21. CATASTROPHE
The staff kitchen is a tiny closet of a room, squeezed between the final office and the outside wall like an afterthought. The once-white linoleum is now gray, peeling at the corners to reveal a darker, stained lining. Dirty mugs lay festering in the sink, pools of long-forgotten drinks discoloring the once-sparkling steel with dark brown patches. If you squint, they look like blood stains.
Bella doesn't squint.
Instead, she washes every abandoned cup, drying them well, and orderly places each one back in the cupboard. Then she wipes down the counters until they're clear of sugar grains and coffee granules, rinsing the cloth out thoroughly.
After the disorder of Professor Cullen's office, this room's a haven. No scattered textbooks, no balled up paper. No memories of a long-dead wife.
Because she haunts that office. Her words loop across the pages of every text book, black swirls telling stories of a vibrant personality. Even in death she seems larger than life. Bella wonders how much of it Professor Cullen has read. His wife didn't only annotate; there're jokes in the margins, little exclamations, and big judgments. It's as if she's telling them something, but Bella has no idea what she's trying to convey.
Two coffees. One the color of warm oak, white steam rising from the rim. The other black as coal. She cleans the teaspoon, picks up the mugs, then turns to walk out.
A blond man blocks her way, making her jump. Scalding liquid splashes across her hand and chest. She screams from the shock as much as the pain, shaking as she puts the mugs back on the counter.
The man hasn't moved. He stands there, staring, his eyes wide, face pale. For a moment he looks as though he's going to faint. She tries to speak, but the throbbing pain of her hand takes away all her words. She cradles her wrist, leaning over to run it under cool, soothing water.
It's some moments before he speaks. Even then his voice holds a vibrato, dipping and rising through every word. "I'm so sorry...Christ...I didn't mean..."
He has the look of a man who's seen a ghost.
"It's okay; I shouldn't have filled the mugs so high. Just a little scald, that's all. It isn't a catastrophe." Bella pulls her hand from the stream of cold water and shows him the small patch of red. "I think you were more shocked than me."
"You're not wrong there." He starts to laugh. "For a minute I thought you were somebody else." He takes her hand, checking her burn. "Mother of God, you look just like her."
Bella frowns. "Like who?"
His answer is drowned by approaching footsteps.