I find her collapsed against the edge of the gazebo in the cemetery garden, pressed to a chipped angel. Her back leans on the stone; her legs are splayed on the concrete like she's given up on standing, on trying, on everything.
Before I climb the steps I already know what pulses through her head — the line she's been repeating since her mother died:
She didn't kill herself.
Part of me wants to believe it. Everything else points the other way, but the idea that she was hunted fits better — it feels true in the gut, not like a cheap plot device. I shake my head; the heels of my shoes click sharp on the stone as I hurry toward her.
Then the sobs find me.
Quiet. Raw. Uncontained.
They are the flood she's been damming for days. The sound of all the things she wouldn't let herself feel. The moment she realizes there's no turning back — that her mother is really gone.
Princess.
