The Face of Death Read Online Free PDF Page A

about the future. About all the good things that could still happen here, should I decide to stay. I didn’t have Matt, and I didn’t have Alexa, but I did have Bonnie, and I did have me.
    Life as it used to be, that was the milk. But
life
in
general,
was pure chocolate donut, and the donut trumps the milk.
    “So this is where all the magic happens.”
    Callie’s voice startles me from my reverie. She’s standing in the doorway, her gaze speculative.
    “Hey,” I say. “Thanks for coming. For helping me do this.”
    She walks into the room, her eyes roving. “Well, it was this or reruns of
Charlie’s Angels
. Besides, Bonnie feeds me.”
    I grin. “How to catch a wild Callie: chocolate donuts and a really big mousetrap.”
    She comes over, plops down on the bed. Bounces up and down on it a few times. “Very nice,” she judges.
    “I have a lot of good memories here.”
    “I’ve always wondered…” She hesitates.
    “What?”
    “Why did you keep it? This is the same bed, isn’t it? Where it happened?”
    “The one and only.” I run a hand over the comforter. “I thought about getting rid of it. I couldn’t sleep in it for the first few weeks after I came home. I slept on the couch. When I got up the courage to try, I couldn’t bear sleeping anywhere else. One terrible thing happened here. That shouldn’t outweigh all of the good times. I loved people here. My people. I’m not letting Sands take that away from me.”
    I can’t decipher the look in her eyes. Sadness. Guilt. A little bit of longing?
    “See now? That’s the difference between us, Smoky. I have a single bad moment in my teens, sleep with the wrong boy, get pregnant, and give up my child. I make damn sure forever-after that I never have another committed relationship. You get raped in this bed, but its strongest memories for you are the moments you shared with Matt and Alexa. I admire your optimism, I really do.” Her smile is just short of melancholy. Her lips curve in self-mockery. “As for me? My cup runneth under.”
    I don’t reply, because I know my friend. She’s sharing this with me, but that’s all she’s capable of. Words of comfort would be embarrassing, almost a betrayal. I’m here so she can say these things and know someone heard her, nothing more.
    She smiles. “Know what I miss?” she asks. “Matt’s tacos.”
    I look at her in surprise. Then I smile too.
    “They were great, weren’t they?”
    “I dream about them sometimes,” she replies, melodramatic longing in her eyes.
    I couldn’t cook with a gun to my head. I could burn water, as the saying goes. Matt, as always, as in all things, was the whole package. He bought cookbooks and tried things and nine times out of ten the results were amazing.
    He’d learned how to make tacos by hand from someone, I don’t know who. Not the kind with the icky store-bought shells, but the kind where you begin with a supple tortilla and transform it on the spot into a stiff yet chewy half-moon of deliciousness. He added some kind of spice to the meat that literally made my mouth water.
    Callie too, it seems. She loved food, and invited herself to dinner three or four times a month. I can see her in my mind, scarfing down tacos, chewing her food while talking out of the side of her mouth. Saying something that made Alexa giggle till her milk went the wrong way and spewed out of her nose. Which was, of course, the height of hilarity, the apex of thigh-slappers for Alexa.
    “Thank you,” I say.
    She knows what I mean.
Thank you for that memory, that forgotten bit of bittersweet, that punch in the gut that hurts and feels wonderful all at once.
    This is Callie, spinning in close to hug my soul, spinning back out to regain her haughty distance.
    She gets up from the bed and heads for the door. She looks back at me and smiles, a mischievous smile.
    “Oh, and so you know? You don’t need a mousetrap. Just drug the donuts. I’ll
always
eat the donuts.”

5
    “ HOW ARE YOU