Page 88 of Dead Love

“Then what is it?”

“The new coroner is an asshole,” she said. “Oh. My bad.Medical examiner.”

I laughed. She had called me that too when we first met, but that was years ago now. And this was different. There was a hint of amusement glimmering in her eyes. I tilted my head.

“I don’t have the patience to tolerate him,” she said.

“Fair enough.”

A beat of silence passed between us. I resumed my work, fixing the walls of the site. Catie shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

“‘My Flower,’” Catie read. “I’ve always wondered who that was for.” I climbed up the ladder. “What are you doing out here, anyway?”

I shrugged. “Working.”

“But you were sitting.”

I pulled the ladder up and collapsed it, leaning it against a tree.

“The dogs aren’t even here,” she added.

She was persistent. I rubbed the back of my neck.

“I was waiting,” I said.

“For?”

“Does it matter?”

“You’re waiting out here,alone,mind you, forsomething.You just got out of jail. And you saw Kora, the woman you were keeping in your basement, right before you were released.” She wrinkled her nose. “You can explain why you’re moping.”

I stomped through the grass. “I’m not moping,” I muttered.

“Careful,” she said. “You’re moping is about to wake the dead.”

Why I had insisted on digging Kora a burial plot when I had always planned to cremate her anyway, was lost on me. It was the act of it, I suppose. Knowing that her future lay in my domain. That she would be trapped with me here forever, without a way to leave this place behind.

We made our way to the mausoleum, and I kept my head low, trying to understand it myself. “I was waiting for Kora,” I said.

For once, Catie fell silent. I took a seat on the marble bench. She sat down next to me. Her fingers flinched. She was trying to find the right words to say.

“I understand that you’re hurt,” she finally said.

I wasn’t hurt. I was angry. I scoffed under my breath, and she rolled her eyes.

“All right, fine. You’re not ‘hurt,’ but you are sulking.”

“Are you trivializing my feelings?” I asked.

“So youarehurt!” She smacked my arm. “I knew it.”

“You don’t know shit,” I said, my tone angrier than I had meant it to be. “You don’t know what happened between us.”

Her eyes bounced back and forth across my face, trying to get a good read on me. But I gave her nothing.

“You’re right,” she said. “I have no idea what you and Kora were doing together. But you’ve got to pull yourself together. Waiting for her to declare her love for you isn’t going to happen. She’s got her family now.”

Behind the mausoleum, there was an empty field that would hold families one day. Like the Novas. For a moment, a bright flash of a vision filled my mind: that area filled with trees. Burial trees, like Kora had suggested.