Page 21 of Deathtoll
“You’ll see me because I’ll be there. And I’ll see you, also because I’ll be there.”
She fought a smile that would just have encouraged him. Instead, she let her exasperation show. “You’re a stubborn ass.”
“You can call me anything you want. Now or then. Because I’ll be in the room.”
“Fine!” God, what was wrong with her? Because while his overprotective ogre instincts annoyed her, they also turned her on. She seriously needed therapy.
Only a sick mind would remember right then how he’d once—okay, way more than once—taken her and driven her to mindless pleasure on the very desk between them.
His eyes narrowed for a second, as if he was reading her thoughts. His ridiculously wide shoulders relaxed a fraction. “And another thing—”
“There’s no other thing.” She shooed him toward the door. “I have work to do. Go away.”
He fixed her with a hard look. “I expect an email with the date and time of your next session with Scott Young.”
“Which letter in the wordgois causing the difficulty?” she snapped, then the anger trickled away as if someone had pulled the plug on her tubful of pent-up fury. She buried her face in her hands for a second before she dropped them to look at him. “Dammit, Murph.” She sounded tired. Shewastired. “We’re always fighting lately.”
He just stared at her—for five solid seconds, at least. As ifshewas being unreasonable. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Held up his hand as a sign of surrender and walked away, shaking his head in that universal gesture men had when they were insinuating that a woman was too emotional to deal with.
She wanted to throw something at his back. He could besofreaking aggravating. “Men!”
“Can’t live without us,” he called back over his shoulder.
“Can’t wait until you all pile onto a spaceship and go off to colonize Mars!”
His back rippled, as if he were laughing.
She waited until he was gone, then, since she had plenty of time before her next patient, she went off to the physical therapist to borrow a wrist guard. As far as her bruises went, for the rest of the day, nobody was the wiser.
She only took the wrist guard off in her car on the way home. She didn’t dwell on the mild injury. She would heal. At least her car was finally back from the mechanic, radiator fixed. She disliked depending on other people for rides. She disliked depending on anyone for anything.
She stopped by the post office on her way home, and then dropped off some dry cleaning, so darkness fell by the time she reached her house.
“Hi, Mr. Mauro. How are you today?”
He was making his rounds. He liked to walk around the block several times a day. He was just this side of eighty, with a slight Italian accent—a real character, according to Betty. Betty had spent enough time sitting on his front porch, and he’d spent enough time sitting on hers, so that Kate suspected there had been a “golden years” romance going on between the two, which she thought was inspiring and sweet.
Anthony Mauro looked toward Betty’s house, then sighed as if his heart was breaking.
“I know.” Kate felt the same. “Can’t believe she’s gone.”
He waved away the words with one hand while he gripped his cane with the other. “She didn’t want to be cremated. You make sure you remind Linda if you see her.”
“I’m sure she didn’t forget, but I’ll remind her.”
He harrumphed. “You get to be my age and funeral homes send you a dozen flyers a day. Always trying to talk you into some newfangled bullshit. Like making diamonds out of your ashes. Or shooting your urn up into space. Like anyone would want to end up in a pawnshop or forever float in a cold and dark nothing.”
Kate didn’t know how to respond, so she just nodded.
“And all of it is so expensive, you’d have to win the lottery on your deathbed.” He grunted with anger. “You know what the latest thing is?”
She waited for him to tell her.
“They cremate you, mix your ashes with dirt in a cardboard box, bury it, and plant a tree seedling in there. For ten thousand dollars!”
Kate made low-key outraged noises. She wasn’t really in the mood for funeral talk. She smiled at Mr. Mauro, hoping this was the end of it.
It wasn’t.
