Roslyn drew the seatbelt across her chest and regarded the small black box in the passenger seat.

            “Do I buckle you too?” she asked.

            The box of her ex-girlfriend’s ashes sat mute in the passenger seat. Roslyn guessed it wasn’t necessary. Nothing could hurt Cat anymore. But then she imagined stopping short and the box flying into the glove compartment, ashes scattering onto the cloth seat and foot space, never to come out. After eight years together (during which they had broken up and gotten back together five times), Roslyn had lost count of the times Cat had screamed at her from that seat, refusing to leave when Roslyn would finally tell her to get out. If those ashes spilled, she would literally never get Cat out of her car.

            Roslyn reached over and fastened the belt strap around the box.

            Roslyn and Cat hadn’t spoken in three years, yet it was Roslyn’s job to spread the ashes. Cat’s mother, Bernie, had passed her the box after the memorial.

            “Some place pretty,” Bernie told her, reaching for the cigarettes in her purse.

            Roslyn held what was left of Cat. “You sure you want me to?”

            “Cat would have wanted you to.”

            “How do you know?”

            The corners of Bernie’s mouth struggled and failed to lift into a smile. She stuck the cigarette between her lips.

            “You were her favorite,” she said.

            Roslyn doubted that but didn’t argue with Bernie. “She didn’t say where she wanted to be?”

            “Cat didn’t have a plan.” Bernie blew the smoke out like she was angry at it. “She never thought she’d die. That’s what killed her.”

            What had killed her was too much booze and pain killers. That was how Cat liked to unwind. It was for that reason that Bernie was convinced Cat hadn’t committed suicide.

            Now here was the sum of her in a black box that looked like it had fallen out of an airplane.

Roslyn was small, with a long brown braid down her back, and early crow’s feet at her eyes. She didn’t have Cat’s bull-headed confidence about things. Most of the time she felt unsure of herself. She even felt unsure about the boots she wore. Cowboy boots and long skirts were her comfy clothes. She’d worn them to the memorial. Could she be trusted to know what pretty was?

            She confidently ruled out Bernie’s place. Bernie lived in a gated apartment complex, and unless Roslyn threw the ashes in the community pool, there was no place else to spread them. Same went for her place; the top floor of a duplex that she had no intention to stay in.

            “Some place pretty, some place pretty,” she muttered. Then to the box, “I don’t know what you thought was pretty.”

            Except other women, she thought. And Bernie’s ex-boyfriend Will. Cat had used that word to describe him once, that her mom’s ex-boyfriend was “pretty.” Bernie and Will had been together for a long time, and sometimes still got together to grab a beer. He’d been at the memorial that day. Even though it had been a while since Roslyn had seen him, he was still, as Cat would say, pretty. Will was a lifter and built like a tank, but had a boyish face, even at middle age. And, as Roslyn recalled, had a trailer on a good bit of land in Abita Springs, which wasn’t too far from where she was at the moment.

            That settled it. Fifteen minutes later her tires crunched over the long, shell driveway that led to Will’s red trailer. It sat on three acres of pine trees and had a big wooden deck in the front. Cat had taken her there once and pointed out the old, rusted swing set behind the trailer. She’d played on it as a kid. Now fat chickens picked through the leaves below it. Two dogs barked like mad as she pulled up to the house.

            Will walked out onto the deck with a longneck in his hand. He hadn’t changed clothes from the memorial, just taken off his shoes and socks, unbuttoned his shirt and loosened his tie. He looked like an executive who’d lost everything.

            Roslyn opened her door a crack and stopped when the dogs threw themselves against the side of the car.

            “They safe?” she asked him.

            “Yeah, they’re all bark.” He gave a sharp whistle. “Y’all get over here.”

            The dogs didn’t listen, but clambered at the door. She opened it carefully and stepped out to be pawed and licked. They followed her to the other side where she unbuckled Cat and lifted her out of the car.

            “Sorry to spring on you like this,” Roslyn said.

            Will took a swig and eyed the box. “Want a beer?”

            “No, thank you.”

            “That Cat?” Will asked.

            “Yeah. Bernie asked me to spread her ashes and I didn’t know where to go. I wondered if she could rest here.”

            “Bernie’s still not dealing with her daughter, huh?”

            “It’s just hard for her.”

            “I think it would be too creepy for me having her ashes around.”

            “You,” Roslyn said, “have a hog’s head mounted in your living room.”

            “That’s not the same thing.”

            Roslyn sighed. “Is there any chance that Cat talked about where she wanted to be buried when she died?”

            “Not that I recall. Talked a lot about going to hell.”

            Roslyn nodded. “Well. I’m sure she handled that part of it. Good seeing you, Will.”

            “Sure you don’t want to come in for a quick one?”

            Something about the way he said it, gesturing towards the open door behind him, gave Roslyn an icky feeling. Something about his stare made her want to fold her arms over her breasts.

            “No,” she said. “I have to find a place for her.”

            “Suit yourself. I’ll pour some out for both of you.”

            Roslyn set Cat onto the passenger seat, buckling her in once more.

            “Okay, so that was a bad idea,” she said, pulling her own seat belt across her chest.

            A frustrated huff came from the seat next to Roslyn. “Why would you even think of leaving me with that son of a bitch?” said Cat.

            Roslyn gaped at her dead ex-girlfriend. Cat’s long, too-thin form sat with the box on her lap. She looked the same as she had when Roslyn had last seen her. Cat’s hair a dark, unwashed bob in need of a trim, her skin pale and tight around her bones. A dirty white T-shirt and sweatpants. But she smelled like she always had – the musky scent that made Roslyn want to bury her face in the crook of her old lover’s neck. Cat watched Will herd his dogs back inside the trailer.

            “Cat?” Roslyn asked.

            Cat shook her head at Roslyn. She had dark circles under her eyes. “Honestly, Ros, I thought you’d know better.”

            Many questions raced through Roslyn’s mind.

            “Why can I smell you?” she asked, unsure why that was the first question to find her tongue.

            Cat smiled. “Pheromones are forever.”

            Roslyn closed her eyes. “Of course, they would be.”

            “Can we get out of here now?” Cat asked. “I don’t want to spend one more second close to that bastard.”

            “I thought you liked him,” Roslyn said.        

            Cat scowled. “Fuck no, he’s been feeling me up since I was twelve.”

            “He WHAT?”

            “I never told you?”

            Roslyn coasted out of the driveway in a daze. “Why didn’t you ever tell me Will did that to you? I never would have even thought about bringing you there if I’d have known.”

            “Mom was still friends with him after they split. It was just easier to pretend it didn’t happen.”

            “What are you doing here, Cat?”

            “I can’t come say hi?”

            “You’re dead.”

            “So far you’re doing a shitty job of laying me to rest. Will, for Christ’s sakes? I had to step in.”

            “All right,” Roslyn said. She wanted to reach over to see if she could touch her, but her hands stiffened around the steering wheel. “Where do you want to be?”

            She kicked empty, plastic water bottles at her feet. “Not in this dump. Why don’t you ever clean your car?”

            “If I would have known I’d have company today I would have tidied up.”

            “You know who always had a pristine car?” Cat said. “Caroline.”

            “Caroline,” Roslyn said. “Your professor that you had an affair with.”

            Cat grinned. “Clean car on the outside, but oooooowee, the dirty things she did on the inside.”

            “Can you not?”

            “Oh, come on. That was before we met.”

            “I still don’t want to hear about it.”

            “All right then,” Cat relented. “Caroline taught me a lot.”

            “Cat.”

            “About literature. I didn’t know I’d like Virginia Woolf. It opened a whole world.”

            “Do you want your ashes with Caroline?”

            “There was a star riding through the clouds one night, and I said to the star, ‘consume me.’”

            “…Is that a yes?”

            “That was from The Waves,” Cat said.

            “I’ll take that as a yes.”

            The women drove in silence for much of the ride. Cat gazed out the window, giving Roslyn the occasional direction.

            “I don’t think you’ve ever been this quiet,” Roslyn told her.

            “Just taking it all in,” Cat said.

            “What are you taking in?” she said.

            “The sound of the wheels on the road. The sunshine. Other people in their cars worrying about things. The way your foot works the brakes. The way you smell like apples.”

            “Do I brake differently from other people?” Roslyn asked.

            “You push down too hard,” Cat said. “You always have.”

            “Do I?” Roslyn said, stomping the brake.

            She and Cat lurched forward. They were on a neighborhood street now with no cars behind them.

            “Shit, Ros,” Cat laughed, bracing herself against the door.

            Roslyn pumped the brake again, coasting forward and then jerking to a stop. “Is this what you’re talking about?”

            Cat laughed in a careless way that Roslyn hadn’t heard in a long time. She drove on.

            “Do I really smell like apples?” she asked.

            “Remember when you and I fed each other apple slices?” Cat asked her.

            “We’d woken up holding each other,” Roslyn said.

            “From a beautiful night.”

            “We were naked. We felt too good to get up.”

            “We were hungry,” Cat said. “I had an apple in my backpack. I sliced it with a pocketknife and fed you a slice.”

            “Then I fed you a slice.”

            “You smell like that morning,” Cat told her. “Oh, Caroline’s house.”

            Cat pointed to a small white house with a porch swing and an oak tree. Roslyn pulled into the driveway and turned off the car.

            “Why didn’t you ever tell me things like that when we were together?” Roslyn asked her. “I didn’t know that morning was special to you.”

            Cat passed Roslyn the box. “I talked a lot, but I said all the wrong things.”

            “You’re not getting out?”

            “I think it would be more effective if you took it from here.”

Caroline squinted at Roslyn when she opened the door, as if Roslyn was a light that her eyes had to adjust to. Then they lit with recognition.

“Roslyn,” Caroline said. “Right?”

“Yeah,” Roslyn said. “It’s been a long time.”

            “It has. What can I do for you?”

“Did you hear about Cat?”

            Caroline crossed her arms and leaned against the doorframe and nodded. “I was thinking about going to the service, but I thought I’d best leave it to family.”

            Roslyn knew that Caroline had fallen in love with Cat and left her husband for her. In return, Cat had cheated on her. A lot.

            Caroline pointed to the box, “Tell me that isn’t her.”

            Roslyn swallowed. She was beginning to think that bringing Cat’s dead body from door to door might not be the best way to go about this. “I promised Bernie I’d spread her ashes.”

            “Why did you bring her here?”

Caroline hadn’t said it in an accusatory way, but there was an edge to her voice. Roslyn tried to answer the question in a way that didn’t reveal the fact that she’d been talking to Cat in her car for the last hour.

“Um,” said Roslyn. “One time she implied that she wanted her ashes to go to you.”

“How did she imply that?”

“She quoted Virginia Woolf.”

“What was the quote?”

“Something about stars.”

“It sounds like you made a loose interpretation.”

“You were a big part of her life,” Roslyn said. “Do you want her ashes?”

“No.”

Caroline didn’t apologize or add anything helpful to her rejection.

“Did Cat ever talk about places that were special to her?” Roslyn asked. “Any place you think she’d like to be?”

“She always liked the beach,” Caroline said.

“Oh,” said Roslyn, remembering Cat in a bikini, kicking sand into the Gulf of Mexico with her toes.

“She liked to take other women there, anyway,” Caroline added.

“Oh,” said Roslyn, remembering at time when Cat went missing for two days and came home with sand in her underclothes.

“You were together with Cat a long time, weren’t you?” Caroline asked her.

“Eight years,” Roslyn said. “Give or take a few break ups.”

“We were together a few years, too. How is it after all that time we don’t know what places were special to her?”

“That’s a good question.” Roslyn took a step backwards. “Well, I won’t keep you.”

“You’re still there for her,” Caroline said. “You always were no matter what she did to you. She would call me in the middle of the night sometimes, did you know that?”

“No.”

“I could always tell when you were broken up because she’d call me, desperate to talk to someone. I could tell when you would take her back because she’d stop calling. You don’t have to take care of her now. She’s at peace.”

“Not yet,” Roslyn said.

            Roslyn got into the car and passed the box to Cat.

            “How did it go?” Cat asked.

            Roslyn started the car.

            “What? What’s the matter?” Cat peered out at Caroline. “Man, she’s gotten older since I last saw her.”

            “Time has passed,” Roslyn said. “Everyone that you see now is literally older than the last time you saw them. It’s always true.”

            “Yeah, but she’s grayer.”

            “Oh, shut up.”

            “I take it that didn’t go well?”

            “No.”

            “That’s okay. I didn’t want to be there, anyway.”

            “You said to go to her house!”

            “No, I didn’t. You just assumed I did.”

            Roslyn laid her head on the steering wheel. Then she shifted into gear and backed out of the driveway.

“Where are we going?” Cat asked.

            “I don’t know.”

            “Where are you driving to, then?”

            “I don’t want to talk to you right now,” Roslyn told her.

            “What did I do?”

            Roslyn stared straight out the windshield, refusing to answer with words or a look.

            “Okay,” Cat said. “‘How much better is silence…how much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird…’”

            “Cat.”

            “‘Myself being myself,’” Cat said.

            “Is that more Virginia Woolf?”

            “From The Waves.”

            “How do I not know you? We were together so long.”

            “You think you don’t know me?”

            “If I did, I wouldn’t have to guess where to take you,” Roslyn said. “I would know things that you loved, where you would want your ashes to go. I don’t even think you know.”

            Cat shrugged and stared out the window. “‘I am not one and simple, but complex and many.’”

            “So,” Roslyn said. “You don’t know?”

            “Things are coming to me like out of a dream, Ros. I don’t remember everything about myself. I mostly remember lines from that book.”

            “Well, that’s just great.”

            “‘Rolling over the waves will shoulder me under,’” she quoted. “‘Everything falls in a tremendous shower, dissolving me.’”

            Roslyn jerked the wheel and took the exit for the interstate. A chorus of honking erupted behind her.

            “We’re going to the beach,” Roslyn said.

            Cat beamed. “I love the beach!”

            “Enough to be buried there?”

            “Oh man, I don’t know. That’s like a real commitment to be there for eternity.”

            “You said you loved the beach.”

            “I love Kentucky Fried Chicken too, but I don’t want to be buried there.”

            Roslyn looked at her. “How about a rest stop?”

            “All right, all right,” Cat said. “No need to threaten me. Maybe I want to be at the beach. Let’s go and see.”

            When they got there, Roslyn parked at the edge of the sand. It was nearing sunset. The sky was bright blue on the edge of fading, and the thin clouds were turning pink and gold. Nobody else was out there. It was a weeknight in November. Cat sat on the hood of the car and wrapped her arms around her knees. The hood creaked under her weight. Roslyn still hadn’t touched her. She sat next to her on the hood and looked out at the waves.

            “Why did you have to die right before the holidays?” Roslyn asked.

            “I don’t remember you having a hard-on for Thanksgiving.”

            “Now I’ll like it even less. For the rest of my life.”

            “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

            “You swear?”

            “I swear.”

            Roslyn rubbed her face. “I don’t know why I’m asking you. You never told me the truth anyways.”

            “‘I have made up thousands of stories; I have filled innumerable notebooks with phrases to be used when I have found the true story, the one story to which all these phrases refer. But I have never yet found the story.’”

            “Do you want me to toss you into the water, Virginia?”

            “No,” said Cat. “Doesn’t feel right. Not here. But there is a place with water and a woman.”

            “That’s water and I’m a woman.”

            “Not here. Not you.”

            After all the years and breakups, after all the therapy in the last three years getting over her relationship with Cat, “Not you,” still hurt.

            “Caroline was right,” Roslyn said. “You’re dead and I’m still taking care of you.”

            “That was a rude thing for her to say.”

            “It’s true. If you wanted some other woman to bury you then you should have haunted her and left me alone.”

            Roslyn swept off the hood and got inside the car. Cat scrambled after her.

            “She wasn’t a girlfriend,” Cat said, getting into the passenger seat. “At least I don’t think she was.”

            “I don’t want to listen to you figure out whether or not you were in a relationship with some girl you were sleeping with.”

            “That’s the thing, I wasn’t sleeping with her,” Cat said.

            “I don’t care.”

            “You’re acting like you care.”

            “You gonna tell me I’m being paranoid like you used to? Possessive?”

            “No,” Cat said. “I’m not going to tell you all that. You have no good reason to trust me.”

            Roslyn took her eyes from the beach to look at Cat’s face. Roslyn shook her head. “When you used to lie to me, you always looked genuine. I can’t tell if you’re for real.”

            “I don’t have anything to lose now,” Cat said.

            “Who is this woman?” Roslyn asked.

            “‘She was like a crinkled poppy; with the desire to drink dry dust.’”

            “What does that mean?”

            “I’m not sure. Let’s go get the book. It’s at my place. I need to return it to the library.”

            “You’re concerned about your overdue library book?”

            “I owe them,” she said.

            “You don’t owe them, Cat. I returned the books I found in your apartment and paid your late fee.”

            “Let’s go to the library,” Cat said.

            “Why?”

            “‘What dissolution on the soul-’”

            Roslyn held up a hand. “Stop. Whatever you’re quoting won’t make sense to either of us. Let’s just go to the library.”

            Roslyn started the car and Cat clapped with joy.

            “I didn’t know you got this excited about the library.”

            “Always. It was the one place Bernie took me as a kid that I liked. I still go all the time. Or at least, I did.”

            “Why didn’t you want me to know?” Roslyn asked.

“Couldn’t let you think I was a nerd.”

            “I would have loved a nerdy side of you.”

            “I didn’t know that.”

            “So you showed me nothing and now I don’t know where you want to be buried.”

            “That’s advice everyone should get,” Cat said. “Be open with your loved ones so they know where to bury you.”

            The library sat at the edge of a large park. It had thick columns and steps so wide it seemed like a library for giants, not for Roslyn and Cat’s little feet. Roslyn held the box and Cat walked alongside her staring up at the columns.

            “You’re coming in with me,” Roslyn said, pleased. “Can anyone else see you?”

            “I don’t know.” Cat reached the top step and snapped her fingers in the face of a man who walked by. The man didn’t break his stride. “Doesn’t look like they can.”

            “Maybe I shouldn’t keep talking to you.”

            “Damn right, you shouldn’t. You’re going into a library.” She raised a finger to her lips and said, “Shhh.”

            Cat walked quietly beside her into the building. There were three floors, the second floor and third floors visible from the ground in the main room. The ceiling was so high that it made Roslyn dizzy to look up. There was the shuffle of feet, the flip of pages, and the murmur of people at the checkout counter.

            “Was there a certain spot you’d go?” Roslyn asked.

            “The pond. I have to get the book first.”

            “Where is it?”

            Cat shrugged.

            “Okay, let’s ask somebody.” Roslyn opened her mouth to speak to a balding man walking by holding a handful of books and wearing a library I.D. in a lanyard.

            “Not him,” Cat hissed.

            “Why not? He works here.”

            “He’s not the one to ask.”

            The man glanced at Roslyn and gave her a perplexed look. Roslyn kept walking and spoke to Cat out of the corner of her mouth.

            “Who is the one to ask?” Roslyn said.

             “I’ll know her when I see her.”

            “I can just look it up,”

            “But we have to find her.”

            “Let’s find out where the book is at least.”

            Roslyn searched for The Waves at the kiosk computer while Cat read the titles on a nearby book cart.

            “The Little Prince, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Darkness Visible, How to Lose Belly Fat…”

            Cat’s voice trailed off while Roslyn retaught herself how to search for a book. She hadn’t been to a library in a long time. She found the location and wrote it down on a slip of paper with a mini pencil.

            “I wish you would have told me that you came here while we were together,” she said, scribbling the book’s details. “I would have preferred to come here than a bar.”

            Roslyn turned from the kiosk. Cat was gone.

            “Cat,” she said, in a loudish whisper. “Where did you go?”

            She didn’t see her with a quick glance around the main area. She wandered the first floor calling Cat’s name as softly/loudly as she could. It was around the periodical section where she took a good look at herself. It was a look from the outside, as if she was way up on the third floor of the library looking down on herself. What she saw was a woman carrying her ex-girlfriend’s ashes and calling her name in a library.

            What if Cat hadn’t ever been there? What if she’d imagined the whole thing? What would she do now? Pour the ashes into the book return slot?

            She decided that she’d come this far, so she might as well look for The Waves. She kept an eye out for Cat while she climbed the staircase to the second floor. She looked for her down Fiction Aisle “Wo-Wy.” Roslyn knelt down, drawing her skirts around her knees. The row of Virginia Woolf books was at the bottom.

            “Cat,” she said. “I found it. I found Virginia.”

            No one answered her.

            She touched the spine of each book, fingertips ready to pluck the one that said The Waves. There was Mrs. Dalloway, A Room of One’s Own, To the Lighthouse, Orlando. But…

            “Where is it?” Roslyn asked. “The database said it was checked in.”

            She leaned back on her heels and raised her eyes to the ceiling.

            “What now, Cat?” she asked.

            She spent a few minutes waiting for an answer that didn’t come. When her legs began to fall asleep, she stood up and wandered to the huge glass window that looked out to back courtyard, and the park beyond. Roslyn pressed her forehead to the glass and held the black box against her chest.

            Cat was out there. She stood near a bench by the pond. Cat scrambled downstairs and out the door as fast as she could. She pushed the backdoor open and called Cat’s name at the same time. She didn’t care who looked at her.

            Cat had her arms crossed and was looking down at the book that a woman was reading on the bench.

            “There you are,” Cat said to Roslyn. “I was wondering when you’d come out here.”

            “Oh well, you know, I thought I’d check out some magazines first, maybe read the paper.” Then Roslyn said, “You vanished.”

            “Shh,” Cat said, finger to her lips.

She nodded to the woman reading on the bench, who was now looking at Roslyn.

“Did you say something?” The woman asked.

The bench lady had short blonde hair, dangly earrings, and sweet brown eyes. She held a sandwich in one hand and a book in the other. Her employee lanyard said, “Ginny.” The book cover said, “The Waves.”

“Oh,” Roslyn said. “Well, it’s strange. I was looking for that book.”

“This one?” Ginny raised the paperback. “This exact one?”

“Yeah, I,” Roslyn thought for a moment. “It was the book that someone special to me loved. I was going to read it, but I can wait until you finish.”

Ginny set the sandwich in a plastic container next to her. “Are you talking about Cat?”

“Yeah. Did you know her?”

“She was here most afternoons. For years. My boss told me that someone returned her books because she…because she died.”

Roslyn nodded. “I returned them.”

“I’m sorry. We all really liked her.”

“Awe,” Cat said, blushing as much as a ghost could blush.

Roslyn gazed out over the pond. There were ducks and a pretty rock formation with water trickling down.

“The last time I saw her,” Ginny said. “She told me how much she was liking this book. When my boss said she’d passed I thought I’d give it a go.”

“How is it?” Roslyn asked.

“Complicated,” Ginny said. She scooched over. “Would you like to sit?”

Roslyn sat beside her, black box on her lap.

“Do you mind me asking?” Ginny said. “Is that a receptacle of ashes?”

“I’m responsible for finding a place to spread them.”

“Wow,” Ginny said, not seeming to know what to say. “Were you thinking of here?”

Roslyn redirected the question to Cat with her eyes.

Cat said, “I think I could stay here.”

“Yes,” Roslyn told Ginny. “Do you think the library would mind?”

“Um. I don’t know. You’d have to ask my supervisor.”

“I know it’s a weird thing to ask.”

“I think it’s sweet,” Ginny said. Dimples when she smiled.

“Ginny is sweet,” Cat said to Roslyn.

Ginny started talking about how Cat would sit right in that spot and read every day, but it was hard for Roslyn to hear her because Cat was still talking.

“I thought of you every time I saw her,” Cat said. “I would think of how you deserved someone kind like her. The last few years when we weren’t talking, I still thought of you every day. I hoped you weren’t shacking up with someone like me. Bury me here, don’t bury me here. My body is yours. It always has been. I just wanted to spend the day with you and introduce you to Ginny. I’m sorry, Roslyn, for every time I hurt you.”

Roslyn’s eyes burned with tears.

“Oh,” Ginny said, reaching into her purse for a tissue. “I’m talking too much. You probably want some alone time. I can leave the book.”

“No, it’s okay,” Roslyn said, dabbing her eyes.

When she looked up again, Cat was gone.

In the coming days Roslyn would be back to spread some of the ashes near the bench and in the pond. Then she drove to the beach, casting the rest of Cat’s body into the waves.

But that afternoon she set the black box beside her and talked to Ginny.