Page 21 of You'll Be the Death of Me

“I’m going back inside,” she said. She was halfway up the front staircase, intersected by an elbow and someone’s shoe, when the mayor turned around to address the crowd.

Evelyn’s normally radiant and welcoming face had grown pale and tight. Her reddened eyes roved over the crowd, passing Dell as if she didn’t exist, and stopped on a point across the street. “This is a family matter,” she said in a thick but steady voice. “Please, we ask for privacy at this time.” She turned to slip in the door, and the chorus of reporters resumed their demand.

“Who even lives here?” Dell heard one of them ask another as she passed through.

“Her son,” someone answered.

“And his fiancée,” another added in.

“Oh shit. What’s with the ambulance?” a third muttered.

“Maybe he murdered her,” the first offered.

Dell scoffed in offense. “He didnot—” she started, and then remembered they couldn’t hear her. Or feel her, other than as a cold presence. For good measure, she punched her fist into the shoulder of the man who’d suggested murder. She held it there long enough that he winced and shuddered and looked around suspiciously.

“Don’t touch them!” Cole called from down below still. “It’s against the rules. Andthey don’t like it.”

Dell cast him a glare. “Well,heshouldn’t be suggesting my fiancékilled me. You are the one to blame for that.”

Cole tried to speak again. “Ms. Rodgers, like I said, I’m sorry. And I’m going to—”

“Fix this, I know!” Dell said, and charged the rest of the way up the stairs. “You better do it fast before one of these vultures figures out my dead bodyisin fact inside this house and it ends up all over the news!”

“Ms. Rodgers, please wait!” Cole called.

She looked back to see him gingerly picking his way through the crowd and doing his best not to touch anyone, as if they might give him a disease. He was serious about following the rules.

Dell ignored his plea and took a breath before attempting to stick her hand through the closed front door. She could pass through people, so solid, inanimate objects seemed like a logical leap. Sure enough, her whole arm pushed right through. She followed it with the rest of her body, and soon, she was standing inside her entryway.

The house had fallen quiet. As if someone had turned the volume all the way down on a somber movie. Her brothers sat huddled on the couch with Jason. Her parents were exchanging embraces with Evelyn. Mariana had busied herself in the kitchen making coffee anyway. The heavy clomp of paramedic footsteps sounded from upstairs, but at a pace to say no one was in a rush to save a life anymore.

Dell was someone who was used to having control, and seeing it all erroneously play out made her want to scream. In fact, it made her want to scream so much that she did.

“I’m right here!” she bellowed to the room. “I’m not dead!” She ran over to her brothers and waved her hands in their faces. “You guys, snap out of it!” She clapped a few times and even smacked Andy in the face.

He didn’t even flinch but rather smoothed his hand over his cheek with a curious bend to his brow.

“They can’t hear you,” Cole said once more. He’d made it inside and stood at the edge of the living room.

Dell turned to him, out of nonexistent breath from all the shouting. She studied the sour look on his face and the way he was brushing his arms and shoulders off as if he’d walked through cobwebs.

“You don’t like touching them,” she said.

Embarrassment flashed on his face before he tilted his chin. “No, I don’t. It’s icky.”

Dell snorted a laugh on reflex. “Icky? Is that an official professional term?”

He frowned at her. “No, it’s not. But you are not supposed to touch them.”

“Why?” she asked, truly curious.

“Because it’s in the rule book,” he said.

Dell rolled her eyes. She’d known the guy twenty minutes and could already tell he was going to drive her nuts following his precious rules. “I was hoping you were going to give me some metaphysical explanation about planes of existence or something, but no. It’s just because it’s a rule.”

He cast her an annoyed glare. “Following the rules is our only way out of this, so I suggest you keep in line.”

She dismissively shrugged at him and turned back to the room. It was obvious no one could hear her and Cole, but she could hear them. Her brothers and Jason were murmuring speculation on what had happened to her, her parents mostly holding each other and weeping. Tommy and his mom had stepped off to the side of the room for a hushed conversation of their own.Evelyn’s assistant and security guard stood by looking prepared for damage control.