Walk (Gentry Boys) Read Free

a place I’d ever spent much time in.  There were some distant Gentry relatives buried here but my father, Elijah, had been cremated, his ashes scattered in the desert.  The cemetery itself had been around for well over a hundred years.  Ghosts of old west gunslingers were rumored to haunt the grounds at night.  It was just one of those stories that people pretended to believe. 
    Chase seemed to know exactly where the gravesite was and admitted he’d stopped by here a few times to leave flowers for his mother.  It was only as he said it that I remembered his mother had died the day before the deadly accident.  I never knew details, other than the fact that she was a longtime drug addict, a fact which was somehow tied to her death. 
    Erin’s grave was the last one in a neat row of headstones.  Some of the graves had flowers.  Most didn’t.  I wished I’d thought to stop somewhere and bring some. 
    On impulse I detoured over to a raised garden bed spilling with lantana and plucked a few of the flower stems.  It wasn’t an elegant offering but at least it was something. 
    Chase and Deck waited at a respectful distance as I made my way over to where Erin Rielo was buried.  Her headstone was both simple and cruel.  Simple, as it included only her name with the dates of her birth and death.  Cruel, because the years they spanned weren’t enough, not nearly enough.  She was seventeen when she died. 
    Gently I laid the flowers down and kneeled. There were no other flowers but a small wooden cross had been stuck in the damp grass beside the headstone.  From it hung a short chain with a crystal at the end.  The crystal caught a ray of light and reflected on the glossy black surface of Erin’s final monument.  I didn’t know who had put the crystal and cross there or why.  A local friend most likely.  Erin’s father and two sisters had left town several years ago, to try to process their grief somewhere else and put their lives back together.  And Chase was pretty sure that Conway had not set foot in Emblem in over four years.
    “Hey, pretty girl,” I whispered.  My throat felt suddenly raw.  “I don’t know what the rules are or if you can hear me wherever you might be now.  I just wanted to come by and say that I miss you.”  A single tear rolled down my cheek.  I didn’t bother to wipe it away.  “So here I am, to say hello and to make you a promise.  A promise about Conway.” 
    It was Con we’d been searching for that evening as we drove around Emblem in a car we had no right to be in.  He’d stumbled away from us in pain and grief, believing we had betrayed him.  Even though I’d thought of Erin every day I’d always kept the details of the rest of that night at arm’s length. I couldn’t avoid them any longer.
    My brother and I had fought that morning.  He’d been a little off center lately but at the time I just chalked it up to our mother’s increasing hostility, especially towards him.  We only had one more year left of high school and then I would do whatever I had to do to get him out of that toxic place.  The fight wasn’t our usual kind of brotherly tussle though.  I almost fell right the fuck over when he accused me of messing around with his girl.  Erin.  The girl next door.  The girl he’d been in love with for years.  The one girl I would never ever touch for any reason beyond friendship. 
    As stunned as I was, I still figured he would cool off in a few hours.  Then and now, there was nothing on earth I wouldn’t do for Conway.  He had to know that.  He had to.  That’s what I told myself.  That’s why I didn’t follow him. 
    Then Erin came to me, reeling and distraught because she’d also had a terrible fight with Con.  I was still trying to calm her down when I committed a fatal kindness.  I kissed her on the forehead.  There was nothing to it; just a gentle reassurance from a friend.  But in a tragedy that’s been played millions