputations don’t matter. Everyone here is beloved and missed and dear. Drought regulations don’t exist or maybe the unnaturally green grass has evolved to soak up the tears of its visitors.

Becca’s face greets me when I reach her site. Mom considered having her headstone laser-engraved with her image tacky, but I’d fought her on it. Her grave didn’t need to suit anyone’s taste but mine. It had been a good call. Over the last year, her photos began to vanish as her Facebook page was deleted and her Instagram stopped updating. Then they disappeared from our house, leaving only faded patches where they had hung for years. But it’s even harder to think about all the photos she won’t get to take.

Plopping down in front of the headstone, I give her a small grin. Her face beams back at me, locked in a happy moment from earlier that summer. It’s one of the last pictures I have of her. My memory fills in the rest of the picture. Becca posing in front of a tall cactus, her red hair billowing behind her. She’ll always look like this to me: young, happy. She’ll never age, while I’ve gotten older in the last twenty-four hours. I blink back tears. “Hey sis, have I got a story to tell you.”

With Becca I leave nothing out. I tell her about sneaking around Nathaniel’s office and meeting Jameson. I tell her that it seems impossible to have fallen in love with him a little bit in one night. I tell her that makes me feel stupid. Then I tell her it was all a lie.

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