The Darkest Corner (Gravediggers #1)(9)

The open office door and bank information had stopped her in her tracks. Theodora could smell money a mile away, and it hadn't taken long for her to transfer funds out of Tess's savings account and into her own. By the time Tess had consoled Cleo's grieving husband and made it back to her office, her computer was closed and she'd forgotten all about paying her bills, which was why it had been open in the first place.



       
         
       
        

Theodora hadn't finished Cleo's makeover. She'd hightailed it out of Last Stop, straight across the Oklahoma border, until she saw the flashing lights of the casino beckoning her. It had taken just a smidgen longer to lose the ten thousand dollars than it had to steal it. She'd come home three days later without a by-your-leave, asking if Tess had managed to do anything with Cleo's hair.

That had been the norm in Tess's life for as long as she could remember. Her irresponsible, scatterbrained, childlike mother was what she was. There'd been no point in filing a police report or sending her mother to jail. Even if her conscience had allowed it, seeing the heartbreak in her grandmother's eyes would've changed her mind. There'd been nothing more she could do than to start over and take more care with hiding her money.

Theodora had a sickness. The thrill of flashing lights and the clang of the machine as dollar signs lined up had always had more of an appeal than choosing to do what was right. Or her only daughter.

Now Tess was finally at a place where she could financially stand on her own, and her savings was growing little by little every month. But her "life plan" had certainly veered off course. And though she hated to admit it, because she took pride in the fact that she was a planner, she was starting to think that Last Stop might not be in her plans after all.

She was the director of the funeral home, but she wasn't the owner. And as much time and personal investment as she'd given to the place, it would likely never be hers. Even if the new owner wanted to sell, she couldn't afford to buy her out. The last two years had been the strangest of her life. And it had all started when Eve Winter had purchased the funeral home.

What Tess needed was to pick up and start over-maybe-she thought, biting her lip. The only time she'd lived away from Last Stop was the five years she'd spent at the University of Texas-three for her mortuary science degree and another two for her MBA. Her plan had been to run a funeral home after all, so she figured she needed to know as much about the business side of things as she did about the death side of things. She could go anywhere or do anything, but she didn't want to be someone's employee forever. That she knew for certain.

She wasn't even a hundred percent sure how she'd ended up in the mortuary science program. She'd gone to college with most of her basics already taken, so she'd had a semester to experiment and try to figure out what she wanted to do with her life. Because she'd had no clue what she wanted to do with her life.

The pottery class had been an utter failure since she had zero artistic talent, and her accounting professor had gotten arrested by the FBI and had his computers confiscated the week before finals, so she figured the life of a CPA probably wasn't for her either. She loved to read, so she thought an English degree might work out, but then she realized she'd eventually need to be able to find a job, so she discarded that idea. 

The class that had stuck with her had been intro to pathology. Maybe it was because the professor had looked like he'd come off the set of Grey's Anatomy. Or maybe it was because she'd found a quiet peace in that class she'd never experienced before. Lord knows her mother had never given her much peace.

Tess found the dead fascinating. What had happened to them? Were they young or old? What kind of life had they lived? Did anyone miss them? She'd almost gone pre-med to become a medical examiner, but she realized that would only answer some of the questions she had about the people who would end up on a slab in front of her.

The other questions could only be answered by the living-by a spouse or parent or child. Tess wanted to know what made the person worth remembering in death. It seemed a question that was more important than it should've been. Maybe because she constantly wondered who would remember her when it was her time to lie on someone's slab.

A crack of thunder shook the panes in the windows on the third floor of the old Queen Anne house. Rain pelted against the roof as Tess lay on top of the covers in nothing but her underwear. But it didn't do much to help cool her off. She propped her hands behind her head and stared at the cracks in the plaster on the ornamental ceiling. The fan in the corner was working overtime, and she'd opened the two windows as wide as she dared. The edges of the white curtains were damp, and she'd put a towel on the floor in front of each window to keep the wood from getting wet.