They called me Cat but I don't like that anymore. If I can't hear my husband call me that, then I don't want to hear it at all. I'm Catriona to you, please, and about Burton Latimer I will say only that he was in a dream I had last night. I'm on my way to California. Raymond's parents are dead too and there's the reading of the will. I would have been there already but they cancelled my flight.

I'm standing at the window now, watching the runway activity at the John F. Kennedy International Airport across the highway. Some planes slant up, I see, and some slant down. Soon I'll be slanting up. I've got to go and catch the bus.

Excuse me? Yes, it was the second leg they cancelled. The first leg got me here from Nova Scotia. They kept us waiting for the longest time before finally announcing the cancellation. Some problem with the door. Hey, imagine if it opened up at 30,000 feet and I was on my way to the toilet and got sucked out just like that. Do you think Raymond would be there waiting for me? Well, I know he would if he could. But apparently ghosts don't have the power to go where they please. Anyway, this black Jamaican guy with dreadlocks I swear to his waist was turning everyone away, no matter what their predicament, but when he got to me he pulled me to one side and asked me to wait. 

There's a term my guru used to use. Auspicious coincidence. I guess I was due for some luck. So I'm dressed in black because of Raymond and I'm the same age as this young Jamaican's mother who's also lately passed. Somehow I remind him of her. I can't imagine how, but after everyone was gone he got on the phone and stayed there for an hour getting me a lodging voucher. I was the only one there that he did that for. And then he escorted me to the shuttle for the motel. He was so kind it was almost unbearable. I cried myself to sleep in my freshly made bed.

In my dream, we had traded last words, me and Raymond, hurtful words, and he was walking away, leaving me once and for all. Only it was not toward the door that he went. He walked into the wall with its peeling paper of faded roses and stuck there halfway through. The leg that didn't make it twitched like the hand of a clock telling the same second over and over. When I tried to pull him back, the leg came off in my hands. There was no blood. The leg was wooden like that of a puppet. Nevertheless someone screamed on the other side of the wall. I ran into the next room through the door. Instead of Raymond on the other side of the wall, though, a baby's head protruded from a polished wooden plaque. It was the baby that was screaming.

That was where Burton Latimer came into the dream. He was standing there in his cocked hat with his flickering lantern held high. “Quite a trophy, don’t you think?” he said, leering at me. “Worth a kiss or two anyway. Are you ready? Pucker up!”

I woke with someone pounding on the wall and shouting, Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!

My throat hurt so I could taste blood. I guess it was me who'd been screaming.

Look, I really have to go. The timing's tight now if I'm going to be there when the will is read. And it's important that I be there. I don't know why. I'll get what I get regardless. I just know I should physically be there. I'm starting a new life free of demons and ghosts and all that nonsense of Raymond's travelling to past lives and wives. There's a chance a lot was left to my husband. That's all mine now. So the moment I hear what he gets, that's like my birthplace, see? So I should definitely be there.

Oh, but be sure and write this down. I loved that asshole and I always will. That's one thought that I'll never let go of. Not in this life. It stays lodged in my heart like my resident dagger.

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