He Faked My Death, So I Let My Family Bury Me novel · Chapter 32 of 32
Chapter 32: Sign First
The visiting room had eight tables, a barred window and a guard who read the newspaper.
Venera came in wearing a grey prison smock, and she had cut her hair to her chin.
She sat down across from me and looked at my green dress.
"You went to the Mass," she said.
"Who told you?"
"The sergeant. He tells me everything. He thinks I'm his daughter."
"He's a decent man."
"He's a gossip," Venera said. "Tell me you struck them all off the list."
"Every one."
She laughed, and it was a real laugh, the first I had heard from her since she was twelve.
Then she stopped.
"This is what I couldn't write," she said. "Don't come every week."
I stared at her.
"Come when you want. Come when you've got something to tell me. Don't come because you owe me."
"I don't owe you."
"You do, a little. And I owe you more." She folded her hands on the steel table. "But if you come every week out of duty, you'll be doing it again. Papa sent you to the hard job, and now you're sending yourself."
"That isn't the same."
"It's exactly the same. You carry. You've always carried." Her mouth shook. "I want a sister who has a life. I want to hear about the island."
"There's nothing on it."
"There's him."
"Yes," I said, and she smiled at me.
"They chose me every time," she said. "Every single time. I thought it felt like being loved. It felt like being kept, Rosaria."
I put my hand on the table.
She put hers over it.
"You were the last one they chose," she said. "And you were the first one who ever chose for herself."
"I had to be."
"I know. I'm learning it. It's slow."
"Write," I said.
"I'll be bad at it."
"Write anyway."
The guard folded his newspaper, which meant our time was done.
Venera stood.
She held on to my fingers until the last second, and then she let go on her own.
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