The Dead Romantics (57)

Because of Ben.

He took my mind away from my sadness, when all I wanted to do was burrow myself in that sadness, make a nest of it, live there clinging to what was left of my dad.

Even though Dad would’ve rather me fall in love than fall into a depression.

I’m fine, I texted back, and thanked my driver for the ride as I got out of his Honda.

The cashier at Unlimited Party looked bored as he played a game of solitaire on his phone. I came up to him and handed him the receipt, and gave him a tight smile. “Um, I’d like to pick this up, please.”

My phone vibrated. Rose again? I ignored it.

He asked, dumbfounded, looking at what he had pulled up on his screen. “Uh, are you—are you sure?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Well, because it says here—”

My phone vibrated again. That usually wasn’t Rose’s MO. “Excuse me for a moment?” I asked, and turned around to read the text.

It was from my sister.


COME TO THE FREEZERBOX NOW!!!!



Then, a minute later: PLEASE!!!

When Alice used please, it was an emergency.

“Okay, new plan. Yes to whatever you were going to ask”—I mean, Dad had already bought the stuff, so whatever he had bought I couldn’t exactly say no to—“and deliver it to the Days Gone Funeral Home?”

“Uh . . . we can deliver the items on Thursday?” the poor cashier suggested.

“Perfect! Thank you!” I waved as I left the store and hailed another Uber. The same guy in the same Honda pulled up to the curb, and I got in. “Oh, this is a great episode,” I said, and he nodded in agreement. The drive back to town was another fifteen minutes, and by then it had started to rain.

The front path was slippery, and I almost bit it hard as I hurried up to the front porch. Carver cracked the front door open as I righted myself again. “That step’s slippery,” he warned.

I stuck out my tongue. “A bit late, bro.”

“You’re in a better mood.”

Was I?

Carver opened the door wider to let me in. “Alice is in the freezer freaking out.”

“About what?” I asked, taking off my shoes in the foyer so I didn’t track mud through the halls. He gave me a long-suffering look. Freezer, Alice being down there—“Ah. Dad.”

“Yeah.”

“And you couldn’t do anything?”

“You know I hate the basement.”

“You weren’t locked in there overnight,” I muttered, but I supposed that was the responsibility of being a big sister.

I shrugged out of my coat as I came in, and realized that Seaburn’s and Karen’s coats were hanging on the rack too—and Mom’s white faux mink jacket. I frowned. “Is there a meeting or something?”

Carver hesitated. “Just some stuff—about the estate and the will.”

“And everyone was here for it but me?” I inferred.

“It’s nothing, Florence.”

“Nothing—like when everyone met at the Waffle House early before I was told to be there?”

He closed the door, and breathed out through his nose. “Florence, it’s nothing personal. You haven’t really been a part of the family business in a few years. And you haven’t come home in a decade. We . . . didn’t think you wanted to be a part of it.”

“Of course I do, Carver.”

“Well, we thought you didn’t want to. I mean, you knew about it, right? You didn’t ask.”

“That’s kind of a shitty way of turning the blame back on me, bro.”

He rolled his eyes. “Sorry.”

“Whatever,” I sighed. The funeral home was quiet as I shuffled down the hallway to the very last door that led to the mortuary. It smelled like it always did, of flowers and disinfectant. Mom was in the kitchen making tea, it sounded like. There were already a few bouquets delivered for tomorrow’s wake. Then Thursday we’d say goodbye.

Time was both passing too fast and not fast enough.

The basement door had a latch on the outside, but it was unlocked. When I’d been trapped down there for a night, I hadn’t been afraid of the corpses in the freezers. They were like shells, and when the person was done with them, the shell cracked and broke.

I didn’t start hating corpses until much later. I didn’t like their stillness, or how blue always—always—crept through the heavy foundation, or how they smelled after being, you know, embalmed.

Alice was downstairs, a black-and-white-striped cloth headband in her short hair. She looked like a black smudge in an otherwise soft gray room. Even her latex gloves were black. On the steel table in front of her was—

I fortified myself. It was fine. This was fine.

Alice glanced over her shoulder, and threw up her hands. “Finally! What took you so long?”

“I was at Unlimited Party,” I replied as I reached the bottom of the stairs, and one foot at a time, one step closer and closer, I came toward the corpse on the table.

No, that was unfair. I couldn’t say it was a corpse because it wasn’t just any shell.

It was Dad.

And Alice had done such a wonderful job, he looked like he was simply sleeping. She already had him dressed in his favorite tux—the tacky red one with the long tails and the golden lapels. He had on his favorite cuff links, gold skulls he bought from some boutique in London several decades ago, and they matched his earrings, and his favorite skull and crossbones and sword rings.