Page 8 of A Wild Darkness

I end the call, toss the phone onto the desk, and wipe a hand down my face, ready to tackle my emails.

The restaurant was one of my mother’s favorites. Or at least that’s what Dad always said. I’m not entirely sure if that’s true anymore. I was six and Lux was eight when our mother died. Most of my memories are fragmented now. They only consist of a laugh and a sweet-smelling perfume. And the feeling of warm fingers brushing hair from my face, but the details have faded more every year.

Dad remembers everything. Which is why the three of us sit in the same booth every year on my mother’s birthday.

The waitress sets down a basket of bread, and Lux immediately steals the only garlic knot.

“Hey!” I reach for the same one.

“I saw it first,” Lux says, popping a piece into her mouth.

I roll my eyes.

From across the table, Dad smiles into his drink, and for a moment, the years seem to disappear from his face. Not completely. Retirement has softened him, but homicide has left permanent marks. Even with him helping on a few cold cases, the lines around his eyes are still deep. And the habit of scanning every room he enters are signs of a former detective—always a detective.

Lux inherited that part of him, but I never had. Which is probably why I spent most of my life feeling like the odd one out. Dad and Lux could spend hours talking about cases. Criminal psychology and investigation, things I understand but never loved. The dead interest me.

“How’s retirement?” Lux asks.

Dad snorts. “It would be boring if I weren’t helping with the cold case unit.”

Lux laughs, then takes a sip from her red wine.

The sound warms something inside me, because Lux and Dad look so similar when they smile. They both have the same sharp intelligence and the ability to read the room without trying. But me? Everyone says I inherited my mother’s softer features instead.

“How often are you taking on new cases?” Lux asks.

Dad shrugs. “I’m working on one right now. I don’t know how useful I can be, though. I’m hoping with the new advancements in forensics, we can close some of them, but we’ll see.”

“You are useful.”

He pointed his fork at her. “You’re biased.”

“You’re my father.

“Exactly.”

I watch their exchange quietly, taking slow sips of wine and bites of bread while the familiar ache settles in my chest. Not jealousy, but just that old feeling I’ve carried since childhood. Like I’ve been standing outside a conversation everyone else understood.

But my dad notices, like he always does. “What about you, Stevie?”

I glance up. “What about me?”

“How’s the mortuary?”

“It’s going well. And I’ve had more time to spend grave rubbing since Kristine has been taking on more.”

Dad smiles. “That’s great. Your mom loved spending hours in the evening at the cemetery.”

The table falls quiet. Not uncomfortable, just thoughtful, as the three of us are reminded she’s no longer with us.

I pick at a small string on the corner of a cloth napkin. “I understand that deeply.”

My dad’s expression softens. “Yeah.”

“I don’t know. Sometimes when I clean the stones…” I shrug. “It feels like I’m doing something for people nobody visits anymore.” My voice grows quieter as the same feeling of sadness that always surrounds me about my mother appears again.

“Mom’s grave always looked so lonely when we were kids.”