Page 114 of Worth of Waste

Karen decided to give it a try.

Dino had been willing to clean the messes, after all.

She got so lost in chopping vegetables that she barely caught the flyby of her son as he ran past her, giggling about something. Turning to watch him run up the spiral staircase that led to the upper loft, something on the television screen caught her attention.

It’d only been a few minutes, she thought.

The panel should have still been on there talking.

Except … they weren’t.

A whole new picture was beginning to take shape on the screen. Smoke hanging heavily in the sky, charred ground, frightened, crying people, and a twisted mess of a vehicle that was burned right down to the fucking ground.

Karen stilled in place, watching the scene unfold.

The woman on the television was talking, explaining what had happened, her voice a quiet murmur in the cabin’s large kitchen. Perhaps she should have turned the television up, listening to the Breaking News unfolding in the heart of Chicago, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

Why?

She recognized that parking lot. She recognized the church behind it and the large stone wall surrounding a cemetery where she had once photographed a beautifully lonely man cleaning the headstone belonging to his mother.

It didn’t matter, Karen came to realize slowly.

She didn’t have to turn up the volume at all. The headline rolled across the bottom of the screen, explaining the details for those who might just be passing a television by and didn’t want to stop long enough to listen to the broadcast.

Breaking News, it read. Bombing. One suspected dead. Victim identified as Dino DeLuca …

Karen stopped reading. She didn’t need to know what he was affiliated to, his age, or that his siblings had been in the parking lot, too. She already knew those things.

She knew everything about him.

Karen had been wrong.

Once, she had thought to herself, if she had to, she could live without Dino. It would hurt, her soul would be gone, leaving a black, empty space full of pain and loneliness, but she could do it if she needed to.

She could live without her soul, she had said.

She had been so terribly wrong.

Karen only realized how wrong she had been when her knees hit the hardwood floor of the kitchen, tears spilling as she screamed for no other reason than to give her sudden shock of pain a way to escape from her body.

And she thought … this is what dying inside feels like.

She had been wrong.

There was no such thing as life without a soul.

Black mood.

Black heart.

Black day.

Black dress.

Karen thought it was all appropriate that her mood, the way she felt, the day, and her dress all managed to match the color of mourning for the day of Dino’s funeral. If anything, it would allow her to blend in with the rest of the mourners, and she wouldn’t draw attention with her presence.

Or at least, that was her hope.