Page 60 of Mourner for Hire
“Text.”
He flips me his card reader to type in my number. I do and turn it back. He stares at it a minute and then hits enter.
“You have my number now, Dominic. If you have a problem with me, maybe you should just let me know instead of telling people around town what an awful, embezzling bitch I am.”
“I didn’t say you were a bitch.”
“Oh, honey. You didn’t have to. I know you think I am that much is clear.”
“Don’t call me honey.”
“Don’t call me sweetheart.”
He tsks out an unamused laugh.
I step closer. “But also, embezzlement is the wrong word. If you really think what I do is a scam, the phrase you’re looking for is financial exploitation… and you and I both know that’s not what I’m doing.”
I tilt my chin, and something warm immediately drips from the crown of my head. I reach up, touch the spot, and when I pull my hand away, the sight of blood on my fingertips sends a woozy rush through my brain. My lips go cold.
“Look at that. Even your birdhouses hate me.”
At this point, I don’t care what he has to say. I turn and walk away without waiting for a response. I push through the dizziness and the rising nausea, focusing on just making it to the bathroom. I need to sit down, put my head between my knees, and not completely humiliate myself.
Then I’m heading back to the cottage—with my shell necklace—to strip wallpaper, repaint, and wipe another item off the whiteboard. One more step closer to getting the fuck out of here.
TWENTY-ONE
DOMINIC
As she rushes away,I notice a wobble to her stride and the hand she’s holding to her head, is quickly oozing crimson.
Shit.
She’s actually hurt.
I hurry to catch up to her before she reaches for the metal door of the restrooms, lightly touching her waist to get her attention.
She turns so sharply to look at me that I almost think she’s going to backhand me. Instead, she groans.
“What the fuck do you want? I’m bleeding and really not in the mood to fight with you.”
“I know you’re bleeding. I’m just?—”
“Selectively nice? Only choosing to be decent and polite when someone is bleeding out of the cranium?”
I withhold a smile. She notices.
“Go to Hell.” She storms away. This time, she reaches the public restrooms, and I follow her inside. “Excuse me?!”
It’s not the way she says it. It’s the way her normally pink cheeks have gone ghostly pale and the way her vision wobbles as she tries and fails to glare at me.
“You’re scared of blood.”
Death in a sundress doesn’t like blood—the irony.
“No,” she argues defiantly.
But the way her expression falls tells me I hit the nail on the head.
