The Dead Romantics (82)

I carried him with me. This house carried him.

This town.

“Florence?” Ben asked timidly. “Are you okay?”

I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the tears to stay back. I was going to cry enough today. I didn’t want to start early. “Yeah. We should probably bring the crows over.”

“At least I’m useful for something.”

“That’s why I keep you around,” I teased—and he suddenly pitched forward. “Ben!” I cried.

He caught himself on the doorframe. Shook his head. “Sorry—I—dizzy,” he muttered. His hands were shaking, and his skin had dropped to that pale, sickly tone from last night.

A knot formed in my throat. “You’re not okay.”

“No,” he replied truthfully, “I don’t think I am.”

The doorbell rang.

Ben and I exchanged a look.

It rang again.

My heart fluttered. The last time I answered the doorbell, it was Ben. Perhaps this time . . . maybe this time . . . I hurried to the front door, almost crashed against it, and flung it open—

“Rose?”

My best friend stood on the doormat to the Days Gone Funeral Home, a duffel bag in tow. She flipped down her Ray-Bans in awe. “Holy shit, bitch! You didn’t tell me you lived in the Addams Family house!”

“Rose!” I threw my arms around her and hugged her tightly. “I didn’t know you were coming!”

“Of course I was. I know you can handle it alone, but—you don’t have to.” She took me by the face and pressed our foreheads together. “You’re my little spoon.”

“You never cease to make it weird.”

“Never. Now where’s your bathroom? I have to piss like a racehorse and have to change into my Louboutins.”

“It’s an outside funeral, Rose.”

She gave me a blank look.

“Never mind, c’mon.” I let her into the house. She dumped her duffel bag into my arms and sprinted to the half bath under the stairs. I put her luggage in the office, where it’d be safe while we were at the funeral, and went to check on Ben in the hall. He was sitting on the bottom steps, his head in his hands.

“Hey,” I said quietly, giving a knock on the doorframe. “Is everything okay?”

“Mmn, no. A little? I’m . . . not sure. I keep hearing things,” he said. “It was quiet at first—but now it’s so loud.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Talking. Voices. Sounds—”

The toilet flushed and Rose stepped out of the bathroom in her red-soled high heels, the same ones that I wore years ago to that horrible Dante’s Motorbike book launch, and grabbed me under the arm. “Are you ready to say goodbye to the old man?”

I hesitated with a look at Ben, but he smiled at me to give me some comfort and promised, “I’ll see you there.”

She jostled my arm. “Florence?”

I squeezed her hand tightly. “Yes. Let’s.”

Rose was my copilot. My rock. My impulsive, wonderful best friend.

And I was so, so glad that she was here.





32





It’s a Death!


THE CEMETERY WAS peaceful, and the grass looked like a watercolor painting against the pale shale of the tombstones. They stuck out like jagged bottom teeth, some crooked, most cleaned. As we passed some of the darker, mold-grown stones, I made a mental note to come back and scrub them pretty again—and then stopped myself.

I wasn’t here to work. I was here to mourn.

Though I was sure Dad would have done the same.

Almost the entire town came out, with lawn chairs and picnic snacks. The wildflowers they had donated—all one thousand of them, arranged by color—sat stacked around Dad’s casket like a mountain of petals, as Elvistoo crooned “Suspicious Minds” from his portable karaoke machine.

And—perhaps best of all were—

“Oh my god, those balloons,” Rose gasped. “Does it—does that actually say . . .”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, they do.”

Unlimited Party had delivered—and decorated—the funeral home lawn, tying balloons to the backs of chairs and hanging streamers from the oak trees that read IT’S A DEATH! and HAPPY DEATH DAY! They had also passed out party hats and kazoos, and some of the town kids were playing “The Imperial March” near a statue of a crying angel.

Rose and I joined my family in the front row of chairs that had been set out, and it looked like Alice was nursing a migraine.

Carver said regretfully, “The balloons got her. She almost had a stroke, she was so livid,” while Alice, poor Alice, was muttering, “I’m going to kill him. I’m going to kill him—”

“Al, he’s already dead.”

I introduced Rose to my family. Whenever they’d come for Christmas, Rose had gone home to Indiana, always missing each other by mere hours at the airport. But finally, now, they got to meet. Mom leaned over Alice to shake Rose’s hand. “Pleasure, though I’m sorry it’s under these circumstances.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Rose replied.

“Did he have to order the balloons?” Alice wailed, and Nicki patted her on the shoulder comfortingly and asked Rose how her flight was.