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It wasn’t my job to know.
Rome reached out and patted my shoulder.
I shrugged his hand away and cleared my throat. “Let’s just get him to HQ and then go home. This day has been going on forever.”
“This is true,” Rome replied as we watched the man’s soul appear by the bed. Rome held out his hand, and the man fell into step behind us as we went back down the hallway towards the door we had come from.
I refused to look into their child’s room on the way out.
The soul wore a lost and heartbroken expression, and I wanted to cry.
It was easy to forget about the time difference between Vegas and NYC.
We’d left the bar at midnight, after spending less than two hours there, but when we arrived at HQ in the middle of the Mojave desert, it was three in the morning.
I didn’t think I would ever get used to the passing of time. It meant something different now.
We stepped into the reception, and as always, beautiful blonde Sasha was operating the front desk. Her face rested on her palms as she stared into space. The moment she caught sight of Rome, her back straightened, and a gleeful tilt twisted her lips into a smile.
Before I had overheard their conversation, I would have said that she was a girlfriend happy to see her beau. Now that I had more questions than answers about their relationship, she looked like a cat that was bored, searching for something to swipe.
I internally chastised myself.Women support women. I reminded myself. The voice sounded like my mother.
A tiny little voice inside of me piped up.Not unconditionally.
I forced a smile onto my face, and any closeness I felt towards Rome vanished and left me cold as his barriers slammed down so fast that it made me dizzy.
If Rome had been hard to read before, he became impossible to read in front of Sasha.
Like stone-cold granite.
“Take Mr. Hernandez to the room at the end of the corridor.” Sasha drawled, sitting up and leaking over the desk.
Rome and I rounded the desk with Mr. Hernandez on our heels, but Sasha let out a twinkly laugh
“Just the girl. Rome, I need to talk to you.” Sasha stated, one moment away from crawling over the desk like a cat in heat.
“Sure,” I said, without glancing back at Rome even though I wanted to. I had a feeling that showing any sort of connection in front of that woman would be a very bad idea.
Mr. Hernandez blinked and focused on me as I ushered him towards the death orientation.
“Is my family okay?” He murmured once he realized I could see him.
I gave him a smile that didn’t reach my eyes. “They won’t be for a while. You died.”
Mr. Hernandez closed his eyes and took a long beat to compose himself. “Okay.” He said. And that was that.
I took my time walking to the end of the corridor, pushing open the door, and ushering the soul inside.
I wasn’t sure if it was because of the late hour or just a coincidence, but the chairs were empty.
Charon stood on the platform, fiddling with a laptop, as his PowerPoint flicked over the projector. The clip art and word art making it look like something from the nineties.
Charon glanced over his shoulder, and the moment he saw me, he put down his laptop. “Valentina.” He called out. “Just the person I was hoping to see.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I stood still and waited for him to come to me.
Charon appeared to be in the same clothes as I had last seen him. A flannel shirt and ripped jeans, worn from wear and not fashion. He looked like a neatly trimmed lumberjack. Even though he had expressed a positive reaction to my presence, it didn’t seem that he was happy to see me.
