I reached down and slipped my hand into hers, pressing our palms together and intertwining our fingers in a tight weave. I felt her squeeze out of reflex, and she slowly swiveled her head and looked into my face.
“Like you said,” I told her softly. “Don’t be like me. No chances… No risks… And, don’t you dare let go.”
“You either,” she whispered.
“We ready?” Ben asked.
“Aye,” Felicity responded, giving him a shallow nod.
He looked at her, then at me. The reluctance was clear in his eyes. Finally, he held up the two salt packets and stared at them briefly before returning his gaze to mine. He wagged the square packets at me as if to say, “I’ve got your back.”
I simply nodded.
Ben sighed then looked at the M.E. and said, “Go on. Open it up, Doc.”
Doctor Kingston stepped around the end of the gurney then reached out a gloved hand and tugged on the zipper. In a smooth motion she pulled the closure, creating an ever-widening gap down the center of the shroud. Once she reached the midpoint, she stopped.
Moving back to the head of the gurney, she carefully folded back the sides of the rubberized fabric and revealed the body that had been sprawled in our front yard less than ten hours ago. After the medical examiner had moved out of the way, Felicity slowly reached out, her gloved hand hovering a few inches above the pale flesh of the corpse.
And then, through our clasped hands, I felt her entire body go completely stiff.
CHAPTER 23
Using the tines of her salad fork, Felicity slowly batted a small hunk of tomato back and forth on her plate. After a few seconds of the cat-like behavior, she pushed the deep red triangle close to the edge using the back of the utensil. Lazily piercing the bite-sized chunk, she then maneuvered it around the layers of thinly sliced red onion, other slabs of extraordinarily crimson-hued tomato, and dollops of fresh mozzarella cheese that were all swimming in a translucent green pool of olive oil. So far, other than a few initial bites, she had barely touched her lunch other than to engage in the absent-minded activity currently at hand.
The restaurant was unusually quiet, but then it was early yet. The sharp-edged, raspy beat of the Raveonettes Dead Sound floated through the room as the last verse of the song filtered from the overhead speakers nearby. It was underscored by the muffled sound of a distant emergency siren somewhere outside. The melange of noises seemed to echo the tone of our day thus far.
“I’m sorry,” my wife finally muttered, her voice riding on the back of a dejected sigh.
It was now coming up on two hours since we’d left the county medical examiner’s office, and I’d lost track of the number of times she’d apologized during that span. I’d actually stopped counting somewhere around the tenth, and that was better than forty-five minutes ago. I figured Ben had given up on keeping a tally as well, but since he had disappeared to the restroom, he wasn’t around to hear this latest verbal atonement. So even if I was wrong, it was really a moot point.
I slipped my hand over beneath the table and placed it on my wife’s denim-covered thigh. Giving her leg a gentle rub, I tried to soothe her mood with the same words I’d already spoken several times. “I’m sorry too, honey. But all you could do was try.”
“Don’t lie, Rowan,” she replied. Her voice was quiet but didn’t lack for seriousness. “You aren’t sorry. You’re happy it didn’t work.”
“I wouldn’t say happy,” I told her. “But, yeah, sure, I’ll admit I’m more than a little relieved.”
In all honesty, I was completely sincere in my words of consolation. I hated to see her beating herself up about something over which she had no control. I’d been there more than once myself and knew it was an exercise in futility. And, I also knew that given the unproductive outcome of our visit, we were still flying blind. Without a doubt, that was the real issue here. But no matter what I said, my wife hadn’t yet been willing to let go of her self-recriminations.
“That’s the problem. I am too,” she said. Her tone was harsh, and she was obviously flogging herself with the words.
“You don’t think you should be?”
“No.” She shook her head but kept her eyes aimed toward the dark red chunk of tomato she was still pushing around her plate. “Maybe that’s why I failed…because I was too afraid.”
I sighed. “Honey, first off, you didn’t fail. It just wasn’t happening, that’s all. Secondly, I’ve got news for you. If fear is what keeps an ethereal connection with the dead from happening, then I’d never channel a single spirit because I’m usually pretty terrified.”
“Cac capaill,” she muttered.
“It’s the truth, whether you want to believe it or not,” I told her. “Besides, even if you had made a connection, we still might not be any better off. You know as well as I do that you don’t always get what you’re after.”
She objected. “But there might have been something.”
“Or not, just like I said. You just don’t know. Miranda is pretty good at covering her tracks when she wants to be.”
“Fekking saigh…” my wife grumbled.
“You’ll get no argument from me there,” I agreed. “Listen, I know how you feel, but you’re just going to have to get over it. We’ll have to find another way of doing this.”
“I’m still sorry.”
“I know. You’ve already said that.” I watched her for a moment as she continued to play with the food on her plate. Then I pushed the salt and pepper shakers toward her. “Would you like some salt for that?”
She shot me an odd glance as she lifted her fork and stabbed it hard into one of the tomato slabs. “No. Salt is bad for you.”
I hoped her mood wouldn’t continue. Felicity was usually far too stubborn to stay in a funk for very long, especially if she saw a way out. However, where the subject of Miranda was concerned, it could sometimes be a different story.
Ben’s voice came from the side as he breezed past me. “Jeezus…is she apologizin’ again?” I looked up and saw him sliding back into the booth on the opposite side as he continued, “I was only gone five friggin’ minutes. How many this time?”
Apparently he was still keeping track after all.
“Just twice,” I told him.
“Twice? Lemme see.” He grunted and then rolled his eyes up in an animated fashion while he scribbled in the air with his index finger. A second or two later, he dropped his gaze down and focused on her as he reached for his burger. “Yeah, those two make it an even twenty-five, Firehair. That’s the daily limit on apologizin’. Now ya’ hafta stop. It’s a law.”
“I haven’t apologized twenty-five times,” she snapped.
“Yeah, actually, ya’ have.”
“He could be right, honey,” I offered. “I lost track at ten.”
“Fealltoir.”
“No, I’m not a traitor,” I replied. “I’m just telling it like it is.”
She turned her attention back to Ben and countered, “Well, twenty-five isn’t an even number.”
“Doesn’t matter, you know exactly what I mean,” he replied then bit off a chunk of his sandwich and began to chew.
“Well, I’m terribly sorry if I’m annoying you,” she snipped.
He swallowed and then shot back. “That’s twenty-six, Irish.”
“That’s the second time you’ve called me that today.”
“Yeah, so?”
“You’ve never called me that before.”
“Yeah, well I didn’t know you were still a foreigner before.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Twenty-seven.”
She huffed out an annoyed breath. “I think you know exactly what I meant.”
Ben raised his eyebrows and shook his head at her. “Last Friday when we were all at that restaurant with the weird name.”
“Flipdoodles?”
“Yeah, that one.”
“What about it?”
“We were talkin’ and ya’ said ya’ had dual citizenship, right?”
“Aye.”
“There ya’ go. Makes ya’ a foreigner in my book.”
Felicity stabbed her lunch hard and muttered, “ Go ifreann leat.”