24. SKYE

Kuna, Idaho

Now

It took three days for the police to release my remains to my parents. During those three days, the coroner confirmed my official cause of death as strangulation. The lab results came back. I hadn't been sexually assaulted. And there was no organic matter under my fingernails. In other words, I hadn't fought back.

"I wanted to," I told the coroner as she carefully studied my purple fingers. "I couldn't do anything."

My parents decided to hold my funeral at Hulls Gulch Park, at the base of the foothills in Boise beside the lake where we'd caught tadpoles every spring when I was little. That was back before my parents split up. It was still one of my favorite places. I was glad they'd chosen it.

It was a short funeral. My mom gave a eulogy but had to stop part way through when the words started coming out as little gasps through her tears. My dad took the piece of paper she'd been clutching tightly in her hand and finished, clearing his throat again and again.

There wasn't much talk of God or heaven. My mom and I had stopped going to church a long time ago, and neither of my parents wanted to cold-contact a local church now. Several priests and pastors had offered anyway when the story hit the news the day after my body was found.

After the eulogy, my parents, a few of my friends from high school, and some of my coworkers from the Daily Grind took turns saying nice things about me and scattering wildflower seeds around the scrubby lakeshore. Ken gave my mom a long hug after he scattered his seed packet. He'd been watching for the hot chocolate guy every day, he said.

My mom pressed her lips tightly together and then thanked him for everything. She didn't tell him that the police knew that hot chocolate guy's real name was James Carson. Or that she called the police station every day, asking if they'd found him yet. Detective Kittleson couldn't tell her much. And she'd been given strict orders not to reveal any details that could compromise the investigation. But there had been no arrests.

The news of my kidnapping and murder had blazed hot and bright throughout Idaho for a few days. My senior photo stared back at me from the front page of the Idaho Report, which my mom had neatly folded and tucked beside the computer in her office. In the short amount of time it took for our funeral procession to make its way to Hulls Gulch, a story about a local murder-suicide had taken over the front-page news. I wasn't surprised. I was a brown girl from a poor neighborhood in Kuna.

Sometimes, when I sat beside my mom in the car as she drove to work or picked up dinner for herself, I watched the faces of the people on the street, wondering if there were other ghosts like me. If there were, would I even know it? Or were they tucked into houses and cars like I was, haunting the people they loved most?

Daily Grind corporate had sent my parents a check for $1,000 and a surprisingly touching letter of condolence. My dad fumed that they didn't want to get sued. This was blood money. But my mom tucked the letter into her desk drawer.

Before we left Hulls Gulch to drive to the cemetery, my dad closed the funeral by reading the words to a Celtic funeral blessing. I remembered it from the book he'd sent me a few summers ago for my birthday. He'd left a note inside saying that it was the only book that had ever made him cry.

Thou goest home to thine eternal slumber.

Thou goest home to thine eternal bed.

Thou goest back to thy home of winter,

Thy home of autumn, of spring, and of summer;

Sleep thou, sleep, and away with thy sorrow,

Sleep thou, sleep in the calm of all calm,

Sleep now, beloved in the shade of high branches

Sleep, O sleep in the love of all loves;

Sleep this night in the breast of thy mother,

Sleep, thou beloved, while she herself soothes thee;

Thy face is turned to thine old home, beloved

Thou goest back to the womb whence thou sprang

The sleep of the seven lights be thine, beloved,

The sleep of the seven joys be thine, beloved,

The shadow of death enfolds thee, beloved,

But in nearness thy father stands by and by

Sleep thou, sleep, and away with thy sorrow,

Sleep thou, sleep, and away with thy pain.

Sleep, O sleep in the guidance of guidance,

Sleep, O beloved, the rest of all rest.