Page 6 of Dearly Departed

My wife flicks her eyes toward the ceiling of the plane. “My mistake.”

“What happened with the mummies?” This flight could end at virtually any second, so our attention should be on finding a way to survive, but I find myself desperate to know everything I can about Catherine before it’s too late. “You never mentioned it.”

“Because it was silly,” Catherine says definitively. “I booked a lot of private tours at the British Museum while you were traveling. It seemed like a good place to start.”

“To find a hobby?”

“To find a passion.” Her expression sobers. “It’s embarrassing that I didn’t go to college. That I didn’t even think about a potential career the entire time I was in high school. Once I realized my parents were going to marry me off the second they could, I spent all my time trying to avoid it. Avoid you.” Her eyes move over my face, softening as she takes me in. I don’t deserve it. “So when we moved to London, I had nothing but time. I thought I would finally figure out what I’m passionate about.”

“Ancient Egypt?”

“The mummies happened because I used to have this book when I was a kid. This big, gold book.”

“Egyptology?”

“Yes.” Catherine’s face lights up. “Do you know it?”

“I can’t say I’ve read it cover to cover, but I know Remy has. It was a story about a lost archeologist, wasn’t it?” Gabriel’s youngest sibling was always interested in dirt and other ancient things. “And it had those cards and letters you could take out.”

Talking about letters reminds me of the one I left for Gabriel. He’ll get it in the morning, and if we’re still alive—if Catherine is still alive—then maybe…

“The cards were the best,” Catherine says softly. “I read it a lot when I was younger. And I liked the letter at the end that said which parts were real and which parts were just for the story. Anyway, that day at the museum, I wasn’t planning to go to the mummy exhibit. The tour guide just started heading there, and I felt like…” Catherine’s eyes go distant. The corner of her mouth turns down, as if she’s following her tour guide all over again, with me on a plane over the ocean. I should have been at the museum with her. “I felt like I couldn’t say no, even when the mummies made me think of my father.”

“And the funeral?”

Catherine had looked gorgeous and stoic, almost royal, at her father’s funeral. I’d bought her an entire new wardrobe so she never had to think about the clothes she wore when she lived under her parents’ roof again. I’d gone with her to the service and the burial, since we’d announced our engagement to her parents, if not the public, and she was living with me. Catherine didn’t shed a single tear that day. It had almost seemed like she was fighting back the urge to celebrate.

“Not because I’m sad he’s dead.” Catherine’s eyes are dry, so I don’t think this is delayed grief. “The first mummy was a priestess, and she—you know, she deserved to be…honored. I don’t think anyone should have taken her out of her tomb. I think it’s pretty questionable to have mummies in museums like that. But I felt like I couldn’t escape, and while the guide was telling me about this priestess, I thought…what if someone digs up my dad one day? And they think he was great? And they’re so wrong, and they don’t know?”

I give her hand a gentle squeeze, because I don’t know what to say. It’s not as if Catherine’s father’s body has been preserved like the mummies at the British Museum. There won’t be much to find in hundreds of years. I understand the sentiment, though. I understand Catherine’s horror at the idea of someone in the future mistaking her father for a hero when he was the worst kind of villain.

“Anyway.” She brushes a strand of her hair out of her face. “I decided then that I wasn’t going to just stand around and let people tell me about mummies if that’s not what I wanted to do. I told myself I was going to speak up for myself after I got away from my dad, and I didn’t do it that day at the museum. I thought finding something to be passionate about would make me more confident, even if I’m, like, years behind everyone else.”

“You’re not.”

“I am,” she answers matter-of-factly. “Lydia has been working on her art since she was in kindergarten. Elise is so incredibly smart, like, a genius, and she started her own bakery basically the minute she got out. I don’t know what I’m passionate about. The only thing I’m passionate about is⁠—”

Catherine stops talking so abruptly that I whip my head toward the cockpit, thinking that Raymond Harris must’ve come out again, brandishing his murder weapon of choice.

But the door to the flight deck stays firmly shut.

“Catherine—”

She stands and brushes by me, her face brilliantly red. I stand, too, hoping she hasn’t just decided to knock on the flight deck door and confront Raymond Harris. I don’t see that going well, as much as I love Catherine’s brazen attitude.

“Kitten.”

“I’m going to boil some water.” There’s a slim kitchen-like area just before the door to the plane’s bedroom, equipped with an electric kettle.

“For…tea?”

Catherine reaches the compartment with the kettle and pulls it out onto the narrow countertop, then turns on the tap in the equally narrow sink and shoves the kettle under. The water hits the bottom of the kettle with a loud smack that deepens as it begins to fill.

“In case we have a chance to boil Raymond Harris to death.” She watches the water flow into the kettle, rising to cover the lines in its viewing panel. “We might not be able to kill him completely, but we can scald him. I saw it in a documentary.”

3

CATHERINE