Page 150 of A Curse On Black Lake
“I don’t know,” he mumbles.
“Grams would be heartbroken.” I take a deep breath even though my eyes burn with more tears. I’m so tired of crying.
“I’m sure she would, but she would be proud too.”
I look away. My throat fills with shame, making it hard to swallow. He’s wrong. I’m sure she’d have disowned me by now.
“You were so brave today, Eliana. I know walking through your house like that, seeing Hazel, and your garden, tore you up inside. But you faced it.”
“Why me? Why us?” I ask him.
“It’s probably not a good thing that I think we’re going to find out.”
“I just want to hide under the covers until it all goes away,” I mumble, shoving my face further into the pillow.
“Can I come with?”
“I don’t know why you’d want to,” I say into the pillow.
He doesn’t answer right away, and I pull my face out of the bedding to face him again.
He blinks and drags his thick finger over my nose and lips, stopping at my chin. “Because I want to be wherever you are.”
Chapter forty-seven
Killian
Shegapesatme.
It’s the truth. She’s the only one I want in my orbit. I’ve had no desire to be around anyone for a long time since Dad died. It was easier to keep everyone at arm’s length. But I want Eliana as close as possible.
“I’ve never seen a dead body before, not like that,” she says.
Okay then.
“It’s a hard thing to look at,” I mutter, having seen too many.
“Grams looked at peace. That poor woman had everything stolen from her.”
I run my hand through her hair again. “It might be one thing to process the death of people you love, but it’s different when you see death that’s unattached to you. Sometimes it can be difficult not to become jaded about it.”
“Is that what happened to you?”
“Among many things, yes. Seeing Dad decline, and die right in front of me, strangely shook me out of it. But you can still mourn for Hazel. She deserves to have someone do that for her,” I tell her.
“I’m sure she has family.”
“I think she has a sister in town. I don’t remember. Usually, a lot of these women are Jane Does. No one knows who they are, or that they’re even missing. That’s why I find it so strange that the perp went after a local woman.”
“Sometimes it feels like the entirety of Black Lake is being buried in this town. The population gets smaller, but the cemetery keeps getting bigger,” Eliana says.
I nod and kiss her nose.
We lay there in silence, and it feels like the ghosts of this town are surrounding us, the fog becoming so thick it’s almost impossible to see life in Black Lake.
“Are the Spirits quiet?” I ask her.
“They finally stopped screaming, so it doesn’t feel like my ears are bleeding.”
