A Crime Worth Committing

Chapter 1: I fucking hate cemeteries.

  These days I'd say I've grown to hate a lot of things. Especially this god forsaken cemetery. I've been here too many times. My name on too many eulogies as 'survived by'. The wet grass under my heels. This stupid black dress that has somehow become my designated funeral dress. The sun, blaring on my ivory skin, as if my mood isn't already shit to begin with. And the tears that won't stop pouring down my cheeks. The ache in my chest that makes me want to hurl, scream and curse. The way the people around me are sobbing. It's my mother being lowered into the ground, yet everyone else is crying harder than me. I almost want to laugh at how stupid that sounds.
  Just four years ago I was standing at this exact burial spot, holding mama's hand as they lowered daddy's casket into this same hole, listening to the guns go off in his honor. The Three-Volley Salute. I was seventeen when daddy died. His life was taken by a serial killer, known by locals as 'The Red-way Ripper'. The name itself almost makes me snarl. I look at the names on the headstone. The two people that gave me life, that brought me into this world. Their names, birth dates and death dates carved into the stone seem like a sick joke to me. Am I really all alone now? Maybe I should get a cat?
  Taking a look around, I see all the same people that were here four years ago to lay my father to rest. I bet my ass no one thought we'd all be back for a cruel reunion so soon because my mom couldn't take it anymore. I can't say I blame her, daddy was her endgame. Their love story drew back to their freshman year in high school. Somehow through twenty-two years of marriage, they never got sick of each other. They got married at eighteen and had me at nineteen. They still danced and laughed and had cringy inside jokes and daddy flirted with her like he was still trying to get her. I wonder how something so beautiful could turn so damn tragic.
  Father Mark is still speaking and I'm not registering a damn thing he's saying. All I see is the pink casket six feet below the earth's surface, holding my mom's lifeless body inside. Right next to the blue casket that barely pokes through the side of the soil, where my father's body has been for the last four years. Looks like an Addams family gender reveal. That thought makes me almost giggle. 'Skylar, get your shit together', I have to berate myself to remember now isn't the time for dark humor and giggles. My therapist will no doubt have a field day with this.
  I dry my tears for what feels like the thousandth time in the last ten minutes and as my vision slightly clears, I see a lone man a few yards away on my left, at a separate burial sight standing over a headstone. He's tall, at least 6'3, with dark hair and a lot of tattoos. The one that catches my eye specifically is the crow tattoo on his neck below his right ear. I tilt my head and wonder who he's visiting here. Does he feel the same ache that I do too? I wonder...