He Ground My Ashes Under His Boot

On the third day after my death, Massimo got the call.

His arm was around another woman. He didn't even flinch.

"Dead is dead," he said. "Burn her, then call me."

He came to the crematorium two hours late. He took my ashes, dropped them on the floor, and stepped on them like they were dirt.

"Tell Tess," he said, "if she's still alive, she can crawl back and beg. If she's really dead, I'll dig her up and flog the corpse myself."

I was right there, screaming without a voice.

Later, he pulled out his phone and called my number. It went straight to voicemail.

"Tess Reinhardt," he said, his jaw tight. "If you don't pick up, you're dead to me."

He still didn't know.

I was already dead.

And he was the only one who would never believe it.

I'm Tess Reinhardt

I had been dead in an "accident" three days ago.

An unmarked semi came out of nowhere and crushed the side of my car, and my ribs went straight through my lung, and blood filled up my throat until there was no air left to breathe with. In that last second of pain, all I could think about was the truth I still needed to tell Massimo.

Now I'm nothing but a ghost tied to him, following him around.

The rain came thin and cold against the shutters of the old Messina house, and I was inside it, though no one could feel me there.

Massimo was in bed.

He had Serafina tucked against his chest, one arm slung over her waist, his fingers lazily winding through her long gold hair. She was purring something into his skin. He wasn't even listening. That was the thing about him—he could hold a woman like she was the only thing in the world.

The phone buzzed on the nightstand. He reached for it without letting her go.

"Yeah."

A man's voice, thin and careful. "Mr. Messina. Tess Reinhardt's ashes are ready."

Massimo rested his chin on the top of Serafina's head. He smiled into the phone, easy, like he was flicking ash off a cigarette. "Dead is dead. Call me when she's in the furnace."

Serafina laughed against his throat, low and pleased, and burrowed closer.

I wanted to scream. I opened my mouth and nothing came out. Nothing ever came out anymore.

It took him two hours to come.

I couldn't stay in that room, so somehow I ended up at the crematorium first, waiting the way the dead wait. When his car pulled up, I already knew it was him from the sound.

He came in with his black coat open and his hands in his pockets, and there was a mark on his collar, a smear of berry-red lipstick he hadn't bothered to wipe off. It was so bright against his white shirt.

The attendant hurried forward with a black lacquered box held in both hands.

Massimo took it. He weighed it in one palm, tipping it a little, and his mouth curled.

"This is really Tess Reinhardt?" He rapped his knuckles against the lid. "You didn't scoop up some stray dog out of the gutter?"

The attendant went pale. "Sir—there's a record. Every step, it's all documented, I can show you—"

"Relax." Massimo's smile widened.

I moved closer without meaning to. That was my ashes in his hands. That was all that was left of me.

He looked like he was going to say something else.

Then his hand opened.

The box hit the stone floor. The lid cracked off, and gray-white powder bursting up along the seams in the slate, spreading into the cold cracks between the stones.

He made a small noise, low in his throat. There wasn't a trace of apology in his face. Instead he lifted one foot and set the heel down against the ash in the cracks.

And he ground it in. Slow. Once. Twice. Turning his heel like he was putting out a cigarette.

"Oops." He looked up at the attendant, who'd gone rigid. Massimo smiled. "My hand slipped."

He brushed a fleck of gray off his sleeve. When he spoke again his voice had dropped.

"Tell Tess—if she's watching—she can spend whatever's left of her little trick begging at my mother's door." He paused, and the pause was worse than the words. "And if she's really dead, I'll dig her up and flog the corpse myself."

The Massimo I once knew would have frowned the second I so much as scraped my knee, fussing over me, bandaging it with hands so careful they barely touched my skin. That man was gone. The one standing in front of me now just sneered and ground my ashes into the mud under his heel.

I sank down slowly and reached out with hands that weren't really hands anymore, trying to gather the powder back together.

The wind came through and scattered it before my fingers ever closed around it.

A single tear fell, and it had no warmth in it at all, nothing left to lose.

That was when it finally hit me. The man who once stood in a church and swore he'd protect me with his own life was the same man who wanted nothing more than to see me ground to dust and scattered to nothing.

He turned and walked out, stepping over the mess of me on the way, and I followed him. I didn't choose to. My whole self just tipped after him like water down a drain, out the door, into the rain, into the car.

I ended up in the passenger seat.

He started the engine. Live oaks blurred past the window, dripping and gray.

His phone rang, and Serafina's voice came through the speaker, soft and coaxing, the way she said everything.

"Baby? Is it done?"

"Yeah."

"Is Tess ok?"

"What could she pull. It's a little trick, that's all."

There was a little silence. Then, gently, like she was testing a bruise: "What if she's actually dead?"

Massimo watched the trees go by. He almost laughed.

"Then I'm renting the French Quarter Opera House. Three nights." His fingers tapped once on the wheel. "Fireworks over the Mississippi for a week."