Page 109 of Mourner for Hire
Why else would she do what she does?
It’s intriguing and terrifying and gives her a semblance of toughness with a wall of resilience I can’t break through.
“If you must.” She gets in the car, and just before she closes the door, she adds, “I need your approval for wallpaper, anyway.”
Quit marching in the past,Dominic. Life isn’t there anymore. It’s here,my mom told me just before she died.Let life change, okay? Promise me. Even when I’m gone.
I stare at the crushed drywall, a ruler and pencil in hand. The anger I felt last night feels like a distant memory that doesn’t really belong to me. Humiliation bleeds in my gut as I remember how I completely lost my temper in the most petulant way.
I can feel Vada’s gaze on me as she brings the toolbox and places it next to the wall, but I don’t look back at her. I stare at the hole in the wall. The left side is a clean break, and the right side is jagged and torn with pink insulation stuck to the paint chips. It doesn’t matter, though—the more I analyze the hole, the more I realize it felt good to hit the wall, because now, I can look at it andsay, this is what it feels like to lose someone: a hole where there shouldn’t be.
“I miss my mom.”
“I know you do,” she says gently.
My stubbornness wants me to pull away, but something else burning inside me wants to pull her closer. The war within makes me stand still and simply look at her.
Her chest is rising and falling in steady but deep breaths. Her mouth is soft, and her eyes are swollen with empathy.
“I’m sorry I didn’t realize you wanted to be a part of the renovation,” she offers.
A truce of sorts.
I shake my head, wanting to bite my tongue but refusing to be so obstinate. I don’t want to be a part of the renovation. Not really. I just want to be done with grief, and I know that will never happen.
“No, I’m sorry.” I stare down at her, my eyes drifting down to her lips and back to the hazy color of her eyes.
She reaches out, curling her hand around my bicep. “It’s okay. Someone told me you hurt quietly. I guess I should have listened to you hurting in the silence.”
I nod once in response, crack my neck, and get to work.
I don’t mention that I see Vada smirk out of the corner of my eye. She sees exactly how I’m managing my grief, and she’s going to let me.
But I guarantee she’s going to give me shit for it.
FORTY
VADA
I sigh loudlyas Dominic measures the rectangular hole in the wall. I cleaned up the edges to make for an easy repair, but Dominic being the manly man he is, decided he needed to help, and now he’s spent the last ten minutes measuring.
He glances at me as I lean against the wall. “Is there a problem?”
“I was just thinking?—”
“Great.”
He pushes back his protective glasses, and I think of his actual glasses and how they make my legs feel a little weak. God bless the contacts he wears to keep me from having ever lustful thoughts about him.
“Did you know if you die when wearing contacts, they don’t take them out?”
The measuring tape snaps closed. “That can’t be true.”
“It is.” I shrug and lean back on the counter.
“That’s a fact I did not need to know. Why don’t they take them out?”
I venture a guess. “I guess the coroner wants to make sure you can see in Heaven.”
