SWNOVELS Chapter 2229
A man's voice, thick with a German accent, answered irritably.
Rose was on edge, her German accented with a frantic undertone as she barraged him with questions.
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line before a voice came back, "Indeed, someone dug up the wrong grave. They realized the mistake and filled it back up."
What the cemetery's administration didn't mention was the little detail of the apology fee.
A sum of a thousand euros had been transferred to his account.
Rose felt a buzzing in her ears; she couldn't believe what she was hearing. She hung up the phone, her eyes wide with disbelief as she turned to Rosalynn, "What the hell? Don't you know show some respect for the dead? My mother, she'll never rest in peace because of this!"d2
"Rest in peace?" Rosalynn's face suddenly turned ice-cold. "If souls do exist, then Yvette's would have been dragged down to the fiery pits, tormented day and night. You think she's resting?"
"No, that can't be true!" Rose shouted back, her voice filled with a fiery mix of defiance and desperation. The mask of the innocent girl she had worn was gone; her true self was emerging. Without another word, Rosalynn tossed the photocopies of the diary at Rose.
Pages fluttered like autumn leaves in a whirlwind, one of the sharp corners nicking Rose's cheek as she reflexively caught a sheet.
By some cruel twist of fate, it was the very page detailing how Yvette, pregnant at the time, had killed the private investigator.
As Rose gripped the paper, her hands trembled violently.
"How many people did she hurt? You think she's innocent?" Rosalynn scoffed.
"Where did you get this? Where is this from?" Rose demanded, recognizing her mother's handwriting on the A4 sheet.
Rosalynn was taken aback - had Rose never laid eyes on this diary?
"It was unearthed from your mother's grave. Oh, and there was also a segment of your dear father's finger bone," Rosalynn said as she casually tossed something else at Rose. Catching it reflexively, Rose glanced at the object and, as if struck by lightning, let out a scream and flung it away.
"Never seen this before?" Rosalynn asked with an arched eyebrow.
Rose's complexion turned ghostly pale, drained of all color.
It clicked for Rosalynn, "You've seen it, haven't you? And it's not just a fleeting memory, is it?"
Clutching her chest as if struggling to breathe, Rose looked like she was on the verge of being sick.
"You're lying! That was just a nutritional supplement, not some finger bone!" Rose gasped, her breathing heavy.
Realization dawned on Rosalynn. A nutritional supplement, something to be consumed...
Had Yvette previously used this bone in cooking for Rose?
Rosalynn's guess was spot on. Rose had seen the bone before; it had surfaced in the clay pot Yvette used for soup and in the water she drank.
"Rosalynn, I truly wanted to be by your side, to work with you. I never imagined you'd stoop so low, pretending to be kind to me while having someone desecrate my mother's grave. You and Natalie, you're both incarnations of the devil!"
"Take a look at these," Rosalynn gestured to the scattered photocopies. "These are the diaries your mother left behind. A devil? If I'm a devil, what does that make her?" Rosalynn's laugh was laced with scorn. Rose's gaze drifted involuntarily to the pages littered around her.
They were supposed to be entombed with her mother. And then there was the tin box, something her mother had treasured. Yvette had clutched it tightly even in death. Rose's feelings for Yvette were a tangled knot of love, fear, and submission.
Her mother had never given her permission to open that box, so she never did. Instead, Rose had placed it in her mother's coffin, letting it be buried with her in the grave.