Katrina stared down at the overly rouged cheeks. Her mother too still to be sleeping. This coffin, the third she’d bowed over in as many months. Her eyes too numb for tears, her heart too hollowed out for pain. The doors of the cathedral opened, liberating a breeze that whispered against her cheek. Her mother’s voice caressed. “Honestly Katrina, I think you fed me to death.” Six Months Earlier When her grandmother died, it fell to Katrina to clean out her house so it could be put up for sale. With her part-time job as a waitress and full-time job as an aspiring illustrator, everyone in her family assumed she had the free time to make it happen. It was a rainy Tuesday afternoon, and the closets under the eaves smelled like cedar and wet leaves. Her back ached from ducking around tight spaces, and her nose ran from the dust and crumbling carcasses of insects. Rubbing her back, she scooted out of the closet and fell on the nearest twin bed. Kat cocked her head as she studied her progress. As sole worker in this establishment, she determined that anything deemed worthy of selling was her profit to keep. An assortment of personal items caught her fancy. Her favorite, a paperback book of photographs of women from the sixties fishing topless. A gag for her brother’s stocking come Christmas.
