Still Waters Run Deep

Chapter 31: A Shot in the Dark

Chapter 31:

A Shot in the Dark

Lily hadn't been able to stand her mothers sniping at one another. So when they'd been in the midst of their argument she'd gone back to her room and flopped down on her bed and screamed into her pillow. Seconds later she felt a cold wet nose up against her arm. She looked over and saw Jett looking at her, perplexed. He looked like a worried grandpa when he gave her the puppy dog eyes.

She sighed and assured him she was fine and then sat up and looked around her room. The walls were filled with mementos of her sister. Photographs, smudges from their fights, memories of decorating things together. It was in looking at her memories that she realized there was something she needed to do.

She grabbed her bookbag and dumped its contents on to her bed. She grabbed a change of clothes, a bottle of water, and Grace's pocketknife and shoved it all into the bag. She walked over to the closet and pulled out a box, flipping the top open to reveal the scrapbook she'd made with Grace for their mothers' anniversary. She'd come across it in the living room two days ago and had snagged it. She stared at the image of her family on the cover, carefully picking the handmade book up. She put it in her bag and then zipped it up.

She opened her window and pulled the screen out. She shimmied down the drainpipe until she got to an overgrown tree branch and then climbed the rest of the way to the ground. It was an exit Grace had used many times before, which is why Ali and Emily had put Lily in that room. Because they knew Lily was less likely to use it.

But Lily didn't care about breaking rules tonight. Her moms were fighting. On her birthday. On Grace's birthday. It was too much. She'd been lost in her emotions, much like Emily. She'd seen her mom struggle since the wreck. She knew everything that Emily was trying to hide. She could sense that her mom had watched her sister die. She knew that it had unraveled her and twisted her into an entirely new person.

Once she was out of the house she'd gone around back and disappeared to a trail in the woods, fortunately out of the prying eyes of Benito Del Toro. He had bigger fish to fry than the kid, so he hadn't been watching her window.

Lily didn't feel like being out in the open under the moon and streetlamps. That was a surefire way to get caught being out past curfew. She stuck to the woods and the trails until she got closer to her destination. She stopped at the entrance, thinking about the last time she'd been here.

It had felt like a nightmare watching the casket being lowered into the ground. She had seen so many movies where grieving families threw themselves on the casket as it was disappearing forever. But she hadn't felt the urge to do anything but run away. A part of her heart was now underneath the soil. She stopped at the headstone, running her fingers over the granite. She stared at the engraving.

Grace Estella DiLaurentis-Fields.

When Lily was so lost that she couldn't find herself, Grace was the only person who could help her. That hadn't changed just because she was gone. She would always gravitate towards her twin, in life and in death.

She felt weird being out at her sister's final resting place. Typically she tried to avoid the cemetery altogether, because it was too sad. And too morbid. But she needed her sister. Not just in the spiritual sense. She needed to be close to her body.

She stared at the grave in silence. What did people say when they visited their dead loved ones? 'I'm sorry you're dead'? 'Are you comfy in that overpriced sarcophagus'? 'How does the dirt taste'?

She ran her fingers over the fresh flowers in the vase next to her grave. They were from her grandmother's yard. Pam came out to the cemetery twice a week and visited Grace, her Grandpa Wayne, and her Grandma Jessica's graves and brought them flowers.