The Curse of Tenth Grave

Reyes grinned and ducked back into the kitchen, hopefully to make me the breakfast of champions, whatever that might entail. I took the opportunity to once again scan the vastness of what used to be my microscopic apartment. I hadn’t seen it for over nine months, eight of those having been spent at a convent—long story—and the other one spent as an amnesiac waitress at a café in Upstate New York.

At some point during our recent adventures, Reyes had renovated the apartment building. The entire thing. The exterior remained relatively unchanged. A few fixes here and there, a good cleaning, and it was good to go.

The interior, however, had been completely overhauled. Each apartment had been updated as students graduated or long-term residents moved into one of the newly renovated ones while theirs received the same treatment. But the third floor, the top one, had received a little extra attention.

It now had only two apartments, ours and Cookie’s, each consisting of over thirteen thousand square feet of absolute luxury.

The rooftop storage units had been opened up so the ceilings in half of the apartment were now over twenty-four feet tall. Metal rafters zigzagged across our ceiling. Two adjoining gardens sat on the flat part of the roof outside, complete with lights and a pond and real plants. The whole place look positively magical.

Reyes kept only one room locked and had refused to open it when he brought me home for the first time in months, but locked doors were never much of a problem for me. The day after we’d arrived home, I took advantage of the fact that he left earlier than I did and broke in. I’d flipped the light switch and stopped short. The room had been decorated in mint green stripes and pastel circus animals and equipped with a bassinet. It was Beep’s room, and the fissure in my heart had cracked a little more.

“I’m going to see if Blue wants to play hopscotch.”

She disappeared before I could get out a good-bye. Or good riddance. Either way.

I looked past where she’d been sitting toward Reyes’s plush cream-colored sofa. He didn’t get it at a garage sale like I’d gotten my previous sofa. Her name had been Sophie, and I often wondered what happened to her. Was she lamenting the days away at a dump site? Sure, she’d only cost me twenty bucks, but she’d been with me a long time. I hated the thought of her being destroyed.

Then another thought hit me.

Speaking of discarded items, “Hey,” I said, suddenly concerned, “where did you put Mrs. Allen and PP?”

PP, a.k.a. Prince Phillip, was an elderly poodle that had once fought a demon for me, doing his darnedest to save my life. He and Mrs. Allen had been living down the hall since I’d moved in, and if anyone had a right to live here, to have one of these sparkly new apartments, it was those two.

Reyes lowered his head. “Her family had to put her in a nursing home.”

My spine straightened in alarm. “What? Why?”

He bit down. “A lot’s happened since we’ve been gone.”

“You should have told me.”

“It happened last month. You wouldn’t have known her.”

I paused to absorb that. He was right. Didn’t make it any easier to swallow. “Where is she?”

“At a retirement home in the North Valley.”

I made a mental note to visit her. “What about PP?”

“PP?”

“Her poodle. The one that saved my life, I might add.”

He fought a grin. “He’s with her. The home where she is allows animals.”

“Oh, thank goodness.” I slumped in the chair and put my chin on the back. Reyes was right. A lot had changed. Including the state of my cup.

“I’m going to make another pot if you want more after your shower,” I said, hopping up and heading that way.

He lifted a wide shoulder, studying his own cup. His bare feet were crossed, his other shoulder propped against the opening to the chef’s kitchen, and I slowed my stride to take it all in.

“I’m not sure I want to shower today,” he said.

“What? Why?”

A panty-melting grin as wicked as sin on Sunday slid across his handsome face. “Your aunt Lillian keeps … checking in on me.”

I stopped midstride, finally becoming intimately acquainted with true, paralyzing mortification.

He stifled a chuckle as he set his cup aside and started for the bathroom.

“Aunt Lillian!” I yelled, summoning her to me instantly. Aunt Lillian had died in the sixties. She’d been elderly at the time, but she didn’t let that stop her from enjoying the flower child generation complete with love beads and a floral muumuu. I’d always figured a hit of acid at her age could not have been good.

“Pumpkin head!” she said, her tone as hollow and insincere as her dentureless mouth. She wasn’t even looking at me. Her gaze instantly sought out the son of evil. Locked on to him like a laser-guided missile.

He tossed her a wink as he strode past, and I thought she was going to melt right then and there.

“Aunt Lillian,” I whispered accusingly. “I thought you didn’t even like my husband that much.”

“Oh, pumpkin, I’ve seen him naked. What’s not to like?” She wiggled her brows, and I gaped, appalled. Appalled that, for once in my life, I had no argument. No sarcastic comeback. No snippy comment. Because she was right as rain on a scorched desert.

I looked my husband over once again. Watched his back muscles ripple with each step he took. Our apartment was much bigger now, so it took a lot of steps to get to the bathroom. A lot of rippling.

One of those ripples was inside me. A ripple of unease. So much had changed. Way more than I was comfortable with. Which brought me to the third, but far from final, reason for my gloom. My husband hadn’t touched me in days. Since we got back, in fact. Normally, he had trouble touching anything besides me, but he hadn’t offered his services in over a week. A very long, very lonely week, made even lonelier when I’d been blindsided by a receipt I stumbled upon. He’d made a payment to the Texas Child Support Division.

He was paying child support.

He had another child.

I closed my eyes again, trying to figure out if I ever really knew the man I married.

2

You can’t control everything.

Your hair was put on your head to remind you of that.

—MEME

Just as Reyes was about to disappear into the bathroom for a visit with George the shower, the front door crashed open. It banged against the wall, and I jumped all the way to the twenty-four-foot ceiling. At least it felt that way.