Death peeked around corners; it winked at her in the mirror then vanished; it hummed along with the radio and then faded away. It wheedled into her mind and her words, leaving a humid vapor around her heart and a thick fuzzy taste on her tongue.

I didn't realize. I wasn't trying to rewrite history.

You couldn't if you wanted to. It already happened. It don't matter if anyone remembers it or not. He paused. Abbs, you're tryin' to find hope in the past, but the world and its lusts are passing away. Hope belongs to the future. -Abby Wells and Will Laughlin

The past never quite disappeared, did it? Folks usually thought time moved forward, starting on the left and riding a right-pointing arrow into the future. Ruby didn't believe that. The future twisted uncertain, a shapeless dream, but the past - the past was set. It cast evidence behind it, photos and letters and bones, piling up in hidden places, waiting for the chance to spill out. An avalanche. A burial. The past consumed the future, always.

Done to death by slanderous tongues

Death without dread of death is welcome death

A detective sees death in all the various forms at least five times a week.