Chapter 5
By the time they returned to Dell’s house, the reporters were on the doorstep with Evelyn Moratto as if the whole lot had
shown up for a dinner party. When Tommy peeled the door open a crack to let his mother and her accompanying security guard
and assistant slip inside, the reporters struck up a chorus of her name, shouting and elbowing one another and clicking their
cameras.
“Mayor Moratto! What happened?”
“Why are you here?”
“Mayor Moratto!”
Dell held her nonexistent breath in worry over how the mayor would respond. Dell had pushed her way into the crowd, and by
pushed, she really just floated through them, sending every limb she encountered rippling with goose bumps. Several of the
reporters looked up at the sky as if to check if the weather had taken an unexpected turn.
“Ms. Rodgers, wait!” Cole called from where he stood behind the small mob as if he’d reached an impassible barrier.
Dell glanced back to see his face bent with equal parts concern and the reluctance of someone afraid to jump into a pond for fear of the slimy lakeweed at the bottom.
He could have just as easily floated his way through the throng, but she gathered based on his sourly pinched lips he didn’t like the frozen tingling feeling that would come with it.
“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 did not—” 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. And they don’t like it.”
Dell cast him a glare. “Well, he shouldn’t be suggesting my fiancé killed 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 body is in 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.
Dell gravitated toward Tommy and his mom and casually lingered like an eavesdropper before she remembered she was invisible
and could simply stand there.
“Mom, I seriously don’t know what happened,” Tommy said with a pained strain in his voice. He swiped a hand through his mussed
hair. He still wore his pajamas.
Evelyn placed her hands on his arms. She leaned in and lowered her voice to a soft hum Dell wouldn’t have heard if she wasn’t
inches away herself. “Tom, I need you to be straight with me. You can tell me anything—you know that.”
Tommy’s eyes widened. “Mom, I—”
“Tom. I just need to know what we might be dealing with here.”
Dell reeled at the suggestion in her voice. Dealing with? She thought back to the reporter outside suggesting Tommy had been involved in her death and wondered for a horrifying moment
if his mother thought the same thing.
Evelyn moved her hands to his shoulders. “You can tell me, son.”
It struck Dell in that moment Evelyn’s entourage—her assistant and security guard—were there for a different type of damage
control. They weren’t there to keep the story on her from getting out; they were there to protect him in the event he’d been involved.
She shuddered at the realization.
But Tommy reassured his mother. “Mom, no. I had nothing to do with it, I swear. I just woke up next to her, and she wasn’t—”
The end of his sentence disappeared and turned into a barb that hit Dell’s heart all at once.
Evelyn let out a big breath. “Good. The police will be here soon, and we need to tell them the right story.”
Tommy flinched like she’d struck him. “You mean the truth.”
Evelyn spread her lips into her winning smile. “Yes, darling. I mean the truth.”
The whole conversation left Dell unsettled. She knew she was marrying into a powerful family, but she’d never been privy to
a hushed exchange like the one she’d just heard. If Tommy had somehow been involved, would his mother have . . . covered it up?
She shivered again and took a step back, only to bump into Cole. She yelped in surprise.
“What are you doing?” she blurted, and spun around to face him.
“Sorry,” he said. “But you might not want to listen in like that.”
“Is no eavesdropping in the rule book too?” she asked with an arched eyebrow.
He smirked at her. “No, but you might hear things you don’t want to know.”
She reeled back in further surprise. “What does that mean?”
“It means they think you are dead, so they might say things they would never expect you to hear, that’s all.”
She considered his point and realized it was a valid one. Listening in from the other side was the ultimate eavesdropping.
“This does present a bit of a problem though,” she heard Evelyn say right after she’d decided not to listen anymore. Unable
to stop herself, she leaned back in.
Tommy glanced over his shoulder, looking like he wanted to end the conversation with his mother. But ever loyal, he remained
still.
“You never signed your prenup,” Evelyn all but whispered.
Tommy’s jaw clenched. He spoke so quietly Dell leaned in close enough to see the stubble on his chin. “No. She left the appointment yesterday before we got the chance. But I also can’t marry her now if she’s dead, so it doesn’t matter anyway.”
Dell was leaning in so far she nearly lost her balance. His words had only begun to settle when a knock on the door drew everyone’s
attention.
“It’s probably the police,” Dell’s father said. He rose from an armchair and made his way to the door.
“The police?” Dell said as it sunk in what was about to happen. She could still hear the paramedics upstairs moving around
and imagined them loading her body up to be wheeled out. She dashed over to Cole and gripped his arms, profoundly thankful
to be able to hold on to something, even if it was the person responsible for the whole mess. “You have to stop them. They
can’t take my body away. What’s going to happen?”
He bit his lip with a grimace and did his best to reach for the rule book while she squeezed him like a vise.
“L-let me look—” he stammered.