The Dead Romantics (33)

“You don’t have to.”

“I know I don’t have to, but I’m offering. I’ll be your emotional support best friend. I can get some wine and you can go show me around your weird little town.”

That sounded so tempting, but plane tickets were expensive, and she was needed at her job. I’d be fine. I always was. “Nah, but thank you, though.”

“You don’t have to do everything alone, Florence.”

“I’ve got so much baggage, I’m never alone,” I replied jokingly, and she laughed.

“You’re ridiculous. Love you.”

“Love you more.”

I waited for her to hang up, and flopped back down on the squeaky bed. Having some help would be nice, but I didn’t need it. Xavier Day was my father. His funeral was my responsibility. So instead I pulled up Google on my phone and punched in where to find the nearest flower shop. I could do things on my own—I didn’t need to bother anyone else. Alice was up to her gills in funeral preparations and Carver had his own job and Mom—Mom couldn’t do everything.

I wasn’t sure if my siblings could see it, but she was barely holding herself together.

No, this was my job. I was the eldest. I could do this. Alone.

I had for this long, anyway.





13





Ghoul Intentions


THE CROWS WERE on the roof when I left the bed-and-breakfast that afternoon, and that meant Ben was lurking around somewhere. Though at the moment, either he didn’t want to be perceived, or he was hiding in a bush somewhere crying. I would be, if I found out I was dead and the only person who could see me was a failure of a ghostwriter who gave him a plant instead of, you know, the manuscript that was due.

I should tell him what Rose told me—about his accident. He had disappeared so suddenly this morning, I didn’t get the chance to ask if he remembered how he died or not. Though, the fact that he thought he was still alive, somehow, definitely tilted that answer toward not.

Google Maps on my phone said that the Main Street Flower Emporium was still open after all these years, so I left for the center of town. My senior year prom date bought a corsage from them that ended up being haunted.

I didn’t want to think about how that happened.

Just like I didn’t want to think about the deep, twisting vein of sadness in my stomach, and how as time passed in Mairmont and Dad wasn’t here, it kept growing. Would it go away someday? Would the dagger in my side slowly shrink to a paper cut? Would the grief ever disappear, or was it stagnant? Would it always be there, just under the surface, lurking in the way only grief could?

I’d always written how grief was hollow. How it was a vast cavern of nothing.

But I was wrong.

Grief was the exact opposite. It was full and heavy and drowning because it wasn’t the absence of everything you lost—it was the culmination of it all, your love, your happiness, your bittersweets, wound tight like a knotted ball of yarn.

The bell above the door chimed as I came into the flower shop. It smelled like roses and lilies and my grandmother’s potpourri that she always kept in the bathroom. There was an older gentleman behind the counter, fixing up a flower arrangement. An old-timey radio played Elvis in the background.

“Mr. Taylor,” I greeted, wondering if he remembered me from seventh-grade English class.

He looked at me over his thick glasses, and his eyebrows jerked up. “Miss Florence Day! If it isn’t you, I swear.”

I fixed a smile over my mouth. “It’s me. How are you?”

“As good as I can be, as good as I can be,” he replied, nodding. “Been doing up flower arrangements as quick as I can, but it don’t seem quick enough these days. So much going on. Are you here to place an order?”

“I—oh. No. Well . . .” Movement caught the corner of my eye, and I turned to watch Ben not so subtly try to hide behind a bouquet of roses on a table. Because that wasn’t conspicuous at all. I studiously turned back to the florist, intent on ignoring him. “I was wondering if you knew where I could find a thousand wildflowers?”

“A thousand?” Mr. Taylor scratched the side of his head.

“I know. It’s a lot.”

“I don’t really stock that many wildflowers, and if I did that’d be . . .” Before I could stop him, he took out a beat-up old calculator and punched in some numbers. “About fifteen hundred dollars.”

I blanched. That was more than my part of the apartment rent for the month, and I most certainly didn’t have that kind of money. “Well—um. That’s good to know, I guess.”

“Is this for your father’s funeral? I could pull something together—”

“Oh, no. No, no, no, I couldn’t possibly.”

“Of course you can! Xavier was a good man. I’m sorry. I know it’s tough. How’s Bella hanging in there?”

“Mom’s okay,” I replied, but it struck me that I didn’t really know if she was fine or not. I tried calling her after my chat with Rose, but she didn’t pick up. She and Carver might’ve still been in the meeting with the lawyer. I didn’t know how long those things took. “And anyway, I’m just running some errands for her. Trying to make things easier. Dad left a laundry list of things to do for his funeral.”