Page 59 of PS: I Hate You

“I’ve already got someone to do the task with.” I don’t know how those words made it out of my mouth with how hard my jaw is clenched. But I did it. I said something relatively mature, when all I wanna do is screech like a banshee and tell my mother to fuck off into the sun.

“I know, dear. You’re doing this with Dom. His mother told me. Can you imagine how that made me feel? To find out from Emilia about what is being done withmyson?” She lets out a dramatic sigh I expect is supposed to sound disappointed. “I know that Dom is an attractive man. And that he was friends with Josh. But I am hisblood, Madeline. This is something thatIshould be doing.” There’s a pause, and then she adds, as if it’s an afterthought, “With you, of course.”

I want to stab something, but there’s nothing stab-able in this bathroom. All I can do is grab a paper towel from the dispenser and crush it in my hands.

Not satisfying my violent urges in the least.

“You’renotcoming on these trips. Josh did not ask you to and so you are not coming.”

I speak in a robot voice, attempting to emulate Dom’s tone from whenever I frustrate him to the point of murder. Sometimes I find pretending to be Dominic Perry is the only way that I can talk to my mother. Not that it gets anything across to her. But it helps keep me from fighting, screeching, and drawing blood.

“I think this is what Josh would have wanted,” she repeats.

I think a random person on the street would have a better idea of what Josh would’ve wanted than my mother does.

And the fact that Cecilia believes she has more of a right to Josh’s final wishes than Dom does is baffling to me. He was in Josh’s life daily. I bet all of the dirty secrets that my brother had, Dom knows. Hell, the guy might know more than I do. As much as it sucks to admit, Dom is probably the person who loves Josh almost as much as I do. Whenever I visited Josh in the hospital, likely as not I’d cross paths with Dom, or Rosaline would show up and I knew her husband wasn’t far behind.

Ex-husband, I remind myself.

Dom is the one who showed up for Josh. And as frustrating as it is to have him on these trips with me, he’s letting me grieve in the only way I can seem to manage: by spouting off a weird mixture of insults and sarcasm and truths before descending into intense silences and heavy, stuttered breathing.

My mother would never allow me the space to deal with the complex emotions of spreading my brother’s ashes. Having Cecilia on even one of these trips would destroy something in me.

And that’s not how it feels with Dom.

I thought it would. I thought spending one more moment in his presence would wreck me.

But—and I don’t think I could ever admit this out loud—having Dom on each of these trips is…helpful.

I suck in a deep inhale through my nose, the stress of this phone call tightening my airways.

Then I stare at Josh’s handwriting on my wrist. The love he left for Dom and me.

And only us.

“No, Cecilia. I’m doing this with Dom. He’s the only one I need there with me.”

Did I just say Ineedhim?

“Now, Madeline, think about this.” Her voice is tense, vibrating with anger she’s trying to suppress. I guess I’m not the only one getting pissed off lately. “Think about how many people could benefit from this story. My writing helps people. People need to know about Josh.”

“The people who matterdoknow about him,” I snap, done with my Dom impression. “And it’s clear that you’re not one of them. I’m blocking your number. I can’t do this anymore. Go back to pretending that you don’t have a daughter. Because as far as I’m concerned, you don’t.”

I end the call and shove my phone into my bag, then crouch down in the public bathroom with my arms wrapped around my knees, and my forehead pressed against them, and I wait for the tears to come.

But they don’t.

Happy fuckingbirthday.

Fall

Chapter

Seventeen

“That morbid son of a bitch.”

Josh probably thought this was the funniest destination on his postmortem travel itinerary.