“I won’t breathe a word of it to anyone, Ray Ray, I swear.”
She seems to forget that all of three seconds ago I was implying that I would turn the morgue’s current residents into goop if I didn’t get my way. Instead, she hands over some paperwork for me fill out while she calls down to the morgue technicians, asking them to prepare Coralie’s dad for a viewing.
I have to wait twenty minutes before a guy in a paper gown appears through the double doors behind Raynor and gestures for me to follow him.
The room I’m led into is cold and sterile. There’s nothing in here bar a metal gurney, complete with the lumpy shape of an expired body on top of it, which is covered with a pale blue paper sheet. The guy who led me down here clears his throat and folds his rubber-gloved hands in front of him. He’s wearing safety goggles, like he occasionally gets splattered in the face as he carries out his work.
“Let me know whenever you’re ready,” he says.
I stick my hands in my pockets. “Yep. I’m ready.” I smile tightly at him, rocking on the balls of my feet.
“Are you sure you don’t need a moment to collect your thoughts? This can be a traumatic experience for some people, especially if they’re not quite sure what to expect.”
“Nope. I got it. Deathly palor. Blue lips. Waxy complexion. Let’s get this show on the road.”
From the look on his face this guy thinks I’m mad, but he carefully, slowly draws back the paper sheet covering Malcolm’s upper body and takes a step back so I can see.
Malcolm, the bastard, looks pretty much the same as he did the last time I saw him, aside from his coloring. Lifeless, he seems smaller somehow, though. Maybe he shrunk in his latter years. Still the same cruel downturn of his mouth, though. Still the same mean pinch in between his eyebrows. I lean down, as close as anyone should lean into the week old remains of a dead man, and I study what’s left of him. He caused so much hurt to Coralie. Physical and mental. He ruined things for us in so many ways. I’m suddenly overcome with such a huge and awful sense of hatred that I can’t keep it inside myself. I hawk and spit into his face. Saliva runs down his right cheek, chasing over his alabaster skin, until it trickles into his ear. The indignity of that makes me smile.
“Excuse me, sir. You can’t do that. You can’t spit—”
“It’s all good. You can check off your little boxes and give me the paperwork I need. We’re all done here.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CORALIE
Loose Ends
NOW
Two days pass. I walk along the narrow strand of river that winds lazily through Port Royal, refusing to step foot onto Main Street. I screen Ben’s calls. I don’t have the energy to text and tell him I’m okay. I don’t even have the will power to pretend that I still love him and want to be with him. Strangely, I get the feeling that he knows the truth. He stops calling eventually.
I spend hours imagining him fucking some other girl in the bed we share back in California, which is what I suspect he’s been doing, and I feel nothing. Maybe relief. Certainly not jealousy or sadness. I know that’s not normal, given the fact that we’ve been together for so long, but this thing with Callan supersedes Ben. It supersedes everything.
It’s been five days since I arrived in Port Royal, and I’ve accomplished nothing. Aside from getting into fights and finding myself angry a lot of the time, it seems as though me being here has been a waste of time.
I’m sitting on the banks of the river, lost in my thoughts, lost in memories of me and Callan, our few summers spent together here, taking photographs, fooling around and falling in love, when Sam the Priest appears out of nowhere, covered in sweat. He’s in his running gear again, shorts and a t-shirt. The man apparently never does any real priesting as far as I can tell.
“Coralie? Coralie Taylor? It is you. Perfect!”
“It is?” I squint up at him, shielding my eyes from the sun.
“Yes, sure is. I wanted to talk to you about flower arrangements. I know your friend said it was entirely up to me, but that seemed a little strange if I’m honest. Malcolm did set out pretty specific instructions, but normally the deceased’s loved ones want to play some part in the organization of the service.”
“I thought I couldn’t set anything in motion yet. Not until…never mind.” I’m so sick of this ridiculous game of dominoes. “Wait, what friend?”