Insulation

"Explain this."He didn't raise his voice. He laid the page on the table beside her tea and stood back from it with his hands at his sides, and that was the part he'd rehearsed on the walk home, how to stand. Not leaning. Not looming. A man asking for directions.Camille looked down. The lamp over the dining table lit the page from above, the ruled lines of the diagram, the boxes, the arrows."That's Rainer's handwriting," she said."Read the boxes.""I know what the boxes are.""Then you'll find it quick."She picked it up. She held it by the corners and read it left to right, slowly, like a woman checking a contract for a typo. When she reached the bottom she turned the page over to see whether anything was on the back. Then she set it down, squared it against the edge of the table, and looked at him."This isn't how it works," she said."Excuse me?""He's drawn it wrong. Marrow Street isn't a pass-through. It's a holding entity. The three downstream accounts are separate vehicles w

Dead Weight

"Slower," Rainer said. "You'll crack the lid."Jose stopped. He was standing in a hole up to his thighs, shovel in both hands, and he'd been digging for forty minutes without a sound that wasn't breathing. The dirt here was loose. It had been turned, tamped, and turned again. It came away in clumps that smelled of cold iron and leaf rot, and every time the blade went in it met nothing."How far?""Another foot. Maybe less." Rainer crouched at the edge with a flashlight cupped in his hand, the lens covered by two fingers so only a red glow leaked out. "I stopped at the lid last time. Packed it back over. Pell never used a vault, he said the family couldn't afford one.""Did he say that to you?""He said it to the bank. I paid for the cinder blocks."Jose laughed. It came out of him sideways, dry, and he didn't like the sound. He put the shovel in again.The cemetery lay behind them in rows, stone after stone fading into the dark. Somewhere beyond the fence a truck went by on the county

All Chapters of EMPTY GRAVE.. the brother we buried : Chapter 21 - Chapter 22

Insulation

Dead Weight