“Let them.” I shrug and get out of the car. There are a few groups hanging around on the front lawn of the church and a line forming to go inside. Travis comes around the front and nods at me to follow him. He leads us over to a group of females and one of them is looking bored and a little sad. She’s African American with short hair dyed a bright red, she is shorter with a slight stature. When she sees us walking towards her, her eyes grow wide and her mouth falls open. I guess this lady knows Ember.
“Travis.” She keeps her eye on me, “who is this?”
“Hi,” I reach my hand out to her, “I’m Emmett.”
“Emmett?” She asks as she tentatively takes my hand.
“This is Ember’s twin.” Travis says and the surrounding ladies gasp. I look at each of them with a smile.
“Rebecca had twins?” The woman still holding my hand breathes. “How?”
“I was adopted as a baby,” I pull my hand back. “I was looking for my birth mother when my adoptive parents passed away, I followed my lead to here and found Ember instead.”
“Oh wow.” She holds her hands to her mouth. “Does Ember know?”
“Yes,” Travis answers, “she found out shortly before her vacation. She asked him to stay here and for me to keep an eye on him.”
“You look so much like Rebecca,” her eyes start watering. “You’re identical to Ember but different as well. More like Rebecca.”
“Ember says the same.” I nod. This must be Vin’s mother and my mother’s childhood best friend. The other ladies walk away and I can only hope that they are small town busybodies who will spread the word quickly. Saves us the work.
“Why were you adopted but Ember was kept?” She looks confused.
“Not sure,” I shrug. “I came looking for answers and instead brought both Ember and I more questions.”
“Well, you are certainly here where you belong.” She puts her hand to my cheek, “with your twin and your mother’s friends.” It feels good hearing her say that and I can see where Vin gets what little compassion he has from.
“Thank you.” I smile at her and follow behind Travis and into the church.
Travis stops and starts talking to a group of guys all wearing Precious Blood baseball caps. This must be some of his teammates. A few of them have that hard toughened look Travis carries and they look like this is the last place they want to be. When Ember told me about her latest kill, she filled me in on how he was another pedophile and how he used to be Travis’ baseball coach. She didn’t tell me that he abused Travis, that was something I just suspected and it looks like he wasn’t the only one. If I had to guess, quite a few of these guys were taken advantage of at a young age by the monster my sister exterminated.
Travis claps them each on the back and stands back running his hands through his hair, “when did you guys get back?”
“Yesterday.” One of the guys replies, “ then we heard this shit.”
“Yeah,” Travis nods. “We should probably head inside.”
“Who’s this?” One of the guys asks while looking me over.
“Shit,” Travis exhales, “my bad, this is Emmett Torres. He’s Ember’s Twin brother.”
“Yeah I can see that.” Another nods.
“Emmett, these are a few guys from my baseball team.” He points at the tallest guy of the bunch, he’s slightly lanky and has a shit eating grin on his face, “this is James.”
“Hey man.” He nods. I return it.
“This is Kevin.” He points out a tall, broad blonde guy. His eyes hold a mountain of pain and he barely gives me a glimpse. “And this is Jeremy.” The last one is shorter and he has been staring at his feet pretty much the whole time.
“Nice to meet you guys.” I nod to them.
“Emmett is coming to Precious Blood this year.” Travis tells them.
“That’s cool,” James nods, “do you play baseball?”
“Nah man,” I shake my head, “I play basketball if I have to choose a sport.”
“Our basketball team sucks.” Jeremy mutters.
“Noted.” I nod.
We all head into the packed church and I see the front few pews have been cordoned off for the Precious Blood Academy’s baseball team.
“You can come sit with us.” Travis says to me but I couldn’t sit that close to the burnt up piece of shit in that casket.
“Nah,” I shake my head, “you go ahead, I’ll just chill back here.”
Travis nods and gives me a lingering look before he backs away and goes to sit with his teammates. When Ember asked me to look after Travis while she was gone, my first thought was hell no, I wanted nothing to do with this smug shithead and I would’ve stuck to that if I didn’t see how much he was hurting. Was everyone else blinded to the suit of self loathing he wore? So, I’m here standing inside a small ass church and listening to a priest talk about this kiddie fucker meeting God in the kingdom of Heaven, just so I can keep an eye on Travis and making sure he knows I’m not going anywhere.
“Rebecca used to hate this guy.” I hear someone mutter beside me. When I turn and look, I see Sharla standing there looking up at me.
“Why?” I ask.
“We went to school with him and she just always hated him.” She shrugs.
I feel a ball of dread form in my belly. Could my mother have known he was a sick, twisted piece of shit? How? Did he try anything on her or were his tastes always geared towards pee-wees?
“She’d be celebrating today,” she nods, “not mourning.”
I snort softly, she’s sounding more and more like Ember. “She sounds like she was pretty great.” I whisper back.
“She was,” she nods, “always a smart ass and running her mouth.” She has a nostalgic look in her eye and a small smile on
