Because somehow, the case kept getting worse. Some girls, either because they were already broken or because they thought it might help them escape, had cozened up to their captor, and he’d mark them with his favor by tattooing another set of wings on their faces, to match the ones on their backs. Everyone else could cover up their wings, once they were out of the Garden. Danelle and Marenka, the only survivors to have gotten that second set of wings, have to rely on a hell of a lot of good makeup.
Even with the smaller sets on their faces covered, those who know they’re there treat the girls differently. Treat them worse, as if sucking up to try to stay alive longer makes them evil.
He hopes they decide against coming. He actually likes Danelle and Marenka, both of them calm and steady and less sharp-edged than Inara and Bliss. Better for them to grieve Tereza—Amiko, he reminds himself, her name is Amiko—without her parents being hateful.
Marlene sets plates before him and Ramirez, then pours out mugs of coffee. Despite the hour and the fact that she’s not going to the funeral, she’s fully dressed, a single strand of pearls soft and prim against her dark green sweater set. “That poor girl,” she says. “At least she’s at peace now.”
That rather depends on what you believe, doesn’t it? Ramirez touches the crucifix at her throat and doesn’t say anything. Inara and Bliss both take over-large bites of pastry, chewing to keep from speaking.
Eddison’s not really sure what he believes when it comes to death or suicide or any of that.
Vic comes into the kitchen then, adjusting the knot on his dark brown tie. Eddison and Ramirez are both dressed for a funeral; Vic is dressed for a Butterfly’s funeral, in brown and ivory somber enough to be respectful to grieving parents and far enough from black to be comforting to survivors. It’s exquisitely sensitive and intuitive and a number of other adjectives Eddison is decidedly not, even on his best days.
“Sit down and eat, Victor,” his mother tells him.
He kisses the top of her head, safely away from the tidy coils of silver hair that have been pinned in place. “We have to head out, Ma, it’s almost—”
“Victor, you will sit and eat and start this terrible day off right.”
He sits.
Inara covers her mouth with one hand, but her pale brown eyes are bright. She’s a very contained young woman, restrained in expression around most. The survivors are somewhat exceptions, but he has a feeling she’s only truly relaxed around the girls she lives with. “Mrs. Hanoverian, please tell me you used to write notes in his school lunches.”
“Let’s see, Mondays I told him to make good choices; Tuesdays I told him to make me proud; Wednesdays I told him . . .” But she trails off, smiling as the girls dissolve into almost silent laughter, leaning against each other.
“And you doubted me,” Vic chides around a mouthful of cinnamon roll.
It’s strange to be laughing before they head out to a seventeen-year-old’s funeral. Sixteen. Her birthday would have been in a few weeks.
Inara catches his eye and shrugs. “You laugh or you cry. Which would you rather do?”
“Yell,” he says succinctly.
“Me too,” Bliss replies, teeth bared in a snarl. A bit of cinnamon-heavy bread is caught between two of her teeth.
He figures Inara will eventually tell her about it.
The seven-hour drive to North Carolina is quiet, but not silent. Ramirez stretches out in the very back seat, because if she’s a passenger without paperwork to keep her busy, she will fall asleep before the next exit, every time. Inara and Bliss sit in the middle, the radio turned down to allow conversation with Vic in the driver’s seat. Eddison listens but doesn’t particularly contribute. Most of his attention is on his phone, skimming through Google alerts for bodies found in churches. It’s a little early in the year yet for Chavi’s murderer to strike again, but he checks regularly, just in case.
Bliss is taking classes, filling in gaps in her education so she can take her GED this summer. Neither she nor Inara has decided yet about college, it seems. He gets it. If they know what they want to do—and he doesn’t think they do—why throw themselves into it now when they know the eventual trial is going to take up so much time? They’re already down in D.C. fairly frequently to answer more questions in pretrial. They’ll both be called to testify if the case gets to the courtroom before they’re eighty, and Inara has already promised the other girls she’ll be there when they take their turns on the stand.
No matter how often he hears proof of Inara as housemother, he still can’t wrap his brain around it. It’s like a pit bull in a tutu.
A Butterfly with boxing gloves.
After two stops for gas and a meal, they pull up to the church for the funeral. There aren’t many cars in the parking lot.
“Are we early?” Ramirez asks groggily, reaching for her purse so she can fix her makeup.
“A little,” Vic answers.
Ramirez isn’t awake enough, but Eddison hears the layer tucked into the simple words: Vic doesn’t expect there to be many people.
Bliss releases her seat belt with a click and a heavy thunk of the latch hitting the door. “Told you. The Kobiyashis are assholes. They probably wouldn’t hold a funeral at all if the suicide hadn’t hit the news.”
Eddison glances back at Inara, who knew Tereza better than Bliss did, but she’s looking out the window at the whiteboarded church.
They all get out of the car and stretch, and Vic takes Bliss’s hand and hooks it around his elbow as they walk ahead to the double doors. Part of it is manners—Marlene raised a gentleman—but Eddison’s willing to bet a month’s pay that Vic’s hoping to keep a leash on Bliss’s idea of small talk. Ramirez double-checks her face in the tinted window and hurries after.
Eddison’s in no hurry. He leans against the side of the car, looking up at the Baptist church. Except for the space in front of the doors, the building is lined with thick, dark shrubs in beds of reddish mulch. There’s extra space in front of the shrubs, a stretch of pine chips before the faded grass picks up. Flower beds? The church probably looks rather charming that way, all abloom, but that makes him think of the Garden, of how he’s told it looked before the explosions, and fuck, is there anything this case doesn’t touch?
He’s gone to more funerals than he can count, and yet every single one is just . . .
Inara settles next to him against the car, hands clasped at her waist. A black-and-gold wristlet dangles from her hooked pinky. “You don’t have to be here, you know.”
“Yes, I—” But he stops, swallows back the reflexive indignation, because this is Inara. Inara, who always means what she says, but usually not in the way you first expect.
And he realizes that no, he doesn’t have to be here. There’s no Bureau requirement, no order, no generally agreed guideline, nothing official that mandates his presence at the funeral of a girl who killed herself because the seams where she broke the first time were too fragile to stitch together a second time. It’s his personal code that has him here, his principle that keeps him facing terrible things because it’s the right thing to do.
It’s his choice.
He looks over at her, unsurprised to find her watching him, her thoughts on the matter neatly tucked away and impossible to read. That’s not something she learned in the Garden, or after. That’s always been her life. “Thank you.”
“Careful, Eddison,” she teases, her hands lifting in mock surrender. “Someone might hear and think you almost like me.”
“Almost,” he agrees, just to see her startled smile.
He doesn’t offer her his arm, and she doesn’t expect it. They push off from the car and walk together into the church, shoulders tight with the shared awareness that this almost certainly won’t be the last Butterfly funeral, but it might be the worst.
For Inara, it might be the worst funeral, full stop, but Eddison is far too aware that spring is coming. Whoever killed Chavi Sravasti and so many other girls will kill again, responding to triggers the FBI can’t name, and Eddison will stand next to Vic and Ramirez at yet another funeral and feel like a terrible person, because he’ll be grateful it isn’t Priya.