Lacey lurches out of sleep with a violent gasp, a harsh suck on air that cuts her throat. It sends her into a hacking fit and she keels over, kneading clammy hands through sweat-soaked hair. The moisture in the creases of her palms feels slimy - like worms - and she rubs them off roughly against her blanket, which she balls into fists once dry. "Fuck," she mutters, dragging the fabric up to her heaving chest.

Her eyes flutter to a close and she takes a deep breath. There goes my subconscious opening the floodgates, I guess. The subconscious is mean.

She needs a moment to recover from the onslaught, from an image of their meeting, from an image of the beginning of the end, from an image of...the end. A shudder flickers up and down her spine and she grinds her teeth together. Everything she's been staunching is coming right back up - what with seeing Stella's corpse in the river, and actively trying to track down her murderer, and being hunted by attractive demon chicks on bicycles, and exposing her greatest secret to Gideon, and - well, the point has been made. She's far too vulnerable in every possible way.

And she can't let anyone, or anything, know. Gideon is the only exception, and that was a fluke to begin with. No, she needs to get it together, and she can start with her appearance. There is a funeral to get to, after all. For her own sake, she'll clean up nice, like nothing ever happened.

She swings her legs out of bed and sighs. For Stella's sake, too.

For the next hour, quiet feet patter throughout the house, hands in separate rooms slipping on clothes of deep black; the daughter wears a plain dress that gives way to skin only beneath the knees, with sleeves ending tight at the wrists, and the father dons a suit. She has some trouble pinning her hair back properly and he fumbles with a tie, but ultimately, the two of them meet in the hall, everything neat and orderly, and with a nod of the head, they leave through the front door and lock it tight behind them.

After clambering into their respective seats in the truck, Jeremy makes an attempt at conversation: "How are you feeling?" It's met with a shrug, and although she's slathered concealer under her eyes and even used a light brush of makeup for once, a part of her can feel him staring beyond the powders and creams. He must know she's not feeling up to par despite her best efforts to hide that fact, so he turns back to the road and they ride in silence. It's something she appreciates.

The drive is not a long one. There's a bit of difficulty on Jeremy's end trying to find a parking space close enough to the cemetery downtown, but they eventually squeeze against the curb, and Lacey pops open her door after grabbing an umbrella out of the backseat. If it's gonna start pouring later, she wants to be prepared.

"I don't think you'll need that, Lacey-bug." She cringes. He's got his eyes raised to the sky, and she glimpses through the open door. Sure enough, after a week of gloom and doom, the clouds have taken on a lighter tint, and they've spread enough to allow the warm mid-morning sun to show its face. "Seems to be clearing up," he says, a phantom of a smile overlaying his lips.

She tosses the umbrella back and hops down. Already, the tombstones seem drier, as do the streets, and there's not a puddle in sight, except in the middle of the dirt path they trek to get to the middle of the cemetery where the service is being held. Other than this minor blip, nature seems to agree with Stella - she's always been a girl of sunshine and bright stars. Let them dangle from her ears sometimes.

They're early. The casket is already set up where it ought to be, but people continue to arrive. Those that have been here a while mill about, offering condolences to the family. It's always confused Lacey, why people who are no more than strangers do it too. Jeremy nods his head in recognition of Elijah. She lets her father take the reigns and stands idly by his side.

"Jeremy," Elijah says, voice hoarse, "thanks for coming." They embrace, a simultaneous pat on the back from both before separating.

"We wouldn't miss it for anything," her father says, smile weak. "I know you've probably heard it a million times by now but I'm so, so sorry. If- if there's anything we can do you know we're always there, yeah?"

"'Course, 'course. You're the first man I'd go to, any day." He glances down at Lacey, mustering up as much of a smile as he can, all things considered. His ponytail is tied back tight, and it seems his temples are greyer than the last time she saw him. "You too. I remember how close you two were and it's nice to have you both here."

His words are deceptive. A piece of his soul had rushed out of his body on the bridge overlooking the Epling River and his daughter, and she can feel that piece trying to fight its way back now, filling the atmosphere around them with a thick agony, a tight magnetic pull, a sensation that burns her chest every time she breathes in. He is hurting, and how he holds it together, she'll never know; she's forced to fight off half of the same thing and she can barely deal with that. Her eyes start to water and sting.

When his attentions return to her father, she takes a few steps back to distance herself as much as possible without seeming rude.

"I was thinking about putting a date on that dinner we'd talked about before," Elijah says, hands shoved into the pockets of his slacks, "since I'm sure we could all use a break and a more comfortable place to talk things over. How do you feel about..."

He trails off, and the brown eyes once trained on Jeremy are trained elsewhere. They narrow, and the man's aged face hardens. His cheeks redden, and his chest begins to heave.

"Excuse me," he says, clasping a hard hand against her father's shoulder as he squeezes between them. There is no sadness in it, no trembling softness. Only a sharp edge, sharp enough to cut through the air and turn it into something sweltering. A bead of sweat sprouts on the back of Lacey's neck, and she wipes it away as she turns to watch where he's headed.

At first, she thinks maybe it's the rowdy kids running around that's got him angry, but that hardly makes sense - of all people, Elijah should be the one to know that kids will be kids no matter the occasion, and if they see a stray stick, they'll take chase after their friends with it. Maybe the mother, then, who scolds them to no avail. No, he passes her by. Then who, or what, has got his hands clenched so tightly at his side?

"Oh, no," her father says beside her.

"What?"

"Those are the parents of that other girl that went missing a couple months ago. The Fosters. Eli's not fond of them. At all. This, this won't, this won't be good." His mouth twitches, and he fiddles with his hands, unsure of what to do before following after his friend.

The parents in question are a strange pair. The white sedan they emerge from is crusted with age, and the man holds the door open as his wife steps out. They're dressed appropriately, the skinny man suited like everyone else, but the receding sandy curls atop his head are not dissimilar to a rat's nest. When his wife emerges, she towers above him, gangly but not letting it show; she moves with grace, black lace fringing the hem of her dress and folding over her shoulders. Her hair is much neater, clearly once copper, but dulled to a pinned-back brown. Bangs fall over her forehead, and the rest of her features are small, almost shrunken.

Lacey's reminded vaguely of the missing girl's poster, tacked beneath the others. The girl definitely favors her mother, but takes on her father's babyish face, and his cluster of freckles. Another thing she shares in the photo is the dead look in their eyes, the hollowed out grooves of their faces as they walk the dirt path.

The man parts his lips as Elijah approaches, seemingly not taking the hint. "We're sorry for your-"

"You have some nerve coming here, Philip, Janie," Elijah hisses. His throat works past the hoarseness, the raw tissue, and comes out gravelly. "Some nerve after all you did- no. Didn't do. I'll have no parents who so willingly abandon their children at my- at my daughter's funeral. You did nothing for her and you have no right to be here."

Jeremy finally catches up and presses his hand to Elijah's shoulder. He whispers something in the man's ear, but he's nudged off. Lacey winces and slowly moves forward; if anything, she'll be close enough to pull her father out of the fray if something breaks out.

The man - Philip - looks to his wife for direction, and she licks her thin lips before speaking. She's almost too soft to hear and Lacey speeds up her creeping approach to catch the end. "...wanted to offer our condolences. We're in a similar boat, after all."

"Similar boat," Elijah mutters, "similar boat." He pauses, even suppresses a harsh laugh in his throat. "No, we're not in a similar boat. I fought for my Stella. You gave up. You gave up months ago and you gave up when you could've caught this man before he could take another life with him and now my daughter is dead and she's dead for your lack of care. Yours!"

He takes a step closer, jamming his finger into Janie's face. Jeremy tries to tug him away, to no avail. "You should've apologized by joining any of the searches I held! You should've apologized by pushing our piece of shit police force to do their jobs and find our children! You should've apologized by never showing your face to my family again! Similar boat. Ha! Our daughters are both dead, yes, but that doesn't mean shit to me. All it means is that you could've gotten off your asses and done more. You want to offer your condolences? Then get the fuck out."

He punctuates his tirade with a sharp point at their vehicle. For a second, Lacey thinks maybe Philip is about to say something back, but he deflates, nods, and the pair turns back from whence they came. Elijah doesn't move until their vehicle calmly rolls out of the area, and when she finally gets close, she can see his face pouring with sweat. The underarms of his suit are soaked. Poor guy.

Jeremy rubs his friend's back comfortingly, the latter ducking his head and sweeping his palms over his face, collecting beads in handfuls. "It's upsetting they came here, I know. I can't imagine what it must be like to lose a daughter. Like that, I mean."

"I can't handle this." Elijah's gruff voice trembles and he shakes his head. The puddle in the path ripples. "I can't."

"You can. I know you can. Say, there's Laurel, yeah? Why don't we go talk to her? It'll make you feel better. And Lacey, I think I saw Sonia and Maria over there. You should say hi."

"Oh, Christ, yes. Laurel, now that's a mother I can respect. Let's talk to Laurel."

The man seems dazed by his own outburst - like it took too much out of him - and the aura surrounding him is weaker. He allows himself to be led away by Jeremy until they come to Erie's mother, who holds a tissue to her mouth as she stares at the casket. No doubt, she's not envisioning Stella laying within. Something painful twinges in Lacey's chest. Time to stop watching, then.

Instead, she looks out for Sonia and Maria, but she hasn't seen these girls in years and she's unsure how much they've changed. It's them who track her down first.

She knows it's them approaching by the rust-color of their eyes, by the sharp cheekbones and the heavy brows. The taller one must be Sonia - she's always been the eldest - but there's something new, something different. Her hair's been hacked completely off, and even for as formal an occasion as this, she's got it slicked back, the sides shaved down. The other is shorter by at least a foot, but she's grown as much since the last time Lacey must've seen her. The transition lenses in her glasses are dark, matching the hair she's pulled into a tight braid. Maria.

Instead of facing the imminent fact that she'll have to talk to these girls in a few short moments, she does math: they'd be nineteen and thirteen respectively now, wouldn't they? She double and triple checks, and as a result, by the time they stop in front of her, she's got to scramble.

"So...hi, it's been a while, a lot of years. Yeah. It sucks it has to be under these circumstances. Talking again, I mean. I'm sorry." She can't tell whether she's apologizing for their loss or for her own incompetence.

They may be separated by a few solid years, but they share the same harsh look about them, the same critical eye. It's not a look Stella ever had. These are strangers.

"Thanks for coming," Sonia says. Her lips are plump and dark; her voice is flat. It's a line she's said dozens of times now and it's lost its shine. Nevertheless, she keeps using it in the same way one might keep referring to their new car as "new" even though that's no longer the case. Force of habit. "We're glad you could make it."

Lacey presses a thin smile into her mouth. It must appear something like a grimace. A silence passes between the three girls, a thick and uncomfortable one. She and Maria shift awkwardly and Sonia looks out over both their heads, in search of someone better, more familiar. But these are Stella's sisters, these are her last living links to a dead former best friend, and she wants to latch on tight, for whatever reason. So she clears her throat. "Do you uh, think you could catch me up on the things I missed while I was gone? About Stella? I'm just-"

"We wouldn't need to catch you up if you cared enough to find out yourself," Maria snaps and the claws are out now, "before she died." She cranes her head up to her eldest sister. "Why did Mama even want us to talk to her? She hasn't been here."

It strikes sharp and deep, a rough sting where Lacey's heart ought to be. It burns, not as much as Elijah's disconnected soul, but still. Stella's sisters don't approve - it's like they can't even stand to look at her. Oh.

Sonia's hard exterior crumbles away for just a moment, just enough for her eyes to soften with sympathy for her sister and apology for Lacey. "Excuse us." Then it's back and she takes up Maria's arm in a vice grip, dragging her off to the side. "You can't just say that in front of people," she hisses. "I know she hasn't been here but she is a guest and you need to treat her like one."

Despite Sonia's attempts to stay hushed, Maria gives zero cares about the volume of her voice, about who may overhear. "Why? Why do I need to treat anybody a certain way when they're all only here to make themselves feel less guilty for what happened? I guarantee her dad had to drag her here. She doesn't care. She's just here 'cause she doesn't have any other choice." Her face remains rigid, an unreadable wall, bricked and cemented. Her anger must be pure, righteous. And maybe she's right to be so.

Lacey tries to swallow down a lump, but it just doesn't want to go down, and with the rising tension in her throat comes a rising pressure behind her eyes, hot and wet and ready to burst. But she runs a tight ship, and she'll be damned if she lets it leak. Not today, not now, not in front of these people, and certainly not with expired mascara that probably isn't even waterproof. She turns away from the girls and starts walking back down the dirt path towards the car. She needs to be alone.

Then, Sonia, distant. "Oh, great. You probably made her cry."

"Good," Maria says.

And that - that is the breaking point.

She crosses her arms over her chest, hugging herself tight as the dam bursts and the steel walls of her carefully maintained ship tear open. There's one unpleasant trickle from the corner of her eye and she wipes it away with her thumb, but just as she clears it away another one starts racing down the side of her nose, and then two more, and another. No, no, no. The sun is suddenly too warm, and her black clothes soak in too much of it. Everything is melting, falling to pieces. She can't keep it stuffed, can't keep it together. Shit, she's got gross concealer smears all over the sleeves of her funeral dress. Fuck. Maybe Jeremy keeps napkins in the glove-

In the same moment she accidentally dips her foot into the mud-fogged puddle in the middle of the path, her face bumps into someone's chest and she stumbles back, splashing dirt-water up her calves and onto the slacks of whoever she's just crashed against. With a disgusted cry she squelches back onto dry land. It's icky, slimy.

"Lacey?" Familiar. "You clean up nice. I didn't even recognize you."

There, before her, stands Gideon Lucas, hands shoved into his pockets. For a moment, he stares at her with this goofy look on his face, as if he's expecting her to make some snide remark or curse him out so he can retort back. Once he sees the state of things, though - "things" being her blotchy face - the smirk becomes a frown and his brows knit together. He reaches out an arm and presses a set of gentle fingers to her elbow. "Hey? You okay? What's up?"

His fingers are cold. She flinches away and ducks her head, but nevertheless continues facing his chest. If anything, he blocks the sight of her off from anyone else. "I'm fine. It's just sad is all. A girl died. Tears are, like, a funeral thing. No big deal."

There's silence; how unlike him. She glances up to see a skeptical brow raised beneath his mass of carefully molded hair. He doesn't buy it. Well. I already told him about the ghosts. What else can go wrong? "Fine," she says, sweeping the sides of her thumbs under her eyes to catch whatever mess remains, "it's her sisters. They hate me."

"And you of all people care that two people you don't know hate you?"

Her mouth twitches. She starts picking under a nail.

"Oh. So you do know them. Lacey, I'm sure they don't hate you. Their sister just died. They're gonna be irritable with everyone, y'know, angry. I know I would be." He smiles. Reassurance. "Why don't we try again?"

That's a horrible idea, but she can't say so, because his gaze moves beyond her shoulder and then she feels a tap, one that makes her jump about ten feet in the air. A strand of blonde comes loose as she whirls around to see who else has the gall to touch her. Everyone needs to stop doing that.

Sonia seems to take the hint and clasps her hands behind her back. "Sorry," she says. She doesn't make eye contact. "For making you jump and for Maria. She's not taking it well. Irritable. Angry with everyone. Grief'll do that."

Unsure of what to say, Lacey glances back at Gideon. He gives her a knowing look - I told you - but comes to her social rescue. "Hey, Sonia," he says, smiling but not too much, eyes solemn but not too much. "I'm sorry about Stella. She was a nice girl. I remember she always packed me up with leftovers when I stayed late tutoring. That's something I've missed." His eyes roam her face, reading the response she doesn't give - a distant flicker of a smile, a soft nod.

"Yeah. She was...an amazing cook. I love my dad but nothing he makes will ever compare to the stuff she made. Like her pisto? They had this-" A brief chuckle fills Sonia's throat. "They had this competition once to see who could make the best pisto, since he started talking this big talk about how good he was, and they had me and Maria and Mama taste both and judge. Tens for Stella all across the board."