Page 5 of Stolen Kisses
I brought lilies and cleared the grave of all the roses from Sunday.
I hated roses …
I may have seemed like an asshole for getting rid of them, but I couldn’t stand the fucking sight. Felt like a reminder of the roses her killer had used to surround her body.
It was a reminder to me that she was gone.
The people who came for her birthday memorial wouldn’t have known that detail. Since I did, I removed them all and left the tulips Ma had bought with a few other arrangements. I’d left the dahlias that I brought too. Christina had liked those. I remembered her telling me that after she had found out her favorite actress loved them.
Once I was done cleaning, I’d sat down on the patch of grass in front of the grave, and there I sat for the last three hours.
Just watching and looking, remembering ;lost in my memories.
There was a bench, but I liked sitting on the grass just like I used to with Christina when we were kids.
We’d sit in the park near where we lived, talking and playing around for hours. I was just trying to do that now. This was our time. I’d talk to her still and tell her what was going on with me.
Today I was quiet the whole time.
I’d sat and mostly gazed out in the open at the surroundings. We’d buried her near the lake that she had loved.
I’d bought the whole plot of land and sectioned it off for her, so it was hers. Surrounding it was a garden with sculptures of everything she loved. She’d wanted to be an artist.
Prior to her death, she was trying to figure things out, because Ma wanted her to study something useful like business or law. Christina was very passionate about art and I had told her to take some time to figure things out.
She took that to mean moving out of Ma’s after high school and going to live with Maria.
It was the moment, everything changed. That was her equivalent of going wild in college. She was like that for two years before I thought she had calmed down. She came to me wanting my opinion on whether or not she should go to art school.
I stared at the head stone trying to remember the day when she told me about that. I’d said yes, because while she might have loved art, I knew going away to school would have gotten her someplace better. Far away from the gangsters and the dangerous types I was starting to see her with.
That day was more of a blur now.
My heart broke every time I cast my memory back to that time and something faded. That was what happened though. Time blurred the memory. Some things that were once vivid in my mind were all shadows now.
Practically everything except that night when I had found Christina dead on the bed.
That memory was still bright and clear like it could have happened only yesterday. I had to remind myself that it was ten years ago.
However, by doing so, by reminding myself that it was a decade ago I remembered that I had failed as her brother and I hadn’t found justice.
I had never found her killer.
I hugged my knees to my chest and stared openly at the grave—her final resting place.
My last words in life to her wereI’m done with you.
I never realized that was going to be the last time we’d speak. The last time she’d talk with me, the very last time I’d see her alive.
We’d had such a bad argument and I had foolishly used stupid reverse psychology on her, because I thought it would work. She knew how much I adored her, and she’d always come to me when she was younger. She got older though and things changed.
I didn’t know how ten years had passed so quickly. Year in, year out I hoped that something would come up, but there was nothing.
I was still looking and hadn’t given up. I had no plans to give up either, even though the police had done so years ago.
I still had guys searching while I continued my own investigation. The longer I looked and the harder I searched I knew that the person who had killed her must have been some kind of high power fucker.
Some high power fucker who wanted to teach her a lesson. She was pregnant and wanted to destroy him.
