The Dead Romantics (25)
There were only two guests in the mortuary that night—Dad called them “guests.” They were bodies. Obviously. I had guessed the right freezer box on the first try, and pulled the drawer out. On the narrow table lay a boy who looked a lot like the one who stood beside me. Young—twelve, maybe. Dad had already fixed him up, painted his blue lips tan, and covered the bruises on his neck.
“Does that help?” I asked the ghost—and he looked . . . “Are you okay?”
“I wanted to wear my Transformers T-shirt,” he replied, and looked away. “I’m really dead, aren’t I?”
“I’m sorry.”
He took a large breath (or as much as a large breath looked), and then he nodded—just once. “Thanks—thank you.”
And like the dozens of ghosts before him, the sparkling bits that made him began to break away like dandelion tufts, and dispersed into the room—and he moved on. A firework there, then gone. And I was left alone in the frigid mortuary.
I climbed the steps to the door again, but it had locked itself when it closed the first time—I had forgotten to unlock it. I pushed on it—once, twice.
Banged on it—called for help.
Nothing worked.
Dad found me the next morning. Apparently, they had looked everywhere once they realized I was missing, until they finally came down into the mortuary and found me curled up on the steel table in the middle of the room, a blanket over me, asleep.
Mom and Dad decided that maybe—just maybe—raising a family in a funeral home might not be as eclectic and wholesome as they were expecting.
Luckily, there was an old two-story house down the street, built in 1941, so it gave Mom things to renovate and fix around the house as we grew up. That was her college major—architectural renovations. She was really good at it, too. I used to wonder if she ever regretted marrying Dad, and moving to a small nowhere town with nowhere people, but she never gave the slightest hint she did. She took unloved things, like the stained glass window above the door in the funeral home, and the stone and brass fireplace in the new house, and turned them into wonders.
The new house was less showy than the funeral home. It sat on a side road off Main Street, beside the Gulliver family and the Mansons, built with old crumbling bricks as red as clay, and pristine white shutters. But at night, when Carver and Alice’s respective room lights were on, the house looked like it had eyes and a grinning red mouth for a door.
The house was exactly as I remembered it as we came up the cobblestone pathway. Bare threads of ivy clung to the brick walls, and a lone spider hung from the sconce beside the door. Alice’s red convertible was in the driveway, though it looked a lot worse for wear these days, beside Mom’s unassuming SUV. Dad had a motorcycle, though I didn’t see it in the driveway. I wondered where it was.
“Ah! That thing,” Mom said as she fished into her heavy purse for the keys. “He took it to the shop this week before . . . well, you know. Before.” She smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I’ll ask Seaburn to get it tomorrow.”
“I’ll get it,” Alice said.
“Oh, Alice, you know how I feel about you riding that thing.”
“Mom.”
“Fine, fine.” Mom unlocked the front door, and it creaked wide open. She walked into the foyer and flipped on the lights. Alice marched inside, not even bothering to take off her boots as she stormed through the house to the kitchen, and flung open the liquor cabinet. She asked Mom if she wanted anything. “Oh, a nice whiskey would be lovely . . . Florence?”
“That sounds amazing,” I agreed, taking off my coat.
The house was warm and it smelled like it always had—of pinewood and fresh linens. The walls were a bright gray, and the furniture was hand-me-down and restored, worn and loved. A staircase off the main hallway led up to most of the bedrooms, while the master was on the first floor, across from the living room. There were photos of all of us on the stairway wall—from elementary school through college graduation, smiling moments frozen in time. Years where we went through bad hair, and blue hair, and braces, and acne.
I looked at one of the earliest photos of us—so early, Alice was an infant. It had been taken outside of the funeral home, Mom in a sleek red dress and Dad in a terrible tweed suit, Carver in one to match. I had pitched a fit that day because I wanted to wear my rainbow unicorn house shoes instead of the white dress shoes that hurt my feet, and I’d won. There I was in a fluffy red dress and . . . unicorn slippers.
On the hallway table there were a few framed newspaper clippings. Dad getting the keys to the town. Mom being presented with a local restoration award. Carver winning a robotics competition. And—
LOCAL GIRL SOLVES MURDER WITH GHOSTS
Along with a photo of thirteen-year-old me smiling for the papers.
It made me sick to my stomach.
“Here you go,” Alice said, offering a glass of whiskey on the rocks.
I jumped at her voice, and spun to her. She rattled the ice in the glass, waiting for me to take it. Suddenly, I was very much not in the mood. “I—I think I’m going to go to the bed-and-breakfast.”
Mom poked her head out of the kitchen. “What? But it’s so late . . .”
“I’m sure they have a room.” I grabbed my coat where I hung it on the coatrack, and shrugged it back on. “I’m sorry.” I stepped back out into the brisk night with my suitcase. “I have a book due and—I’ll keep all of you up.”