She has curlers in her hair and lipstick smeared to her nose. The door opens, and an older, tiny woman stares up at me with a disgruntled look about her. It’s so motionless I start to wonder if it’s a statue, but then it blinks and slinks away. There’s a cat in the window staring at me. Bring cash I’m in apartment one.” Then she hung up. The landlord didn’t even ask for my name when I called to see if they had any vacancies.

The place looks even worse than it did online, but I expected as much. I kick one aside so that it doesn’t get stuck in the wheels of my suitcase. Beer cans in various stages of decay litter the property. It’s just a single-standing unit flanked by an abandoned car lot on one side and a convenience store on the other. My new apartment isn’t part of a huge complex. Then I grab my suitcase and the wooden cross I just stole and make my way out of the cab and up to the building. I look at the meter and pull cash and a tip out of my purse and hand it to him after he parks. I knew Grace probably left something at the location of the wreck, and I felt I owed it to Scotty to remove it. That’s why I had the driver take the detour down this back road. Stealing Scotty’s memorial might be bad karma, but one could argue that leaving a memorial up for a guy who verbally expressed his hatred for roadside memorials could be bad karma as well. And, according to the cabdriver, the bad karma I’m probably carrying around right now. It’ll be difficult with my history and lack of experience. I don’t have a car, so I decided to find a place closer to downtown this time so I can walk to work. My new apartment is only two miles from here, but it’s in the opposite direction from where I used to live. I’m the one who put it there.” I can still feel him staring at me as he pulls back onto the road. “Stealing roadside memorials has to be some kind of bad karma. I glance at him in the rearview mirror, and he’s staring at me with a raised brow. I set it on the back seat next to me and wait for the driver to pull back onto the road, but he doesn’t. I walk back to the cab with the cross in hand. I may not have killed him with my actions, but I definitely killed him with my inaction. Then, to avoid having to sit through details if the case went to trial, I pleaded guilty. When I heard he had crawled several yards away from the car, I started humming so I wouldn’t hear anything else the prosecutor said. I didn’t pay attention to the details during the pretrial. I shake it side to side until the dirt loosens around it, and then I pull it out of the ground.ĭid he die in this very spot? Or did he die in the road? I get out and walk back to where the cross is. The driver slows down and brings the cab to a stop.

There’s a small wooden cross staked into the ground on the side of the road with the date of his death written on it.

Reminders of him genre