The Vengeful Dead Read Online Free PDF

expect you to,” she said. “What I do expect is for you to talk to me about it, in whatever way you see fit. It doesn’t have to make sense, but Jackie?” She waited until Jackie turned around, hands thrust defiantly into her jeans pockets. “If you don’t, it will continue to eat at you until there is nothing left.” She reached over and grabbed a handful of Kleenex from her desk and soaked up the spilled tea. “Please, sit back down.”
    Jackie shook her head. “I need to stand.” She paced, walking behind her chair to the other side of the room to look out the window at the cloudshrouded downtown skyline. “What’s there to say? You know everything about me already. Why not just tell me what it is I need to do so you can sign off on that dotted line?”
    She chuckled. “You think I’d let you off so easily?”
    “No, but what’s the point of telling you stuff you already know?”
    “Because the point is not for me to know it,” she replied. “The point is to put your issues into your own words, to let someone else hear them, and know that you aren’t so utterly alone and helpless as you feel right now.”
    “I’m not helpless.” Jackie couldn’t even convince herself with those words.
    “Then do something about it, Jackie,” she said. “Get off your butt, put on clothes, and get out. You need to be around other people. You need to do something to get your mind out of this rut you’re in. You want me to sign that dotted line? Then show me you’re willing to make the effort.”
    The words stung. Effort. Now there was a laugh. She walked back over to her chair and sagged back into it. “What if there’s nothing I want to do?”
    “I find that hard to believe.”
    She let her head rest against her hand, elbow propped on the arm of the chair. “I mean it. Who the fuck do I do anything with? I’m not going to ask any of the guys here. I don’t need their pity. There’s no family dinner I can join. The only person I did anything with is, you know . . . dead. I could go down to the pub, but you already know where that leads.”
    “Dear girl, you can drop the sarcasm.” It was the first time Jackie had heard any hint of annoyance out of Tillie.
    “I’m serious,” Jackie said, pointing an accusing finger. “Laur is the only person I did anything with, the only one I talked to. She’s the one I told my story to when I was too drunk to realize that my mother wasn’t actually floating in my bathtub. But she probably told you that shit already.” Tears were starting to fall now, but Jackie didn’t care anymore. “She’s . . . she’s the only one who wanted to do anything with me. She loved me in spite of all the stupid shit I did. Why? Why would she love me, of all people? Did she tell you that, Tillie? She tell you why she was in love with someone as fucked up as me?” Damn her! How had they gotten on to this? So much for proving she was doing fine.
    Tillie grabbed the tissue box off her desk and handed it to Jackie. “And why do you think you’re so unlovable? I don’t see that at all.”
    Jackie grabbed a handful of Kleenex and wiped at her running nose. “Do we really have to talk about this now? I just wanted to come back to work. I need my routine back, Tillie. I can’t handle being at home all the time.”
    “What we talk about is up to you, Jackie. I can’t make you talk about anything. But this issue is important. It goes back a long way for you.”
    She could not look Tillie in the eye. “I know. I’m just . . . I’m not ready to talk about that yet.”
    “Will you when you’re ready?”
    Did she have a choice? She had promised to talk about her mother’s death at the hands of her stepfather, but the mere thought of doing so made her squirm in the chair. “I will.”
    “And I want your word that you will get out of your apartment and do something social in the next two weeks, anything involving being with other people.”
    Jackie sighed. She didn’t want to go