Page 13 of Unburied

CHAPTER

SEVEN

The figure leaned forward, and his smell filled her nostrils. It was a combination of smoke and something faintly sweet, and it made her stomach churn.

“You sure you didn’t take my money, Virginia?”

His features remained obscured, blurry but somehow still familiar. She shook her head, fear and something else rising up in her throat, stealing her words as a second hand landed on her other knee.

“It’s okay if you did. Really. I need you to tell me the truth. Good girls tell the truth, Virginia.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t take it.”

“I think you’re lying to me, Virginia.” The huge hands felt heavy on her thighs as they slid upward, sending her heart into her throat. “Now, what are we going to do about that?”

She bolted upright in bed, cold sweat covering her body. Heart still racing, she drew in several deep breaths and tried to bring her body back under control. What was it with these crazy dreams?

For the past few weeks, they had plagued her incessantly. It was the same thing over and over—a strange, faceless man who would approach her in the middle of the night. She could still feel his clammy, fleshy palms on her skin, and she rubbed briskly at the blanket covering her thighs to dispel the sensation.

She felt sick to her stomach, unable to fathom why her mind conjured these images night after night. And it felt so real. What was wrong with her? She grabbed her phone where it was charging on the nightstand, and the numbers on the home screen read that it was a little after 3:00 AM. She wouldn't be able to go back to sleep. Not yet. She was always too shaken after these episodes to rest easy.

Instead, she slipped from the bed and headed out to the kitchen. On nights like these, she desperately wished she wasn't alone. At almost twenty-four, it was more than a little ridiculous of her. She'd spent several years up north in college all alone. She didn't need a man around.

But sometimes, even she had to admit that it might be nice. Nearly two years had passed since her last serious relationship ended. She’d met Brandon while attending college and had immediately fallen for him. But after almost three years together, things began to fizzle out. He wanted to settle down, take her home to meet his family. She wasn't ready for that. Not that it wouldn't be nice… someday.

But then, at twenty-one, marriage and kids weren't in her immediate future. She'd had dreams of doing something big with her life. She hadn't worked out all the details, but she knew she wanted more than what she grew up with.

Like she had told Mason at the hotel, her childhood had been spent mostly in a state of upheaval. Her mother worked whatever odd jobs she could find, typically cleaning houses or waitressing. Her father moved around, doing odd jobs. Sometimes it was citrus, other times avocado. But he traveled all over the south, working whenever they needed money.

When he moved around, her mother typically followed. That left her brother and her alone sometimes for months at a time. And when her parents weren't working, they were partying. They loved the music scene, reveled in the drink and drugs it offered. It was as if her parents had never really grown up, only gotten older as the years passed. They focused on having fun, seeming to forget that they had two children at home.

When she was eight, two officers showed up at the house one evening to inform them that their parents had perished in a car accident. She didn’t even remember crying for them. She didn't know them well enough to feel any kind of deep emotion that they were gone. If Knox felt differently, he never showed it.

He told the officers they had relatives who would step up and take care of them. It was a blatant lie. Their maternal grandparents had disowned their daughter when she married George Castillo, and Vivi had never met her paternal grandparents or any of her father’s family.

Knox had been more a father to her than a brother. She owed him for taking care of her at seventeen when he should have been out with his friends having fun. Instead, he’d been raising a nine-year-old girl. He’d never once complained, and they made it through several months together before the authorities threatened to remove her from his care.

The summer he turned eighteen, Knox enlisted in the Marines and found Vivi a home with Ellen, a friend of her maternal grandparents. Vivi’s grandparents had cut her mother off when she married Vivi’s father, and his parents were God knew where. In the end, they had little choice in the matter.

Though her maternal grandparents were still alive, they had neither the ability nor the desire to take in a nine-year-old girl. Instead, they’d reached out to Ellen, who had welcomed her in with open arms and treated her like her very own.

Ellen had seen her fair share of grief. Her own daughter, Christine, had committed suicide at just sixteen, just a couple of years before Vivi was born. A few months after Vivi moved in with her, Ellen insisted Vivi speak with a child psychologist. Vivi had thought it silly at the time but, looking back, she was certain Ellen didn’t want a repeat of what had happened with Christine.

Losing one’s parents was bound to do some emotional damage, but as she’d told Dr. Vance then, she was mostly just relieved to finally be in a home with someone who cared for her and was present all the time. She’d spoken with another doctor as well, but both had apparently told Ellen that she was resilient and well-adjusted.

Though Ellen was still overprotective, she began to relax her guard a bit as time went on. Still, she mourned her daughter deeply. There was a row of lilies planted along the fence in the backyard that commemorated her life, and Ellen had tended them diligently, almost as if they were a living extension of the real Christine. Vivi felt like it was her responsibility to take care of the house Ellen had loved so much.

It had never been her plan to stay in Florida, even though it was home. She’d gone to school for computer science, and she’d always wanted to move out west where technology reigned and make a name for herself. But when Knox had offered her a job with Vantage she hadn’t been able to say no.

Honestly, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. She vacillated daily between staying in Florida or staging the house and putting it on the market. A slice of pain zinged through her chest, compounding her guilt. Ellen had willed her the house, and it felt wrong somehow to sell it when it seemed to mean so much to her that Vivi stay there. She felt like she owed both her and her brother for all they’d done for her over the years.

She flipped on the light to the kitchen and looked around the room. It was still so similar to the place where she had grown up, yet different now too.

After the fire last week, the recovery team had scrubbed the entire room and now the smell of industrial cleaning agents hung in the air. The kitchen looked bare without the cabinets, and she rubbed the little space over her heart as a pang of hurt ricocheted through her chest.

She still couldn't believe she hadn't seen the signs of Ellen’s rapid downward spiral. Were they there and she had just ignored them? She didn't want to believe that was the case. Either way, the damage was done and Ellen was safe in the assisted living facility.

She planned to visit Morningside before heading into work in the morning. She wanted to make sure that Ellen was settling in okay. After everything that had happened, even though it was her choice to go, she still felt responsible for her wellbeing.