Finding Lily

31- Alex

Jane. Golden hair, tinted red with blood, lying on the floor with a gunshot wound in her abdomen. My own broken body next to her, watching the life drain from her eyes, unable to help her, unable to save her. My mother, shot in the street, dead in an instant. Cops showing up at the door to let us know what happened. We don't know who did it. Why it happened. Mom had dark hair, dark skin. Her eyes, though, filled with light. I didn't look at her body. Dad wouldn't let me. He wanted me to remember her as she was, happy and smiling in the forest with a crown of flowers on her head.

I was sitting on the curb out front, my head in my hands, trying hard to keep myself together as memories attacked me. Pain I tried to keep buried was climbing back to the surface. Pain that I now knew I wasn't alone in experiencing.

Luke lost his sister. And in the process, he apparently lost his mother.

He didn't get to bury it like I did. He didn't get to move on with his life. He was constantly reminded of it in a way that would be way too painful for someone like me.

Another tear escaped from my eye. Were these for him or for me? I hadn't felt like this in a long time. My own pain hadn't been enough to promote a sadness such as this since Jane was taken from me.

"Lily?"

I hastily wiped away the few remaining tears before turning to face him. I returned my expression to its neutral setting, cold and detached.

"Yes?"

"You ok?" His eyes were softer than I'd ever seen them. He was worried about me when he just had to explain to his mother that his sister was dead. As he sat next to me on the pavement, I bit my lip in confusion. Apparently, I still hadn't figured him out.

"Are you?"

He clenched his jaw and averted his gaze. "Yeah. I'm numb to it by now."

I ran my tongue on my teeth, debating whether or not to ask him the questions that were burning in my mind. I didn't want to be nosy. The fact that he'd willingly showed me so much of himself was a lot already.

Before I could speak again, Luke beat me to the punch.

"Sara was kidnapped six years ago, when she was fourteen. She was walking home from school when she was taken. We couldn't find her and had just about given up when her body was discovered a year later in the woods." Luke explained. "A storm had washed away most of the dirt covering her. The autopsy said she'd just been killed twelve hours prior."

So she'd been a prisoner for a whole year. I swallowed, unable to respond. Thankfully, Luke continued.

"The marks on her body were extensive. Whoever had Sara tortured her in ways that I didn't think possible. My mom refused to believe that it was her. The DNA was wrong, she said. Even now, she believes Sara is still living with her. She'll tell me about things they talked about that day. What they ate for dinner. For the first couple of years, I couldn't stand to be around her. It hurt too much. In hindsight, I think that only made her worse. She didn't have anyone but the ghost of Sara to keep her company.

"Once I accepted Sara's death and my mother's reaction to it, I started coming by a couple times a week. Most of the time, I don't try to correct her. It's easier to play into the fantasy than to see her crushed like that again."

I stayed quiet, unsure of how to react. Luke was staring off into the distance, his expression haunted, vulnerable. My heart swelled for him, urging me to hug him, hold him, something. But I was frozen. I couldn't.

"You still don't know who did it?" I asked.

Luke shook his head. "The trail went dead years ago. I promised myself that I would make sure it never happens to anyone else. I've been focusing on kidnapping and sex crimes ever since Sara died. That's why Sebastian Malone was so high on my list, and now Ray since the girls were most likely passed on to him."