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✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
Death wasn't a foreign concept to Charlie.
Her pet turtle once died an excruciating death—Damon had accidentally stepped on him when she let Tortoise out of his cage. She never cried like she quite cried the day she had to bury him in the gardens and even did the whole wake for him. Damon gave the eulogy for Mr. Tortoise.
The second time Charlie experienced death was when one her grandma passed, albeit, she only knew her when she was little, and she wasn't as close as Damon was to really remember much of the woman, but she did know the funeral was sad, the eulogy her father gave made little Charlie cry, especially when Damon went up to say a few words, as well as Stefan, and her dad Giuseppe was absolutely heartbroken at the loss of his mother.
That was only two phases in her life she ever knew faintly what death entailed, but it didn't compare quite like the loss of someone she not only was in love with, but broke her heart, trampled it, then broke her heart again because he died.
The officers didn't give much detail, but based on the autopsy report Giuseppe somehow managed to know about and let the word slip from closed doors, Lawrence Lockwood was murdered.
And not in the conventional kind of way—he was murdered as in sucked dry, and hung by the neck of his own guts. Charlie couldn't stomach the imagery, especially wondering how anyone could even do such a brutal and sick, twisted thing—she couldn't imagine what the Lockwood's were going through, especially Mary Lockwood. She wondered if the last thing she said to Lawerence was her hurtful words—because that's exactly how Charlie felt. Granted, he deserved every ounce of her spite in that moment, but to think he was killed not moments after? Who would even do such a thing?
She didn't know what to think.
Grief was difficult for her to process. She didn't like it, and she hated being surrounded by it, especially at funerals. Charlie hated funerals. They were crowded, morbid, and always tactless. Especially because the guilt that ate at her was more potent than any grief she felt towards the whole entire thing.
She couldn't help but feel as if Mary blamed her in a way—she thought her son perhaps had committed his own death, but the officers deemed it impossible for him to hang himself by his own guts and mirthlessly suck his own blood out. It didn't help there were other cases building up behind Lawrence's, a pattern, is what her father said in hushed words to George Lockwood in his office. She overheard, and often would eavesdrop, this time, not liking what she caught wind of. Anything else she tried to catch was muffled by the sound of a music record playing—every time. She almost wondered if her father purposefully did it so no one could hear the truth behind closed doors. More and more, suspicion arose within Charlie. She hated the secrecy, and her father was surely withholding more information then he let on.
