Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 107118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 536(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 536(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
“Mamma,” I whispered into the blustering wind. “Papa.” My voice was drowned out by a crack of thunder. “I’m sorry,” I rasped, my falling tears melding with the droplets from the sky.
I looked up at the burned wood. I hadn’t seen their bodies. The coroner said all that was left of them was bones. My grandfather took my mamma’s remains and buried them on his land. My fingers curled tighter into the mud as anger made fists of my hands. My papa was buried communally. I didn’t have a single scrap of money. Nothing to pay for a funeral.
My parents, who’d endured everything together—fought together, loved together, fucking died together—didn’t get the one thing that was their divine right.
To rest together.
No grave for me to speak to them. No holding of hands as they walked to the boatman and crossed over to the Elysian Fields. Just burned bones and teeth, parted, ripped apart, in defiance of the second my mamma had seen my papa across that jazz bar in New Orleans.
“I’m sorry.” I lowered my head to the ground, a fucking silent prayer. A prayer that wherever they were, they could hear me. Hear how sorry their burden of a son was that his illness caused them to die, all because he was late in coming home. “I’m so fucking sorry,” I called more loudly, lifting my eyes up to see nothing but burned wood and charred nails. Hand over hand, I crawled forward and searched through the rubble. I grabbed any pieces of wood that were still intact and piled them at my feet. Gathered as many nails as I could. I didn’t think; I just let my hands start building. Using a hard, short plank as my hammer, I drove a long piece into the ground. Then placing another horizontally, I used the plank to hammer the nails into the makeshift cross. I did the same with the second, ignoring my cuts opening and pouring with blood.
Out of breath and weak, I sat back and stared at the blackened wooden crosses. I fought the lump in my throat as I took my knife out of my cut and began carving the wood. I choked on the fucking pained rage that left my mouth with each letter.
My knife dropped to the ground, and I stared at the words. “Mamma” etched on one. “Papa” etched on the other. Under both of their names, I scrawled, “Love doesn’t see color. Only pure hearts.”
“I love you.” I reached out and ran my fingers down the jagged wood. I closed my eyes. “I miss you both so fucking much.” My face crumpled. “I don’t know how to do it.” I took a long gasp of breath. “How the fuck to be with them when there are fuckers in the world like the ones who did this to you.” I swallowed. “I can’t save them from the Klan. From white power . . . from people who won’t ever understand—don’t wanna understand. I don’t know how the fuck to get all this from my head . . .” My head dropped along with my arms. I was exhausted. I breathed in and out, and then admitted, “I don’t know how to be me. I have no idea who the fuck I even am.”
Silence answered back; that, and the rumbling storm above. Swaying with bone-tiredness, I lay in front of the only family I had in the world. I closed my eyes and gave in to the dark.
I didn’t even feel the rain.
I didn’t even feel the cold.
I felt nothing, except the comforting dead feeling of hopelessness. And a sense that with these two crosses and their names written in wood, I wasn’t alone.
I just couldn’t fucking face being so lonely anymore.
Chapter Fourteen
Cowboy
The sun woke me, its bright rays making me flinch. I groaned, my body aching from the past few days and my stomach growling for food and coffee. A warm body pressed against my side. Smiling, I cracked open my eyes and peered down at the head on my shoulder. Sia was still asleep, hand on my chest and her breath blowing on my neck. I checked the clock on the table beside me. Fuck. We’d slept through the late afternoon and right through the night. That’s what a fucking kidnapping to Mexico would do to you.
I glanced over to check if Hush was awake. My brow furrowed when I saw he wasn’t there. A weird feeling settled in my stomach at how he had been yesterday, at how he’d seemed after we’d both taken Sia. The brother was obviously bothered by something. The way he’d hovered at the door of the bedroom while Sia cried, instead of getting his ass to bed to make sure she was okay.
Gently lifting Sia’s arm off me, I slid out of bed. She moaned, almost waking up, but then settled back down into the sheets. My chest fucking expanded watching her. Unable to keep away, I leaned down and kissed her shoulder. The knife marks on her lower neck were healing. But the numbers were still as visible as the moment they were carved. Mine were too.