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Chapter 752:
The SUV’s headlights cut through the rain like knives. Easton drove with focused silence, his hands steady on the wheel, navigating the treacherous roads with a competence that allowed June to retreat into her own thoughts.
The storm had worsened. The windshield wipers fought a losing battle against the deluge, and twice they had to slow to a crawl as the road disappeared beneath sheets of rushing water.
He did not speak. He seemed to understand that she needed the silence, this cocoon of darkness and motion, to prepare herself.
The gates of the family cemetery stood open and unguarded. He pulled onto the gravel path, stopping a respectful distance from the Erickson plot, just as he had promised.
“My phone will be on,” he said, his voice low. “Take as long as you need p>
She stepped out into the storm.
𝗠𝘰𝗋е 𝘯𝘰𝘷еl𝘴 𝘰𝘯.с𝗼𝗺
The rain was ice-cold, instantly soaking through the waxed coat and plastering her hair to her skull. She did not feel it. She walked with her eyes on the ground, watching for roots and stones, her injured foot dragging slightly, sending sparks of pain up her leg with every step.
She had forgotten the umbrella. Or she had not cared to bring one.
The Erickson plot was in the oldest section of the cemetery, beneath a stand of ancient oaks that creaked and swayed in the wind. June knew the way by memory—by the number of steps from the gate, by the shape of the hill.
She rounded the final tree.
And stopped.
Her mother’s headstone was white marble. Carrara, imported from Italy, carved with her name and dates and a simple epitaph: Beloved wife and mother. Her light endures.
Now it was red.
Not entirely. But enough. Enough that June’s brain took a moment to process what she was seeing—to understand that the dark streaks running down the stone were paint, that the words scrawled across the polished surface in black spray paint were not a nightmare but real.
DESERVED TO DIE. GOLD-DIGGING BITCH.
The flowers she had placed there last month—white lilies, her mother’s favorite—had been ripped from their vase and trampled into the mud. The vase itself was shattered, its pieces glittering in the grass like broken teeth.
June made a sound.
It was not human. It was the sound an animal makes when caught in a trap, when the pain is too deep and the fear too vast and there is no escape.
She dropped to her knees in the mud. Her hands found the stone, the rough surface where the paint had begun to dry, and she began to scrub.
The paint would not come off.
She scrubbed harder, her nails catching on the marble, scraping, tearing. The red smeared beneath her fingers, mixing with the rain, turning pink, turning to streaks that looked like blood.
“Mom,” she whispered. “Mom, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t protect you. I didn’t p>
Her voice broke. She was crying now—really crying, the sobs tearing through her chest like physical things, doubling her over until her forehead pressed against the cold stone.
She did not hear him approach.