for the sins of her mother

Doubt

Chiyo designated her kitchen table as their centre of operations. Mei saw that Chiyo was waiting for her to start and took a breath. She always wanted to feel needed. It had become a terrible weight. She had to pretend to be confident, to know what she was doing.

"Who would want to hurt Vera?" she asked, taking her cue from countless films. It was the first question to ask. And she'd keep the present tense to the end. She thought about it. The reflexive answer was 'no one' but 'undeserving of hate' and 'unhated' are different things. Still, the hatreds were childish, fuelled by pride and stupidity. No one could hate enough to thrust the knife, not one but eight calculated times. Mei answered her own question. "The bastard- I mean, what's his name- Seb. The obsessive." Chiyo gasped.
"Him. I forgot about him. But he wouldn't, right? He couldn't? He was a coward, that was all he was, he had latched onto her for some reason."

"Didn't she hit him? That last time she confronted him, when she told him to leave her alone forever. What if he-" Chiyo shook her head.

"He can't have. He- I can't." Mei could understand her. Seb was a pathetic, disgusting creep but he was creepy in the vein of bad love poetry and endless texts. She couldn't imagine him killing. "I don't want it to be him," said Chiyo. "I don't want it to be anyone. Is that stupid?"

"It's okay, I get it. But you've got to admit, he's not stable. Obsession can turn into hatred pretty fast."

"This is- I can't- It's too much."
"We should stop, then," said Mei, standing up. Chiyo picked the skin of her knuckles.
"No. We have to. No one else will."

"Who else?"

Vera's hair was black. It was a rare event. Her makeup was lilac, fairytale. If she grew wings and flew away no one would have batted an eyelid. "No, you two have to watch it!" she insisted. Mei rolled her eyes.

"Last time you insisted we had to watch a movie, Chiyo ended up sobbing." Vera made a sweeping motion with one hand (iridescent purple nails and thin silver rings on her fingers not that Mei noticed).

"Okay, sure, that time was an error of judgement. This time, you have to watch it. It's redefining modern cinema." Chiyo folded her arms and made her best attempt at a menacing glare.
"Promise that no animals get hurt and no one I'll get attached to dies," she said.
"Well that's an impossible promise. You get attached to kitchen tiles. You'll cry about the serial killer. You once got upset because a dandelion leaf looked sad." Mei slapped Vera on the arm.

"Okay, okay! No animals get hurt, and only one of the death scenes is sad or bloody. And I'll bring chocolate."

"It has to be at your house, though," said Mei. "I need to know what you're hiding there." Something crossed Vera's face. Uncertainty, even fear. It was alien to her and it disappeared quickly. Vera grinned.

"Of course you may enter my lair, sweet children. I just need to figure out a time when my dad won't be there." There was a dark current beneath those words, something that couldn't be disguised by her crooked grin. Mei wanted to find it, to make everything better.
"Why?"
"Why may you enter my lair?"

"Why can't we come around when your dad's there?" The fear returned and Mei wished for the millionth time that she could retract words.

"He's got a monopoly on the TV, so unless you want to watch nothing but the football..." Mei wanted the truth and she wanted to help, but she wanted to make Vera's smile return more.
"Anyway, tell me about the Raysbury phantoms." Vera nodded slightly, a tiny gesture of gratitude that would have been missed by anyone else.