The Cult by Penelope Sky

Author:Penelope Sky [Sky, Penelope]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hartwick Publishing
Published: 2021-09-13T18:30:00+00:00

13

Benton

A father should never have to bury his daughter.

A parent should never outlive their child.

But that was my reality.

I’d never see her blond hair in the sink in her bathroom. I’d never walk down the hallway and watch her play with her dolls on her bedroom floor. There would never be crayons that fell off the edge of the table and rolled underneath.

Now it was me—alone—surrounded by the walls that held on to her echoes.

I’d have to sell it and move.

Couldn’t stay here.

I dropped off the remains at the funeral home so they could be placed into coffins and prepared for the funeral. For my final goodbye. I picked out a beautiful rose gold casket for Claire.

She’d always loved pink.

For Beatrice, I picked white.

She wouldn’t give a damn what she was buried in.

Honestly, neither did I.

I was furious that she’d suffered like that, that she was taken from her life like a carton of milk off the shelf at the grocery store. But my sorrow was reserved for my daughter, the only person I really loved in this world.

When we’d had her, it was all diapers and vomit and chaos.

But that quickly changed, and she became everything to me.

I sat alone in the parlor in my apartment, a glass of scotch always somewhere nearby, Bleu coming and going. My days blurred together. Time had no meaning. How could it when my nights were days and my days were nights?

This was a kind of grief that would never get easier.

If I’d just gone to Bartholomew sooner…she might still be alive.

But I cared more about my pride.

I was a piece-of-shit father.

My phone rang beside me. It was the number to the funeral home. I recognized it because I’d stared at it for so long before I’d made that first call. It was an out-of-body experience, to call a funeral home and make arrangements…for your seven-year-old daughter.

I took the call but didn’t say a word.

“Mr. Marseille?”

I inhaled a deep breath—then let it out slowly. “Yeah?”

“After examining the remains, we’ve discovered that there are bones for an adult…not a child.”

My eyes focused on the amber liquid beside me, my heartbeat nonexistent. I’d never opened the bag to look inside. I would never do that—look at her little bones. “I don’t understand…”

“We’ve confirmed the remains of two adults. But none from a child.”

I was on my feet, my eyes immediately turning to the window, my heartbeat back, stronger than ever.

“Since there are two sets of bones, we’ll need to go through all the steps to verify the identity—”

“Do what you have to do.”

“Can we pull Beatrice’s medical records?”

“Yes.” I hung up and left the house.

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