Chapter 4

On the third day, the morgue called me to identify the body.

I did a full face of makeup.

I wore a black haute couture dress, pairing it with four-inch Louboutins.

To block out the smell of death and decay, I practically bathed myself in expensive French perfume.

The hallway outside the cold room was packed with people.

Aside from me, they were all families of the other miners who had died in the cave-in.

They wore dusty, oversized winter coats, kneeling on the dirty linoleum floor, sobbing hysterically with tears and snot running down their faces.

I stood there amongst them like a peacock that had wandered into a chicken coop.

An assistant walked up and offered me a blue surgical mask.

"Mrs. Vance, please prepare yourself. Mining accidents... they aren't pretty."

I took the mask, looked at the cheap, disposable fabric with distaste, and tossed it aside.

"I don't need it. Just take me in."

The assistant pushed open the heavy steel door of the cold storage room.

A sharp, overpowering wave of chemical disinfectant mixed with a sickening, metallic stench hit me instantly.

I reflexively covered my nose with a silk handkerchief.

The assistant pulled out one of the metal drawers and unzipped a yellow body bag.

"This is Garrett Vance."

I looked down.

In that fraction of a second, my chest tightened.

It wasn't the goofy, sunburned face I was used to seeing.

It was a horrific, unrecognizable mess of torn flesh and bone.

His face was caked in thick black coal dust—soot that had been ground so deeply into his skin during the collapse that it had become one with his flesh.

Half of his skull was completely caved in.

His lips were split wide, exposing teeth stained with dark residue.

The expensive Italian suit he had bought specifically to wear around me was reduced to bloody, shredded rags, stuck to his body by dried, black blood.

Dirty.

It was so incredibly dirty.

It was the most grotesque thing I had ever seen in my life.

My stomach violently turned.

It wasn't grief. It wasn't heartbreak.

It was pure, visceral physical revulsion.

I pushed the assistant aside, bent over, and retched.

I threw up my morning coffee right onto my eight-hundred-dollar designer heels.

The sobbing families outside stopped, staring at me in absolute shock.

Someone muttered under their breath, "Look at her. Her husband is dead and she doesn't even cry. She's just disgusted by him."

"Typical. Rich girls have no souls."

I heard them.

But I didn't care.

I stood up straight, wiping my mouth with my silk handkerchief.

Then, I tossed the stained handkerchief into the biohazard bin.

My eyes fell on the hand peeking out of the body bag.

Two of his fingers were broken, and the nails were packed with black dirt.

I suddenly remembered that very hand reaching out to hold the train of my wedding dress so it wouldn't touch the wet ground, only for me to kick him away.

"Don't touch me, Garrett. You're filthy."

At the time, he had slowly pulled his hand back, wiping it nervously against his trousers, smiling his usual goofy smile.

"Right. Sorry, Chloe. I'm dirty. I won't touch."

And now, he had finally become nothing more than a pile of broken, discarded flesh.

I turned to the morgue worker.

"It's him. Creamate him."

"Would you like to hold a viewing or a memorial service first, Mrs. Vance?"

"No. He didn't care for formalities when he was alive, and looking like this, there’s no point in putting on a show. Just burn the body and hand me the ashes."

I turned and walked out.

My heels clicked sharply against the cold concrete floor.

In my mind, I spoke to him:

"See, Garrett?"

"Even in death, you never learned how to be clean."

"You made such a mess of yourself. How do you expect me to cry for you?"