Elliot nodded. “That was a dream, or some sort of psychotic break.”
“You were the last thing your mother spoke of before she entered the afterlife. You almost chose to be with her.”
I might as well have slapped Elliot. It would have drawn the same reaction. Elliot fought back tears and anger. His hands fisted at his sides. He might have wanted to hit me, but he didn’t step closer. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“She said she was worried about you. She asked me if I would tell you how sorry she was, but that’s not what reapers do. So I told her I couldn’t.” It was against Bureau policy to deliver messages to loved ones, but the Bureau wasn’t a priority anymore. “She loves you above anyone and anything else.”
Elliot opened his mouth, but only a sob came out. I was beside him in seconds. To my surprise, he didn’t push me away when I gathered him in my arms. He would have collapsed if I hadn’t been holding him. I carried him into the house.
“Why are you doing this to me?” he repeated into my chest.
“I don’t mean to cause you pain, baby, but I’m not sorry for your grief. Sometimes the dead don’t have anyone to grieve them.” His mother was a nice lady who deserved her son’s love.
“Can you bring her back?”
The back door led into the kitchen. A chair was pulled out from the kitchen table, so I sat down, but I didn’t let him go.
“I’m afraid I can’t, but you can see her whenever you want. You’re very special, Elliot.” He could visit her in the afterlife and still return to the living realm. Or he would be able to if he allowed me to get close to him.
Elliot wrapped his arms around my neck and held on. “I want to believe you.”
I didn’t want to drop any more truth bombs on him. I’d just turned his world upside down. Unfortunately, the rest of what I had to tell him would shatter his reality.
Chapter Thirteen
Elliot
Iwas pretty sure I’d gone completely mental. I clung to my captor as if he were a lifeline to my happiness. At that moment, the sadness I’d never allowed myself to feel took hold. I was angry at a dead woman for dying, and that anger had kept the sadness at bay. Somewhere in what Grymley had said, the anger gave way, falling like broken glass around me, and all I was left with were tears and regrets. I clung to Grymley because he was the only one who could soften the pain into a dull ache. I wasn’t sure why him or how I knew he could, but the more I stayed close to him, the more his presence felt like a warm blanket. The tears stopped, but the sadness balled up in my chest. It wrapped around my heart, a tangled web, trapping the grief inside the chambers. My blood still flowed around it, but it would always be there.
So when I asked him why me, a part of me already knew the answer. He was like the Grim Reaper, just as his name suggested, and I was supposed to be his sidekick. But I already had three jobs. A fourth might make me certifiable. “I don’t have time for another job.”
Grymley rubbed my back. He had the perfect lap for cuddling, and I didn’t want to leave. I tried not to think about how his thug friend had kidnapped me or how he might hold me hostage in my own home.
A hostage to Death. That should be the title of a song if it weren’t already.
“I’m not offering you a job, baby.”
I wiped my eyes and sat up. Grymley pulled a cloth handkerchief out of nowhere, dabbed at my tears, then handed it to me.
I was a lot more aggressive, wiping both my cheeks and then blowing my nose because he deserved my snot on his cloth handkerchief. He’d been a bit of an asshole, and maybe blowing my nose on it made me a snotty asshole, too, but I’d like to think of it as payback for being a snotty bitch.
When I handed the cloth back, I expected him to tell me to keep it, but he folded the clean parts over the dirty part and held it in his hand as if what I’d just deposited inside it weren’t gross at all. He did it with a quiet calm that pissed me off. I couldn’t say why.
I wiggled off Grymley’s lap. That he let me up so easily made me double down on the irrational anger for reasons I couldn’t explain.
When I held out my hand for the handkerchief, Grymley handed it over. He sat there, watching me leave the room. I could feel his gaze on me.
I only had to walk down the hall to the laundry room, which was on the other side of the wall. I threw it into the washing machine as if it offended me.
“Why am I so pissed off?” I mumbled to myself as I added more laundry to the machine so I wouldn’t be washing only one thing.
“Because deep down, you know your life is about to change.” Grymley leaned against the doorjamb, his arms folded over his chest. “Not all change is bad, baby.”
“Shut up.” I knew he was right, which pissed me off even more. And I couldn’t hear the last part. Not yet. “You come in here and blow up my world, then expect me to be in a good mood about it. I still don’t understand why me. Why not Gary or Silvia, or hell, even Joel? Or the guy who told me I was two minutes late delivering his pizza, and that was why he didn’t tip me. Or the shitty lady from my other job who makes me clean her oven even though she doesn’t cook anything in it and tells me I do a terrible job every time.” She was old, so I just did what she asked in silence, but that didn’t make her any less mean.
“Jean Harbisson. She’s got a few weeks left.”
“And that. The random facts about people.” I threw my work shirt from yesterday into the laundry. It was covered in pizza grease and smelled like the restaurant. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get the smell out. My pants were a lost cause, too. “I believe you. Okay. Like, how else are you going to know Miss Jean’s name? But I can’t handle it, Grymley. I truly can’t. Not right now. Okay? I really don’t care whether all change is good or bad. That my life has to change at all is totally screwing with me.”
