Punishment with Kisses by Diane Anderson-Minshall Page B

someone scream, “No!” and the sound echoed off the canyons in my ears. It wasn’t until Gualterio called my name that I realized I was the one shrieking. As though released from a spell, I started forward again. Just as I did, I sent a prayer Heavenward. I begged the man upstairs for something I will always be ashamed of. Please God, I thought, don’t let it be Shane.
    Almost immediately I knew my prayer had been answered. I could make everyone out. Tabitha was wailing, holding Ash’s limp, bloody body in her arms. Maria was sobbing and crossing herself while Gualterio and Father were huddled together as though conferring. Father was shouting something I couldn’t decipher. A distant police siren rang out in the background.
    I stepped into the light of the pool house. I stood arm’s length from the lifeless body of my dear sister. And then I saw it. The bloody knife. An antique silver knife from Grandma’s set, passed down from four generations, now bloodied, discarded on the ground next to my dead sister’s body.
    My dead sister’s body. My sister was dead. Is dead. Slashed to death in our very own home. It was all so horrible to imagine, I fell to my knees and vomited all over the hardwood floor, my refuse seeping into Ash’s blood as Tabitha continued to wail.

Chapter Seven

    I bent and set my bouquet down, adding it to the pile of roses already blocking the inscription on Ash’s gravestone. A year after she was buried and someone still cared enough to bring her flowers. I didn’t need to push aside the thorns to see the epitaph. Father had chosen a simple Beloved Daughter. It perfectly matched the stone just to the left, with the short descriptor Beloved Mother. I sensed a theme. If I passed into that dark night before my father, I’d be buried on the other side of Ash, no doubt spending eternity resting under my Beloved Sister stone. When Father joined us he’d be on the far left, the head of the Caulfield clan. I bet his epitaph was stipulated in his last will and testament or something. The tombstones were stark testimony to the truth of our family. We only existed in relation to Ash. I had never been my own person. I had always been my sister’s sister. I wondered if that would change now that she was gone.
    Looking at half my family resting side by side, and my own waiting grave, I couldn’t help but wonder what was supposed to happen to Tabitha. Did Father plan to have her buried underneath him in the same plot? Or maybe she was just supposed to throw herself in on top of his casket like women were expected to do in India not too long ago?
    Cemeteries had always brought out my morbid sense of humor. That was one of the reasons I had chosen to come here alone, even though I knew I’d raised Father’s ire by failing to join the official pilgrimage earlier in the day.
    I could hardly believe that it had only been a year since Ash was murdered. Well, in some ways. In other ways it was hard to believe it had already been a year. Those first few weeks after her death went by in a blur while I walked around in a daze, barely even aware of the flurry of activities around me, as Tabitha made funeral arrangements, the police detectives traipsed in and out of the house, crime scene investigators swarmed around the pool house, and reporters skulked outside the gates of the estate like vultures waiting to pick over the remains of my family. With Mother and Ash gone, all there was left was not much more than bones.
    The case made headlines that first month: pretty society girl killed on family estate, a string of casual acquaintances and even a couple of family friends were investigated, but there simply wasn’t enough hard evidence to link anyone to the crime. We did learn a lot about our neighbors, including who was on the sex offender registry and whose kid had previous burglary convictions. Unfortunately, our neighbors learned equally disturbing things about us.
    Both the local newspapers and the