Page 30 of The Graveyard Girls

Still, for some reason she wanted her sister’s approval. So she’d done what Ruth said and kept her secrets. And they’d both paid the price for it.

Guilt suffused her, and she shuffled past the kitchen, ignoring the tug of nostalgia of family dinners, Taco Tuesdays and holiday meals when the house had smelled like prime rib and her mother’s rosemary roasted potatoes.

Although meals had been stilted. Her mother insisted they dress for dinner and berated them if they didn’t use propermanners. Her father had been up and down from the table on work phone calls and never joined the conversation. As an adult now, she realized he’d ignored her mother. The only one he paid attention to was Ruth.

And that was before Ruth went missing. The night that had happened they’d become obsessed with finding her.

Her parents had been distraught. Her mother turned to vodka while her father became the bane of the police’s existence, hounding Sheriff Wallace. More than once, he’d accused him of negligence. The two of them had disagreed over politics in the town, her father pushing to get the toxins cleaned up while Sheriff Wallace had dragged his feet.

Exhausted, Tilly carried a glass of Chardonnay to her bedroom, pulled on flannel pjs and crawled into bed. For a long minute, she lay looking at the dark ceiling. Staring into empty space. Listening to the sound of the furnace grumbling just as it had when she lived here.

Time rolled back as if it was a video on rewind…

The loneliness. The ache to be close to Ruth, to someone. Not to be the geek freak with the outgoing sister who she’d played Barbies and Candy Lane with at one time but who wanted nothing to do with her as a teen. She missed that big sister.

The warmth of the room finally lulled her into sleep and dreams carried her back in time.

Another sound… the window sliding up. Her sister’s room across the hall.

Tilly clenched the sheets, her heart thudding. Heard whispers in the dark. Ruth’s. A boy at the window calling Ruth’s name. The quiet padding of footsteps. The squeak of the wood floor.

“Shh.” Her sister’s voice. Then a quiet giggle. And nerves that ripped through Tilly from the inside out.

Then silence except for the wind whistling through the open window as Ruth left for the night.

THIRTY-FIVE

Briar Ridge Mobile Homes

Although Kat hated that damn graveyard where Hetty worked and the other kids talked about the ghosts roaming the cemetery, she was intrigued by the mischievous games her mother played with Hetty. It was hard to imagine the two of them ashumansmuch less kids.

They were old and such a drag now. Hetty’s fingernails were always covered in dirt and she smelled like fertilizer or chicken shit.

Her mama’s skin was dry and wrinkled and in the summer she smelled of the tomatoes she soaked in hot water to can. When winter came, she coated her chapped face and lips in Vaseline so she looked like a greased pig.

Her daddy ruled the roost, as the old biddies in town whispered.

Yeah, he thought he was king of the house, but he was a bully. She had no idea why her mama stayed with him except she didn’t have a job and Mama claimed she stayed because of Kat.

That was just an excuse because she was too afraid to leave.

Kat lifted her chin, her stubborn streak kicking in. She refused to ever let a man run her life like that.

Downstairs, she heard her mama talking on the phone. “Oh, my word, Hetty, I can’t believe this is happening. It feels like before.”

Kat knew she was talking about Ruth Higgins and the gossip in town.

Her mother’s voice grew more hushed and worried, as if she didn’t want anyone to hear what she was saying.

Curious, Kat decided to check out her mama’s journal again.

Everybody at school thinks Ruth is all there is. She acts sweet to the teachers and must be a genius because she gets good grades but I’ve never seen her study. In class, she’s too busy passing notes to Clint.

Today this happened:

Someone passed a note to me to give to Clint and I snuck a peek.

“Meet me at the DQ.” Ruth’s pink lipstick painted lips formed a kiss on the paper.