Between the Spirit and the Dust

Chapter One

One year later

I jolted awake, fumbling around for my phone for a moment before that it was still dark outside, way too early for me to head to class. I let my phone flop down, figuring that I would find my phone later. My hands felt clammy and there was a prickle of unease, like I felt that something was vaguely off today.

Whatever it was, I couldn’t remember it now. Maybe it was the nightmare of returning to the courtroom, the same nightmare that I’ve been having for the past year. The therapist that I had been forced to see said that it was something about trauma and how my subconscious isn’t able to let that day go.

There was no way I could let that day go. It was the day we’d lost the case.

I shouldn’t have been shocked because Mr. Peters had tried to prepare us for it from the start. He’d told us that the prosecution only had some pieces of hair and semen that had connected Gabriel to Sylvia. The prosecution also had to draw the link between Sylvia’s death and the other girls’ murder. Peters had told us from the start that the case was weak, that it was a miracle if we could even get to trial. But when we had reached trial, I had thought that maybe things would go our way. Maybe I could change things, to do something for Sylvia that I wasn’t able to before.

But I hadn’t taken into account the wealth and the power of the St. Clair conglomerate, how they would hire the best legal team and the best PR team for their only heir.

I hadn’t thought about how difficult it would be to convince the jury that Gabriel, with his classically handsome features, would do all those depraved things to Sylvia’s body, much less to have attacked six other girls. I hadn’t thought about the amount of media attention. The number of newspaper reports, the way the reporters had hounded us, the way that America had taken one look at Gabriel and thought, there’s no way that that handsome boy would kill. Just look at him, he’s surely got a dozen girls surrounding him.

I shook my head, wondering why I felt so jittery today and then, just as my gaze fell upon my phone, I realized that it was the D Day. It was two years since I had visited Sylvia at her college. Two years since she’d died.

I checked the time on my phone. It was 6 a.m. and I’d probably been awake for about an hour, just remembering the past. I definitely wasn’t going back to sleep anytime soon.

Dad would be awake and I should probably check in on him. Dad was an English Lit professor and always woke up early. He’d said that there was something about early mornings that seemed so full of potential. Both my sister and me had rolled our eyes whenever he’d said this. I called home.

The phone rang once, twice and then finally, on the third ring, somebody picked it up. “Emily? Is there something wrong?”

“Hey, Dad. No, nothing’s wrong.” I tried to force a smile, forgetting for a moment that he couldn’t see me. I knew that he had probably checked the caller ID before picking up. It was a habit that we’d all picked up after the trial. “Just checking in with you guys. I mean today...I just… How’re you guys?”

“Ah. We’re alright, Emmy. Don’t need to worry about us. I’m grading papers and Mom… Well, Mom’s still sleeping.”

There was an awkward pause here. We both remembered that things didn’t used to be like this. Mom used to wake up the same time as Dad, to go for a morning run. Then she would be back in time to prep for her classes and to wake us up for breakfast. She’d taught Chemistry at the high school that Sylvia and I had gone to. Sylvia had always thought that it was kind of lame that our Mom knew of our grades and had a firsthand report from the other teachers about how well we were doing. Ever since the trial, Mom had stopped doing all of that. She didn’t teach anymore.