Ashes Learned Human Names novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: A Number on a Tag

Rafael Castellanos sat in his car on the hospital's top deck with a clean shirt on the passenger seat and did not get out.

He had left her for three hours.

It was the first time in a week, and his hands had not stopped shaking since he turned the key.

His phone lit up on the dash.

It was the nurse with the squeaky shoes: She went down for tea alone. She's back in her room. She says she's fine.

He did not believe the word fine.

He knew what he was afraid of, because he had already lived it once.

In the first life, Gabriel had cried in his kitchen on the Thursday night and told him every piece of it.

Rafael had stood there with the crystal bead in his fist and said nothing.

Then he had stood outside Lucia's ward door three nights running, and he had never once opened it.

On the fourth day he drove to Dallas, and he told himself it was for a week.

It was seven years.

By the time he came back for her, the county office had a form and a cardboard box.

Unclaimed remains, female, twenty-five years old.

The tag on the box had said 3318.

She had gone into the ground as a number because he had been a coward.

He took the bead out of his pocket and held it until it was warm.

Then he got out of the car.

He carried the shirt up in the elevator, where somebody had left a paper coffee cup on the rail.

It was half full, and it was still warm.

On the lid, in marker, someone had drawn a small smiling face.

Rafael knew the hand.

He pressed the button for the fourth floor with his knuckle, as if the cup might bite, and he did not touch it.

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