(2012) Colder Than Death by DB Gilles Read Free Book Online

almost a year, and after coming to terms with how I never got to see him for a last look... I decided that no one should have to be put in that position. I decided to become a restoration man.”
    Quilla moved away and looked at me with surprise. “Is that what you do?”
    “No. As I was working at Henderson's and learning the trade, I realized that I had a better skill. I was good with people. Lew, my boss, said that my talents would be wasted working on bodies, so he groomed me to deal with the public.”
    “Cool! I’m not good with people. Except my friends. Do you ever have sex in the coffins?”
    “ What ?” I was taken off guard and embarrassed, but I laughed at her audacity.
    “I always wondered that. I mean, have any of your girlfriends ever wanted to do it in a coffin?”
    “You ask too many questions for your own good.”
    “Know what else about you that's bizarre? Your name. I saw it on a sign when my mother and I came into your office. Dillard. I mean, I've got friends with strange names, but Dillard? I never met anyone called that.”
    “My father and grandfather were named Dillard. But the nickname all three of us wound up using was Del. Your name isn't all that normal either.”
    “It's a made up name. When I was little I liked koala bears. Couldn't get enough of koala bears. Only I couldn't pronounce koala. I'd say 'quilla' bear. Aunt Brandy started calling me Quilla and then so did everybody.”
    “What's your real name?”
    “Anita. Lame, right? I'm gonna legally change it to Quilla in three years, when I hit eighteen. That's what Aunt Brandy was gonna do. Her real name was Susan, but everybody called her Brandy because when she was a little girl she liked Brandy snaps, but she hated her real name because it was too close to my mother's. I mean, Suzanne and Susan. What kind of parents would name two daughters so similarly?”
    “You must have really loved your Aunt,” I said gently.
    A wistful expression crossed Quilla's face. “She was just so cool.”
    “If I heard your mother correctly, you were only six when Brandy disappeared.” She nodded yes. “You two must have crammed a lot together for you to remember her so fondly. Most kids who lose a loved one that young forget.”
    “I probably would've it if wasn't for her stuff.”
    “Her stuff ?”
    “My mother was gonna throw all of Aunt Brandy's things away, after about six months from the time she disappeared. But I begged my Mom to let me keep my Aunt's private stuff in a big trunk that she had.”
    “What kind of stuff?”
    “Things she had in her jewelry box. Some books. A diary. I mean, not a diary like some wimpy chick from the Fifties would have. Aunt Brandy was too hip for that. She used regular spiral notebooks, nothing fancy. I mean, she didn't, like, treasure them. They still have smudges on it from coffee and food stains. She put her feelings and thoughts and junk like that in it. I started reading them and found out that I felt exactly like she did on almost everything. I got to know my Aunt from reading what she wrote more than from the time we spent together. And she had pictures from her trips. She'd just take off and disappear for a couple weeks. That's why people assumed she ran away. Everybody knew she hated it here. And that she loved to travel. It sort of made sense that she would just pick up and leave. But... ”
    “What's that but about?”
    “I have this theory. When you love somebody truly, you have a sixth sense about why they do things. It's like, you know them so well you know how they think?”
    Without realizing it, I must have nodded my head in agreement because Quilla said, “So you loved somebody like that too?”
    “Someone a long time ago. In high school.”
    “You and your high school sweetheart loved each other that way?”
    “It was entirely one way.”
    “You loved her and she thought you were doggie-do?”
    “Wasn't that bad. She just didn't connect with me the way I connected with