The Index of Unarrived Deaths
Kimi K2 (0905) and Davinci 002
The third drawer held index cards in her mother's handwriting, each dated 1987-2011, each describing a death that wouldn't occur for decades. The most recent was labeled with tomorrow's date. The others didn't have specific dates or initials, just a few words—alcoholic, slow moving, tries to hide. On the dates following her own year, March was handwritten across the card with a crooked heart and the end of a bow.
About that time, something heat started to rise in her chest and she could feel herself dissociating. She tried to grasp hold of the memory that was ahead of her, but in that split second, the branch, the heart, the boatman—everything—was gone. Instead she was in a full grasp of a man's mood she knew by heart. The red sky, the buzzing in her ears, the skin on fire, pulsing. If she could bring her concentration back on the images that flashed before her, she could see her father standing in the glow of the rising moon, legs poised to jump from the top deck, peering over the side at his Marianne across the narrow water. She looked back around her cutting board for the knife, but the cutting board, knife, and everything else had moved to the shore, where the little wooden boat waited. She saw her father stop himself from getting in, and heard a set of objects collide with a loud thunk. She could hear his voice again, though it rang in her head as if from another room. A bit of the following conversation floated back to her: Dumping shitworth… Please walk in front of the car…I'm about to jump… Marianne…good girl… We need her… He said "please," and then repeated himself, this time adding, "You're special…Please walk in front of the car…Marries me anyway…Tell her to eat some curry."
March stopped.
Her name rang in her mind. It caught in some lymph node above her neck and sang there for a long moment. Then, slowly, her heart expanded. The holes in the skin on her arms were still there, but she was warm inside for a moment as if from a breeze. Things sifted, water-swallowed. Finally, March's eyes were clear again and when she looked down, the knife and all the objects were back on her cutting board with the scallop shell in reach. She gripped it by the stem under the mother of pearl bowl of its belly. She hadn't cut open her arms. Someone was leaning against the empty cutter board on the other side of the room, watching, knowing what had happened.
"Wavering," he said.
March turned her wrist and the scallop shell fell to the cutting board like a knife. The blade was sharp enough to slice through the vein of an artery. She told him, "That's the best name for what I do."
He tapped his name twice on the rock wall.
"But my son…"
March grabbed the towel in her hand and threw it down.
"I'm sorry. It's only a matter of time before people die."
"What about your son?"
"Something will come between us. He'll kill me one day after Parker's death, but not for revenge." She got the scallop shell back in her hand and picked up the branch. "I can protect this thing, for a while at least. I didn't tell you about the things I saw-- it was part of the contract." She tumbled the branch back over. "You should go."
"Wait," he said, and he stepped over the dryer edge and took her left hand in both of his and led it to where she could see the bottom of the puddle. There was a man sitting in the bottom, slouched over in the little boat, almost under water. March could see the folds of skin under his sallow eyes, the spattering of veinous ramparts on his forearms. She frowned.
"Who are they?"
"My brothers."
She frowned harder.
"He has been unaccounted for for years."
"Years?"
"A long time…I didn't leave my home in Ealing for nearly seven of them. Until you arrived."
March stood staring into the water with the speckled dead man in her hand, then she passed it back to him. "But he's dead."
He sighed. "I know it looks that way." He took her chin gently in his fingers and turned her face close to the boat. "Look in there."
March dragged her eyes below the surface and saw her reflection, giving it a once over with a half smile to pass on◆ About the ending
❧ About the title