The Dead Romantics (59)

Mom nodded and pulled me into a tight hug, and kissed my cheek. “I can’t see things like you can,” she said, “but I know he’s here.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that he wasn’t. That his ghost didn’t roam the creaky halls and sit in his favorite parlor chair and that the whiff of cigar smoke, strong and sweet, was just her memories playing tricks.

“I’ll order you some chicken Alfredo to go and keep it at the house if you want it later,” she went on, and with one last lingering look at the foyer and the oaken staircase and the parlors, she left and closed the door quietly in her wake.

And I was alone.

The funeral home felt so empty, and big, and old. I sat down in the red parlor—Dad’s favorite—in his favorite high-back velvet chair, and sank into the silence. The evening was so quiet, I could hear the wind creak through the old house.

The dead singing.

I wondered if the wind was Dad. I wondered if he was in this gust, or the next one. I wondered if I would ever recognize the sounds through the floorboards, the wind swirling between old oak wood, making sounds that, perhaps, could have been voices.

It all finally became real. This week. This funeral. This world—spinning, spinning, spinning without my father in it.

And the wind rattled on.





23





The Casket of True Love


“FLORENCE?”

I glanced up at the voice, quickly wiping the stray tears out of my eyes.

Ben stood in the entryway to the parlor, his hands in his pockets, but all I could see was his faint outline, his face shadowed in the yellow streetlight pouring in through the open windows. Of course he would appear now. When I least wanted him to.

“Great timing,” I muttered, sniffing. God, I probably looked hideous. Half of my eyeliner had already wiped away onto my palm.

He came into the parlor, his footsteps silent against the hardwood floor. “Is . . . everything okay?”

I took a deep breath. If it wasn’t already obvious . . . “No,” I admitted, “but it’s not really something you can help with. Thank you, though. For asking.” Then, a bit quieter, my voice cracking at the edges: “I miss him. I miss him so much, Ben.”

He came over quietly and sat down on the floor in front of me, and for the first time—ever—he had to look up to meet my gaze, and he gave me something that I hadn’t really thought I wanted: his undivided attention.

“What was your dad like?” he asked, because he was decent. Because he was good.

What was the song Dad liked? “Only the Good Die Young”?

I was quiet as I tried to think of the right words, afraid to open up. To tell him my story. Ben and I were strangers, and he never knew Dad. Never would. And even though Ben was being decent, and kind, and made me feel like my hurt was worthy of this wasted time—

I was still afraid.

Had I always been this guarded? I couldn’t remember. I’d been closed off for so long, locked tightly, that it just felt safe and natural. I tricked myself into thinking that I could live like that forever, and until Ben showed up, I thought perhaps I could.

But now . . .

“My dad was kind, and he was patient—except when his soccer matches were on, then he would get so mad at the TV. He smoked too much, and he drank too much at his Thursday night poker games, and he always smelled like funeral flowers and formaldehyde.” Talking about him out loud felt like a relief, in a way, as though I were slowly dismantling the dam I had built, brick by brick, memory by memory, until I could feel again. I wish I could say I wasn’t crying, but I was because I tasted my tears as they slipped into my mouth. “When I was little, we lived here—in this old funeral home, and sometimes I caught him and Mom down here in the parlors, windows thrown open, dancing to a song they heard in their heads. He was the one who said I should be a writer. He said that my words were so loud and so vivid and alive they could wake the dead.” I laughed and said a little quieter, because it was a secret—one I’d never told anyone before, “Somewhere, under one of these floorboards, I’ve got smut hidden.”

“Oh? Scandalous.”

“You’ll never find it,” I added. “Carver looked for years. Finally gave up.”

He laughed, and I really loved the way he laughed. Soft and deep and sincere, and it made my uptight muscles and my rigid bones relax. It was endearing. I mean, for a dead guy. He leaned against my chair, his head resting on the armrest, eyes closed. I clenched my hands because I wanted to run my fingers through his thick black hair. And I couldn’t.

“So, did the great Benji Andor always want to be an editor?” I asked.

He tilted his head to the side, thoughtful. “I never wanted to create words, I always wanted to bury myself in someone else’s. But to be honest, I became an editor because I’m chasing this feeling I felt when I read my—” He quickly stopped himself and cleared his throat. “When I read my first romance.”

“Which one?”

Ben shifted. He didn’t say anything for a long moment, as if he was debating whether to tell me the truth or tell me at all. I doubted he would lie to me at this point—I didn’t think he could lie his way out of a paper bag if he had to. “The Forest of Dreams.”

That . . . was not what I was expecting. “Seriously? An Ann Nichols novel?”