After His Wife Destroyed My Mother's Grave, I Disappeared

The taxi driver kept glancing at me in the rearview mirror.

I didn't blame him. I looked like something that had crawled out of a grave. Which was almost funny, considering where I was going.

The correctional facility was behind me now. Six weeks inside. The charges had been reduced. Some technicality about evidence chain of custody. The Griffin legal team hadn't fought it. I think they just wanted me gone.

I wore the same clothes they'd arrested me in. The black pants hung loose. I'd lost weight. The kind of weight you lose when your body decides survival is optional.

"Where to?" the driver had asked when I got in.

I gave him the address of the cemetery.

He didn't ask why.

The city passed outside the window. Morning light. People walking to work with coffee cups and phones. Normal lives. I used to have one of those.

I touched my collarbone. The space where my mother's necklace used to rest. They'd taken it during processing. It was in an evidence locker somewhere. Or maybe Vanessa had it now. Maybe she wore it.

I pressed my thumb against the inside of my left wrist. An old habit. Something to focus on that wasn't the ache in my ribs or the way my left side still pulled when I breathed too deep.

The taxi turned onto the narrow road that led to the cemetery gates. Trees on both sides. Quiet.

"You want me to wait?" the driver asked.

I looked at him in the mirror. He had kind eyes.

"Yes," I said. "Please."

He pulled over near the entrance. I got out slowly. Everything hurt in small, specific ways. My body was a map of what had been done to it.

I walked through the gates. I knew the path. I'd walked it dozens of times. Every month for years. Bringing flowers. Pulling weeds. Talking to a headstone like it could hear me.

The path curved left past the old oak tree. Then right. Then—

I stopped.

The headstone was in three pieces.

I stood there. I didn't move. I couldn't.

The marble had been smashed. Not by accident. Not by weather or time. Someone had taken something heavy and brought it down again and again until my mother's name broke into fragments.

The ground around the plot was torn up. Raw earth. Tire tracks from machinery. The flowers I'd planted last spring were gone. Just churned dirt and rocks.

I walked closer.

Someone had ordered this. Someone had paid for it. A landscaping company. A work order. A favor called in.

Vanessa.

I knelt beside the broken stone. My knees pressed into the dirt. I picked up one of the pieces. It was heavy. Cold.

My mother's name was split in half. SARAH WE—

The rest was on another piece somewhere.

I set it down carefully.

I thought I would cry. I thought something would break open inside me. Some last reserve of feeling.

But there was nothing.

I stayed there for a long time. Kneeling in the dirt. Holding pieces of marble that used to say my mother's name.

The sun moved. Birds made noise in the trees. Somewhere far away a lawnmower started.

I thought about four years of waiting. Four years of believing a promise. Four years of making myself small enough to fit into the spaces Damari left for me.

I thought about the baby I'd lost on a concrete floor.

I thought about six weeks in a cell where women Vanessa had paid made sure I understood exactly how disposable I was.

I thought about Damari's voice on the phone. Handle it legally. Full charges.

I thought about this. The grave. My mother's name in pieces.

I stood up.

I walked back to the taxi. The driver looked up when I opened the door.

"You okay?" he asked.

I almost laughed.

"No," I said.

He drove me to a diner I'd never been to. I paid him. I thanked him. I watched him drive away.

Inside, I ordered coffee I didn't drink. I sat in a booth by the window. I pulled out my phone.

I had one contact left who might help me. One person who owed me something she'd never named aloud.

I typed: I need to disappear.

I sent it.

Three minutes later my phone buzzed.

Sable Monroe: Where are you?

I told her.

She arrived twenty minutes later. She slid into the booth across from me. She looked at my face. At my hands. At the way I held my left side.

She didn't ask what happened. She already knew. Everyone knew.

"What do you need?" she said.

I told her.

She listened. She didn't interrupt. When I finished, she was quiet for a moment.

"It'll take ten days," she said finally. "Maybe less."

"Okay."

"You're sure?"

I looked out the window. People walking past. Living their lives.

"Yes," I said.

She nodded. She stood. She put cash on the table for the coffee.

"I'll call you," she said.

She left.

I sat there until the coffee went cold. Until the waitress asked if I needed anything else. Until the light outside started to fade.

Then I left too.

Ten days later, a car went over a cliff on a coastal highway north of the city. The police found hair samples. A blood-stained scarf. Enough to confirm.

By then I was already gone.

Lylah Wells died at 11:40 PM on a Tuesday.

I was on a plane to London.