You Are Mine Little Sister (by Syra Tucker) novel Chapter 124

RALI

Alec Stone and Gretchen Stone. Right next to each other.

I couldn't believe I was finally meeting them after twenty years.

I dropped to the ground, cross-legged. The grass was cool through my calves; the stone breathed its own kind of winter.

"Hi," I managed, my voice hoarse. "I'm glad I finally met you two."

Sniffling, I set a small bouquet on each headstone—one on his, one on hers—then swiped the single tear making a path down my cheek.

"It's Lilith," a shaky laugh slipped free. "Though I go by the name Zerali now. Rali for short." Like introductions mattered to marbles.

"I wish you were here," My gaze dropped to the space between my knees. Words scraped my throat on the way out. "I wish I'd gotten to know you and... you'd gotten to see the beautiful woman I grew into. I'm so sorry you didn't get to find me before you passed. I'm so sorry if it hurt.. I—" The sentence broke, pain finishing it for me.

"I wish we'd had a whole life to be a family."

My head pounded from two days of crying. Grief had sanded me down to the quick. Part of me suddenly hated myself for searching, for opening this door and learning there'd be no knock back.

It was so heartbreaking I didn't and would never get the chance to meet them. God, I wish things were different and they hadn't died in that accident.

I pulled the folded photographs from my back pocket. They were prints Void had dragged out of the internet, and God, they were beautiful.

I smoothed the creases with my palm. My father's green eyes stared out of a younger man's face. My mother's smile was cute and looked like mine. They looked like people who would have filled a house with noisy love. I traced their outlines with a fingertip, as if I could memorize them into muscle memory.

I stayed a long time, speaking, falling quiet, speaking again, until the words thinned and the ache settled into a sore silence. When I finally pushed to my feet, my legs had pins and needles.

Outside the gates, Void waited by the car, leaning against it with a cigarette burning down between two fingers. He didn't move as I approached, his jaw tight, eyes like cooled metal. He'd been pissed since I started crying over the loss. It bothered him, I knew, that this was a problem he couldn't break or buy for me.

"Done?" His voice came rough with cold edges.

I nodded and sniffed, tucking both hands into the pockets of my purple cardigan with my eyes on the gravel. He dropped the cigarette and ground it out under his boot with a slow twist like he wanted it to suffer for me.

"Come on." He pulled me into his chest—one of those bear-hugs that swallowed me whole.

I let my eyes fall shut and sank into him anyway, finding comfort in 'my' monster despite knowing he was the wrong one to take that from. He smelled like home, and God, I wanted to stay there.

"You still have Tasmin and Joe you know? They're good people."

"Yeah." I breathed damp into his shirt. "I guess they're all I have left."

****†****†

"So, this is it?" Veronica asked, shoulder to shoulder with me, staring at the mansion ahead.

I didn't respond, too drawn in by the house I was probably born in.

It belonged to someone else now. My parents had no relatives they passed their properties to. So, after their deaths, the government took over and handed the deed to someone else.

"Think going inside would jog anything? My memories, I mean," I questioned, my eyes still glued to the house.

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