Page 73 of Threaded Lies

I’ve lived my whole life with the sheen of privilege and affluence, not the invisible scars and scratched psyche of someone who has struggled or done without. Sure, I thought I had them—struggles—but I’m astute and selfless enough to know I had nothing hard in comparison to those who grew up on this side of the river.

To those who grew up like Holden.

“I don’t want my brother to win,” I say eventually, noticing our surroundings are becoming more familiar.

“Yeah, well, you Rothschilds seem to get everything you always wish for, so don’t act so surprised.”

“Not everything,” I say, uncertain why I feel the need to rebut against the anger that emanates off that statement.

Another grunt followed by a long stretch of silence as we turn onto a street even more familiar to me. We must be near the Sanctuary, then. I try to picture my brother’s vision here: warehouses, restaurants, chic apartments for urban types. Is a revitalization necessary and could it work?

Yes and yes.

But not at the cost of displacing all these people. Sure, some of the people in this town can be classified as bad in one way or another—theft, drugs, crime—but for the most part all the people here are simply hardworking and trying to provide for their families.

The same could be said for Westmore or any town on the other side of the river for that matter. Good people with a sprinkle of bad.

In fact, I venture to guess there are more bad people in Westmore than Fairmont. The difference is in my town people have the money to pay off their crimes and hide behind their fancy gates to pretend they never happened.

“There are other ways to defeat him,” Holden murmurs.

His words stay with me long after he says them and continue to as he turns in to the parking lot of what appears to be a cemetery.

One of my least favorite places in the world.

And yet, Holden navigates the parking lot before finding a space beneath the only tree in the entire section of plots. He puts the car in park, cracks the windows some, and stares intently ahead at the sea of grave markers out there.

Headstones are few and far between, the grass struggles to stay green but is winning the fight, and pinwheels or fake flowers dot the different plots. There is love here. It’s a weird thought, but you can feel the peace and the love.

I glance over to Holden. His posture has relaxed some but he is still quiet in his intensity and silent with his thoughts.

“I never knew this was here.”

“Why would you?”

“Don’t be a dick. I’m not my brother.”

He shifts, moving his knee so that he can turn and look at me better. He paints quite the stunning picture in his silver dress shirt and strikingly good looks. But he just studies me with his head angled to the side and a whole world I can’t begin to understand behind those eyes of his.

He told me in the diner that night that he’d lost a younger sibling too. His brother. He knows the weight a place like this holds. He understands, more than most could, why it’s hard for me to sit here. And still he decided to stop here.

“Do you sit in cemeteries often?” I ask, glancing around as a car pulls in to our right and begins to drive the slow loop through the far end of the block that takes you closer to the plots. I shiver, nerves suddenly eating at me. And then I begin to ramble, needing to eat up the silence with words. “I hate everything about them if you want to know the truth. What they stand for. What they hold. The depth of emotion they make you feel every time you set foot in one. I sometimes think I prefer to be numb, not to feel, and then I remind myself how boring life would be without any feeling, you know?”

“Mmm,” he murmurs.

“Part of the reason I hate them is because I feel horribly guilty for not going to visit Cassie more. And if I’m not going, does that mean I don’t love her? Does she know I don’t go? How is your love measured for someone after death? In how often you visit their headstone? I mean, the questions are endless and the guilt that goes with every single one is just as ridiculous and unfounded … and yet they’re there. Every single time, like clockwork. But then, so is death.” I emit a shaky laugh. “Sorry. I’m rambling. I’m—”

Holden reaches over and places his hand on top of mine before lacing our fingers together. He squeezes, a silent show of support that for some reason hits me so very hard in the feels.

Maybe it’s just because I’ve been thinking about Cassie so much since the other day, or perhaps I just needed to know there is a human being in this godforsaken place who is kind. Regardless, it means more to me than he’ll ever know.

“I hate them too.” His voice is a quiet rumble in the car. “For all the same reasons as you. Sometimes I think I visit them to ease the guilt over why my brother was the one who had to die. Sometimes I do it as a punishment for being the one still here.” I squeeze his hand back. “My mom. God, she … she spent the first few nights after he died sleeping at his gravesite with him. She was afraid that he was going to be lonely and cold, and so I think I force myself to visit the cemetery to remind me of that pain and why I need to keep going.”

I swallow over the lump of emotion lodged in my throat. The visual he paints is so visceral and heartbreaking. And real.

“It’s not fair. They deserved to be here with us. To get to experience all of this with us.”

“Hmm,” he says, opening his mouth and then pausing as if he is reconsidering what it is he was going to say. “You want to talk about real guilt? If he hadn’t died, I don’t know that I would be who I am. My success. My life. It was like his death created a path for me that I never would have been on. And that’s a hard pill to swallow and an even tougher reality to navigate.”