Voices of the Sea Read Free Page B

frowned. “You aren’t going to call him?” he asked, gesturing toward the phone. “If you were my daughter, I’d want more than a text message.”
    Lora hesitated at first, but then shook her head. “No,” she said, placing the phone back in her pocket, and rubbing her temple with the palm of her hand. “He’d just start yelling.”
    The detective shrugged his shoulders and turned away, walking back toward the crime scene. Lora continued to rub her forehead, trying to stave off the headache which threatened to torment her. How did this happen? All she wanted to do was sing with the sea before school, and now? Well, now a member of her clan lay dead, and she had been the one to find her.
    Victoria. The woman’s face finally became clear in her mind. Victoria Thanos lay beneath the memory of blood stained clothing and blond hair.
    Lora whispered the name through trembling lips, releasing it into the air so it could travel to the sea. If the detective asked her if she and Victoria were acquainted, Lora had a conditioned response ready. Yes. We attended the same church. Everyone in her clan told the same lie when asked how they knew one another.
    Victoria was, or had been, several years older than Lora and still lived with her parents in a small cottage on the beach. Though they didn’t speak beyond clan meetings, Lora remembered her voice, her face, her essence.
    Twenty minutes passed and Lora watched while the detective and other police officers continued to mill about the scene. She heard the ocean singing a death ballad for its fallen sister. Though she hadn’t recognized it as such before, she became completely in tune with its grieving now. For the first time in her life, Lora wished she could escape the music which tormented her, but she couldn’t leave. The detective kept one eye on her they whole time.
    As Lora waited, still leaning against a police car, she saw Victoria’s parents apprehensively approach the scene. She gazed at them as they passed, memorizing the grief on their faces, which stood starkly against their aged wrinkles and soft skin. Neither noticed her. Mrs. Thanos sank to the sandy path, her tears falling into her daughter’s green death-bed. Victoria’s father stood behind her mother. Neither parent could tear their eyes away from their dead child. Sirens themselves, they did not once glance at the sea, though Lora was certain it called to them as it did her; even in this moment, where death surrounded her, the ocean wanted her near.
    “Loralei!”
    Lora turned to see her father beyond the orange police tape which stopped curious people from tampering with evidence. He wore faded jeans and a windbreaker, which surprised her because he had to go to work. His graying hair plastered itself to his head, wet from the moisture. As he tried to cross the barrier, a police officer stopped him, shoving him backwards.
    “Dad!” she called back, and the relief on his face comforted her. She’d told him not to worry in her text message, but didn’t want to go into too much detail. He would be understandably upset, and not only over her gruesome find.
    The officer next to Lora gave his okay with a brisk nod and curt motion of the hand, allowing her father to pass through. He ran, feet pounding on the path, and for a moment Lora remembered her own hurry to pass this point only an hour earlier, her hunger to join the ocean’s song, a longing she’d been unable to fulfill.
    He hugged her, fright more than relief spurring the rough movement, and Lora felt a rogue tear drop from her face onto his shoulder. She wiped her nose on his blue windbreaker as if she were a young child.
    “Are you all right?” he asked in a tired voice. His arms moved to her shoulders and he held her away to stare into her eyes. Outwardly, he appeared calm, but the tension in his grip indicated otherwise.
    “I told you I was all right in my text.”
    Her father sighed. “You made a poor decision this morning.”
    Lora