A Dish Served Cold

Erica thought he was dead. She had watched him die, had felt for a pulse and not found one. There he is though, right across from her on the street. He’s smiling, discordant with her last memory of him. Erica pushes the image of his bloodied face out of her mind and hurries into the coffee shop. The line takes forever, and by the time she’s ordered her usual—a chai latte with an extra shot of espresso—her heart rate has returned to its pre-caffeinated normal. She takes her time drinking her latte. She sits in the corner of the shop, listening to the acoustic covers of pop songs they’re playing over the speaker and scrolling through her phone in an effort to both distract herself and look busy. Finally, when even the foam left at the bottom of her cup has vanished, she drags herself out of her chair.

He’s still there when she emerges from the coffee shop, still smiling. Erica stands there, caught between shock and horror until a city bus blows by. The noise and the mud it kicks bring her back to herself, back from the night she had watched him die. When she blinks, he’s gone. She runs home as fast as the ballet flats she’s wearing will allow. It’s faster than one might think but not as fast as she would like. 

Her first search is for his obituary, which she finds. Cody Hughes of Chicago, IL. Passed away unexpectedly on the evening of June 10th, 2018. Survived by his parents, siblings, wife, and one grandparent. His mother’s mother, if Erica is remembering right. He loved hunting, fishing, and anything with a motor. Cody will be missed. It’s all typical obituary stuff, made more tragic by the date range below his name. 1993-2018. She still remembers when twenty-five had seemed old, ancient even. Now she knows what it’s like to think twenty-five is young. 

She looks at his social media accounts next. They haven’t been updated since June 9th, 2018, when he had posted a picture of his truck on Instagram. Several days before that he had posted something vague and passive-aggressive on Facebook, directed at his wife. Most of what’s on them now are comments from people wishing him a happy birthday, happy holidays, and saying how much they wish he was here. Erica tells herself that she’s being ridiculous. She watched Cody die, still watches him die in her nightmares. If there’s one thing she’s sure of, it’s that he couldn’t have been standing across the street smiling at her this morning. Whoever it had been had made eye contact though. She’d seen him clearly. It had been Cody. 

A knock at the door makes her almost jump out of her skin. She flinches badly, and her hands shake as she stands. Heart racing, she makes her way into the entryway. There’s no shadow on the other side of the door, even though the sun is streaming through the frosted glass. Erica relaxes, but only marginally. A note flutters to the ground when she opens the door. There’s no one in sight. She crouches and picks up the note. The letters are cut out from a magazine, the way they are in particularly unsubtle crime TV shows. 

Colorful, cartoonish letters shouldn’t look threatening, but the words these are spelling manage it anyway. 

I know what you did. 

Cody knows, but Cody’s dead. She had watched the rise and fall of his chest until it stopped. She hadn’t been able to do anything else. 

Erica drives to the cemetery. She hasn’t been since the burial, hasn’t wanted to go. The flowers by Cody’s grave are garish, fake, and covered in cobwebs. She tries to brush them off, but the webs stick to the dirty plastic. In a few more years Erica imagines they’ll have faded in the sun, or maybe been replaced if anyone still cares.

1993-2018. There’s no epitaph on the gravestone. Twenty-five years isn’t that long, but any life lived is hard to summarize when the engraver is charging by the letter. There’s a sound like a car backfiring and a clod of dirt kicks up near her feet. Erica just stares for a moment, until it happens again and it occurs to her that it’s gunfire she’s hearing. Someone is shooting at her.  

Erica zigs and zags and makes it back to her car. She doesn’t think it’s due to any particular skill on her part. It’s starting to feel like someone is toying with her. It’s that, or she’s finally losing it. The odds are pretty even at this point. 

She drives back to her empty house and throws the deadbolt behind her. Cody is dead, far too dead to pull a trigger. The accident had seen to that. Even if he had lived, he’d been so badly injured. Sternum, ribs, who knows how many other bones all crushed. The insurance company had deemed it his fault. They said he’d been drinking, texting, or distracted some other way. 

The flash of light followed by the feeling of weightlessness as they went off the road still wakes her up at night. Cody had wrenched the wheel—his reflexes had always been good—and they had sideswiped the tree instead of hitting it head-on. Erica had walked away with a broken nose from the airbag and some cuts from the shattered windshield. Cody hadn’t walked away at all.

I know what you did.

She hadn’t done anything, not really. Cody never would have been there if he hadn’t come to pick her up though. It had been wrong, what they were doing, but he said he was going to leave his wife, that she didn’t love him so it’s not like the cheating even really counted anyway. 

Erica slumps down onto her couch and clicks the TV on. It turns off again. Frowning, she presses the button to turn it back on. She hears the first few bars of an advertisement jingle and then it’s off again. The next and last thing she hears is the click of heels on her hardwood floor.