Page 26 of Perfect Order
Maybe she’s watching and heard Beckett? Maybe it was just time? But either way, my shoulders shake as I stare at Brit’s beautiful smile just beneath my best friend’s eyes staring up at me. There’s absolution in those eyes. Absolution I’m not certain I deserve yet but I’ll keep trying to earn.
By the time Beckett comes offstage, I’ve pulled myself together. “Do you want to go by Erzulie’s?” I ask him somberly.
He shakes his head. “Carys said she’s helped her escape out of the city. She’s at her parents’, but I do need to figure out how to get something to the funeral.”
“We’re not going?” Surprise leaks into my voice as we make our way out of the green room.
“No. There are days when I wish I could go back in time and make different decisions. Times when…”
“Yes?” I tilt my head, curious about the older man.
Beckett runs his fingers through his hair. “Never mind. It’s too late to change the past. But no. We’re not going. Apparently my showing up will cause too much of a media circus.” He tosses out the words as if they mean nothing, but I know hearing them from Carys had to have stung.
I stop him. “If you want to find a way to go, I’ll help find a way to make it happen.”
His mouth falls open in surprise because typically I’m the one encouraging him to keep a lower profile. But once again, his thoughtfulness surprises me. “No, because if I show up, then it becomes about Ky and not about her sister. You know?”
“Don’t I ever,” I agree fervently as my mind drifts back to the funeral I attended just a few years before.
There’s one thing I know for certain: I know I’ll never be able to look at Kylie Miles in quite the same way I did before. There’s something about death that binds people in unimaginable ways. Being left behind leaves you with a whole host of questions.
The most terrible being, why not me?
Saratoga Springs, N.Y.Ivan Forfa has been named CEO of Castor Industries.
Amid overwhelming grief, Ivan Forfa has been voted to succeed Leanne Miles after her sudden death, effective immediately. Castor has announced they expect no delay in their recently awarded government contract with the Department of Defense.
—Castor Newsroom
Four days later, I can’t remember a time I’ve been this exhausted. Not even in the early days of starting up Castor when we’d be pulling twenty-one-hour days and sleeping on our office floors to meet insane deadlines we’d set.But at least you’re alive, I remind myself as I climb the small hill leading to Kylie's grave. I need to be alone with her for a while. Just us.
If the worst day of my life was watching my sister’s heartbeat stop, today will be the night that replays in my nightmares for eternity. It wasn’t a celebration of her life; it was about me. And above all, it was a goddamn farce.
I wanted to vomit on several occasions between listening to my coworkers, my supposed friends, alternately mourn my loss out of one side of their mouth and murmur they really weren’t that surprised out of the other. “I always wondered if she was capable of running an empire of this magnitude on her own. Good God, you don’t think it was drugs, do you? That she wandered off to score and got mugged?” I overheard Ivan exclaim as if he was the expert on my behavior.
Fortunately, Carys dragged me away before I could line up to ram my pointed shoe between his legs. That’s when she guided me in the direction of my mother, who was in a catatonic state flipping through photo albums, touching pictures of my sister. And I felt like smacking every single person who told her, “At least you still have Kylie,” because she’d just give them a blank stare. And they’d give her an empathetic pat, telling her her heart will heal with time.
Bullshit. A heart that’s damaged can’t grow back. It decays more over each day blood pumps through it. So, what the hell kind of good will words like those do anyone?
I somehow managed to hold up my family during the invitation-only service. It was the most impersonal service I could come up with. When I explained to my parents the reason why—that some reporter would likely try to sneak in as a guest—my father yelled, “Can’t they just leave us alone? We just lost our little girl!”
I repeated the words Carys said to me in a whisper, “This is the life she chose.”
My mother hissed, “No, this is the life you both chose,” before she stormed out of the room, blaming me for my sister’s choices. After all, if one of us got in trouble as a child, we both did. I guess we still are.
And if I’m right, I’ll be contributing to her agony until I find out who did this to Kylie.
I pause for a moment in my climb, a snip of a conversation coming back to me.
“I’m so glad we set up the trust, Leanne.”
“Why?”
“Because if it weren’t for you, I’d never have this chance.” Kylie hugged me hard. “I wish you could feel what it’s like to be up onstage when the nerves settle out and it’s just you and the music.”
“I’d probably throw up,” I joked. “People would never believe I’m you.”
Her eyes stared off in the distance. “You’d be surprised.”
