The Dead Romantics (69)

“Steal your Rolex.”

He looked annoyed. “Do you have a better idea?”

“No, but I do like the birdcage—can you give me a ride back to the bed-and-breakfast?”

“Sure, hop in. Just be careful with the cage,” he added as I walked around to the other side. I slid in, and noticed a copy of the Daily Ram on the seat. I picked it up, and flipped through to the back. “The obit was lovely,” he added as I found it.

Good, they used one of my favorite photos of Dad. It’d been taken a few years ago, when everyone had come to New York to celebrate the New Year and we’d all grabbed our champagne and climbed the fire escape to the roof. He had a cigar in one hand, laughing into the night, his face lit by New Year’s fireworks. I smiled at the memory.

Carver pulled out onto the road again and made a U-turn back into town. “You know—you don’t have to do all of this alone. I love scavenger hunts.”

I folded the newspaper back up and stuck it between the seats. “I know, but you’re all so busy. I’m the bum of the family.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” he replied. “You ghostwrite for Stephenie Meyer.”

“Not even the same genre, bub.”

He shrugged. “Worth a shot.” He picked up a Slim Jim from the console and tore open the wrapper with one hand. “Want some?”

“I can never stop chewing it.”

“Half the point.” He bit into the end and tore it with his teeth. “I heard you had a run-in with Heather . . .”

I winced. “Word gets around that fast?”

“Dana couldn’t stop gushing over how cool you were when I ran into them at the coffee shop this morning,” he replied. We rolled to a stop at the only stoplight in town. The mayor was making his rounds with a high school dog walker, and he was the happiest boy as he crossed the street in front of us. We waved, and the high schooler waved back. “I also heard you talked to Mom about feeling excluded.”

Seriously, was nothing sacred in this town?

I rolled my eyes. “It’s fine, she explained it—”

“I’m so sorry,” he interrupted.

That surprised me.

“I wasn’t thinking. Neither was Alice. We just . . . you never wanted to . . . we thought it would be too much,” he confessed, “especially after we noticed that you started talking to your—” He changed course quickly. “Someone we can’t see again. Like Dad did.”

I clenched my hands into fists. “Did you think he was crazy, too?”

“I don’t think you’re crazy, Florence.”

“Then tell me, what do you think?” I snapped. Even though it’d been ten years, that same anger was quick to simmer beneath my skin. “That I’m talking to some imaginary friend? That I’m losing it?”

“You know I’d never think that—”

“Faking it—?”

“Is it Dad?” he interrupted. Oh. “Would you even tell us? Or keep it to yourself? Like you keep everything else to yourself? Florence, the lonely island!”

That was it. I was out.

First it was Ben, who did a miraculous Houdini act at just the right time, and now Carver was laying into me about things I obviously did not need to work on.

My patience was already thin, but now it was absolutely demolished.

I reached for the handle and forced the truck door open, forgetting I was still buckled in. So I unbuckled my seat belt, after almost strangling myself, and shoved my way out of the car. “I’ll see you at the wake, Carver.”

He cursed. “No, wait, Florence—!”

I slammed the car door before he could finish whatever he was about to say. I didn’t want to hear it, anyway. Florence, the lonely island, was tired and sweaty, and she didn’t want to talk about her faults before a nice hot shower.

And what was more worrying was that someone caught me talking to Ben, and the rumors were at it again. I pulled my jacket tightly across my chest, folding my arms together, as I hurried back to the bed-and-breakfast. People weren’t looking at me as I passed—but what if they were? What if they were leaning in toward each other, whispering, “There goes the ghost whisperer,” and laughing under their breath?

Stop it. They weren’t.

It was my stupid brain turtling. This wasn’t high school anymore. I was a decade out of it. I was older. I was wiser. And despite Carver, my head was still filled with the memory of dandelions in the wind—and I realized that the rest of this didn’t matter.

And I was okay.

Somehow.





28





Dancing with the Dead


I HAD BEEN to plenty of wakes before, but never one like this.

As I slipped on my kitten heels on the front porch and made my way down Main Street toward the Days Gone Funeral Home, the townsfolk, wearing blacks and reds, began to close up their stores, carrying platters of cheese and crackers and lasagna and fried chicken and collard greens and various oven bakes.

For an hour, Mairmont had paused, all save for the lone Victorian house with black shutters and wrought iron fencing on the parapets. The closer I got, the more people there were. A sea of people, spilling out of the front door and down the sidewalk.

Seaburn was standing at the front gate in a brown suit, an orchid in his pocket. He saw me as I crossed the road, and pulled me into a tight hug. “Why’re they all outside?” I asked.