Because I’m going to kill the man who did this to her. Dead.
So fucking dead.
“Calm down, Nix,” she says, her voice cracking on my name.
“It was Kai, wasn’t it?” I ask, sounding remarkably calm considering the fact that in my mind I’m already wrapping my hands around the bastard’s scrawny emo neck and strangling him.
“We aren’t having this conversation right now. Not like this.” She sets the brush down, sitting up straighter as she turns to face me. “And this isn’t your problem. This ismyproblem.”
“You’re my sister, my family,” I say. “And no one touches my?—”
“Out!” She points a finger at the door, glaring at me with all the fire of twelve-year-old Bea insisting I never borrow her good markers again without asking, no matter how desperate I am to color in a stupid pie chart for statistics class. “Get out and wait for me in the kitchen. Give me ten minutes, and we’ll discuss this like adults.”
“Iamdiscussing it like an adult,” I insist, but my volume is still too loud. I know that. So, when Bea cocks an “are you really?” eyebrow my way, I have no choice but to grumble, “Fine. But ten minutes. That’s it. And you are never going to be alone with him again, do we understand each other? Never.”
“Out!” she says again, eyes blazing brighter than before. “Before I come over there and slam the door in your face.”
“Fine!” I shout.
“Fine!” she shouts back.
I storm out of the guest room, slightly comforted by Bea’s fire, but only slightly. She isn’t broken, but that doesn’t mean Kai didn’t do his best to get the job done. He’s been doing his best to break her down for years, subtly dinging her confidence every chance he gets, until my once fiercely independent, outrageously talented sister seemed to think she couldn’t live—or make music—without him.
But she can.
And she will.
And if Kai tries to stop her?
Well, that’s a decision he’ll regret for a very, very long time.
Or a very short one…
Twelve
CHARLOTTE
Something’s wrong.
Very wrong.
I know Nix well enough by now to clock that a text like the one he sent around noon isn’t good—Can we talk? In person? I’m spiraling and could use some advice from someone I trust to keep a level head. If you don’t have time this afternoon, I totally get it. But maybe tomorrow? I don’t have practice, so I could meet you whenever, wherever. I just… I don’t know who else to ask. I’m afraid my guy friends might react the same way I am right now, and that wouldn’t be good.
I texted back right away, assuring him there was no need to apologize and offering to meet him here at three, in a place where we’re pretty much guaranteed privacy.
High tourist season is over, and even the “spooky NOLA” lovers gathering for the pre-Halloween festivities rarely make it to Metairie Cemetery, though I don’t understand why. Yes, it’s more off the beaten path than Saint Roch’s or the Lafayette tombs, but so much quieter and cooler, and every bit as lavish.
The tombs are like tiny mansions, topped with ornate sculptures and marble carvings, arranged along pathways shaded by ancient oak trees that have been here as longas some of the cemetery’s residents. I have a great, great-something aunt resting in the far corner, tucked into a gorgeous stone sarcophagus on a pedestal surrounded by a marble shell protecting her from the worst of the elements.
As a child, my family used to swing by for a visit every once and a while, bringing her daffodils from our yard in the spring or Mom’s roses in the summer. I was always proud that the inscription on her tomb said her full name—Marjorie Henrietta Dupont-Delaney, beloved wife and mother, the very soul of charity. Most of the tombs simply listed the deceased woman as “Emily, Wife of John” or sometimes, even worse, just Mrs. John Whatever, her identity completely erased by her marriage.
But for a long time, wives and children were considered the property of the “man of the house.” It’s why there are still so many laws forbidding even adult children from severing a father’s paternal rights in favor of adoption by a stepfather or other adult who’s had boots on the ground during their childhood.
My friend, Christopher, had to go to court our sophomore year of college and fight to be free of his bio dad, even though the man hadn’t paid child support in years, and being adopted by his stepdad was the only way Chris could get affordable medical care.
The world is deeply fucked.
And unless something changes pretty drastically, it likely will be for quite some time, a fact that feels heavier today for some reason. Maybe it’s the fact that the summer heat is back, infusing the humid air with the sickly-sweet scent of flowers rotting in cast-iron vases by the crypts.
