Chapter 1: The Mud and the Margarita
The rain did not fall; it assaulted the earth. It came down in heavy, relentless gray sheets, turning the graveyard dirt into a thick, clinging mud that stained the hem of my black wool dress. I stood beneath a dripping canvas canopy, the cold seeping through the soles of my shoes, creeping up my legs like a slow
paralysis.
In front of me, suspended over a gaping, rectangular wound in the earth, were two mahogany caskets. One was standard adult size. The other was devastatingly, agonizingly small.
My husband, Daniel, and my seven-year-old daughter, Lily.
The priest was speaking, his voice a droning murmur easily swallowed by the wind and the rhythmic drumming of rain against the coffins. I didn’t hear a word he said. My reality had narrowed to the brass handles on Lily’s casket. I kept expecting the lid to pop open. I kept waiting for her to sit up, her dark curls plastered to her forehead, complaining that it was too dark and she wanted to go home.
But the caskets were lowered. The gears groaned. The earth reclaimed them.
As the first shovelful of wet dirt hit Daniel’s coffin with a sickening thud, a vibration shuddered against my hip. Numbly, operating on a bizarre, detached autopilot, I slipped my phone from my coat pocket. The screen flared to life, overly bright in the gloom of the cemetery.
It was a group chat notification from a thread I hadn’t looked at in a week.
My mother had sent a high-definition photograph. It took a second for my tear-blurred eyes to focus on the image. There was my mother, my father, and my older brother, Mason. They were all deeply tanned, their skin glistening with oil, smiling broadly behind expensive designer sunglasses. They were holding
sweating piña coladas, lounging on a sun-drenched, white-sand beach in Cabo San Lucas.
Beneath the image was a text from my mother: “We’re sorry, sweetheart, but flights are expensive right now and funerals are just so emotionally draining. This is too trivial to ruin the trip we planned for months. We’ll call next week. Chin up!”
I stared at the glowing pixels. A raindrop hit the screen, magnifying the word trivial.
I didn’t scream. I didn’t throw the phone. A bizarre, absolute stillness washed over me. It was the sensation of a main artery being severed; the pain hasn’t registered yet, only the profound, icy knowledge that a fatal change has occurred.
Three days later, I was sitting in the suffocating silence of my living room. The house felt cavernous, haunted by the echoes of a life that no longer existed. I was curled in Daniel’s leather armchair, wearing his oversized college sweatshirt, clutching Lily’s muddy yellow rain boot to my chest. The dried mud flaked onto my lap. It was the boot she had been wearing on the afternoon of the crash.
The silence was absolute, a heavy blanket woven from grief and phantom memories.
Then, a violent, kinetic pounding shattered the quiet.
Someone was hammering their fists against the solid oak of my front door, rattling the frame. The doorbell shrieked, once, twice, three times in rapid, impatient succession.
I slowly uncurled my legs, my joints aching as if I had aged fifty years in seventy-two hours. I wiped a tear from my hollow cheek, leaving a smear of dirt across my pale skin. I shuffled to the door, the yellow boot still gripped tightly in my left hand.
I turned the deadbolt and pulled the door open.
Standing on my porch, surrounded by a pile of premium leather luggage, were my parents and Mason. They were still sporting their Mexican sunburns, looking annoyed, impatient, and utterly devoid of grief.
Before I could even open my mouth to speak, my father pushed past me, his shoulder roughly clipping mine. He didn’t offer a hug. He didn’t look at my tear-stained face. He just stepped into the foyer, his eyes darting around the house like an appraiser.
“Where is Daniel’s life insurance paperwork?” he demanded, his voice devoid of a single ounce of sorrow. “We need forty grand by tonight, Clara, or your brother is going to prison.”
Chapter 2: The Price of Blood
