Backstabbing Friend's Self-Inflicted Shame novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Soup

Riverside Cemetery opens its gates at eight, and Valeria was already sitting on the bench beside my father's grave.

She had a thermos at her feet and a paper bag on her knee.

Her phone stood upright against the headstone, with its camera facing the bench and a small red dot lit above the lens.

I stopped at the bottom of the rise.

"She's streaming," Rafe said behind me.

"I see it."

"Greer, don't go up there."

"You're coming as far as the gate," I said. "You can watch me the whole way. That's what term three is for."

He didn't like it.

He stayed on the gravel path with his hands in his jacket pockets, forty yards back, and I walked up the hill alone.

Valeria turned her face to me, and the tears were already there.

"Greer. Oh, honey." She patted the bench. "I came before work. I couldn't stand to think of him with nobody."

"That was kind."

"I brought soup. The squash one he liked."

My father had said he liked it once, at a company picnic, and Valeria had kept it in her head ever since.

I sat down at the far end of the bench.

I did not touch the bag.

"Rafe is lying to you," she said, softly, for the phone. "I'm not saying he's a bad man. He's a very controlling one. I was frightened of him for years."

"Were you?"

"You've seen what he does. He follows people."

"He followed you to Cherry Street."

"Exactly." She wiped her cheek with a knuckle. "I'm just so worried about you, Greer. You aren't sleeping. You're so alone in that house. Let Tate take some of this."

I looked at the headstone.

The lilies were wrapped in a cellophane that still held the florist's tag.

Tate had bought them, then.

Valeria would never have thought of the tag.

"What does he want?" I said.

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