Everything She Saw

Leave Her to Heaven

Zoey Brooks was dead.

That was what I knew as I, her other friends she had, and her family stood around an open grave as a coffin was lowered into the ground. She was dead. There was no other way of saying it. Zoey would never come back to the building. We would never have another conversation. That fact hurt so much considering the last conversation we had had not been the best one we had shared.

It hurt so much seeing my best friend lowered into the ground.

It had been the day after Jonathan had stormed out of my apartment. It was the afternoon when someone knocked on my door. I had still been in bed, wallowing in shame and pity for myself. It wasn't something that I did. I hated doing it. When I heard the knock, I had made myself get out of bed and open the door. A cop by the name of Quinn O'Malley was not who I had been expecting. In fact, I had been expecting Zoey. I had been expecting Zoey, and what I had gotten was a police officer telling me that Zoey Brooks had been found dead in an alley that morning. He told me that Zoey's coworkers had called in and mentioned me by name. When he said coworkers, I knew he meant other prostitutes. He tried to offer his condolences, and to say they were looking into it.

I made him leave. They would never look into it. I knew how the cops in this city were, even if they were better under Gordon's leadership. They wouldn't waste their time looking for someone who had murdered a prostitute. I knew what Zoey would say if she were in my shoes.

"They have better things to do than find Jack the Ripper," she would have said.

The funeral was the first time I had ever met Zoey's family. I knew she had an older sister named Theresa. Her parents' names were Olivia and Thomas. She had told me they hadn't been close, that they hated her. But looking at them, I think that had been in her head. Her mother was sobbing and her father looked like he was about to break down. Her sister was stone-faced, but even I could tell that was just a front.

The others that were present must have been others from Zoey's line of work. There were two blondes, a red-head, and a brunette. All of them were sobbing.

After the priest had finished speaking, he spoke to Zoey's family quietly. The other girls left, all of them continuing to cry. I wondered if they felt they hadn't belonged at the service. I had felt out of place. This was only the second funeral I had ever been to. The first had been for Jonathan's grandmother. It had felt different.

Someone tapped my shoulder. Theresa Brooks stood behind me.

"You were a friend of Zoey's?" she asked. Her voice was firm, but I could hear the slight shake in it.

"I was," I said quietly. "She was my best friend."

"She was a good person?" she asked.

"She was," I agreed. "A great one."

"When she dropped out of college, we-" her voice cracked. "None of us tried talking to her. I hadn't even known; I was away. And my parents... they were so angry with her for throwing her life away. She thought we hated her."

Theresa stopped talking to take a deep breath. She was consoling herself; trying to keep herself from crying. "I should have talked to her. I should have tried, but I thought she was fine. I thought-"

She stopped and wiped her eyes. I had seen the tears. She sniffed and breathed out. "I'm glad she had you, though. She kept a journal, and she wrote about you a lot. She made you sound like such an amazing friend, and I thank you for that. You were there when her family wasn't. When we should have been-"

She didn't wipe her eyes. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Her lip trembled. Her breath was staggered. "I should have tried," she breathed.

"She loved you," I offered. My voice was uneven. My throat hurt from trying not to cry. "She was such a wonderful person, and I don't know what I would have done without her for the short time I've known her. I don't know what I did before her."