He snapped a picture of it while I tromped through the snow to walk around the side, checking for relatives.
“There’s a wife here, but look at this shit—”
I circled back around to see what had annoyed him. There was indeed a wife, just under his name, but instead of her full name, it just saidMrs.James Dugan. I batted some snow off the headstone below her name to reveal the year she was born—1925—and—
“Isaac!” I said. “There’s no death date on here!”
He perked up. “Really?”
“She could still be alive!”
“Well,” he said, smiling that achingly soft smile he only ever wore in private. The cold sunlight glinted off the blond in his hair and caught on his eyelashes. “Look at us. An idea worked!”
“It was technically your Cat Committee’s idea.”
“Cat Advisory TextThread, please. We’re an anarcho-collective of like-minded individuals who cede no agency to each other.”
We wandered away from the headstone to a seating area near the mausoleum. Isaac dusted the snow off the bench under the holographic Santa Claus and took off his wool scarf for us to sit on.
“Who texted you?” he asked, his voice firm like there was no way forward without answering his question. “In the truck. Who was it?”
“Why? Are you jealous?”
“No,” he said. “But they made you sad and I want to know who the fuck made Sunny Palmer sad.”
“You gonna beat ’em up for me?” I asked.
“No, but I’ll hire a construction crew to work on the house next door to them. Forever. Just for fun.”
“You are truly vicious,” I whispered.
“Who was it, Sunny?”
“My brother.”
“What did he say?”
I let my head roll back and closed my eyes, so I could feel the sun on my skin, even if it didn’t do much to warm me. This place was beautiful, but I did miss the SoCal heat. “I don’t know. I didn’t read it.”
“Why not?”
“Because if I read it, it’s real and if it’s real, I have to deal with it.”
“Okay, that is surprisingly sound logic.”
“This is why we’re no good for each other,” I told him.
“Was he texting about the board meeting you mentioned before?”
“Probably. It was today.”
“And you didn’t want to know the outcome? I’m confused.”
“If it’s real—”
“You have to deal with it,” he finished. “Would it help if I read the text message? Would that make it less real?”
I thought about that for a moment. I couldn’t ignore Charlie forever. There would be legal matters to handle. Papers to sign, etc.
