The Dead Romantics (83)

I scanned the crowd for Ben, but I didn’t see him. Had he disappeared again? I hoped he was okay. One by one, the crows landed in the nearby oak tree and quietly ruffled their feathers against the wind. So he had to be here somewhere. That gave me some relief.

After a few minutes, Elvistoo’s rousing rendition of “Return to Sender” interrupted my thoughts, and I glanced down at the set list.

“You’re up,” Carver whispered.

Right.

Dad, in his will, said he didn’t want a preacher or a bishop or any sort of holy person. We weren’t really the organized-religion kind of family, even though we dealt in death. All he said by way of a speaker was the letter he wrote.

I took it from Karen, Dad’s lawyer. The paper was soft and crinkly. “It’s showtime.”

Alice looked worried. “Florence . . .”

“I can do it. Really.”

“You don’t have to do all of this alone—”

“I’m not,” I interrupted gently. “Because I want everyone up there with me. If that’s okay.”

The tension that had coiled Alice’s shoulders a moment before unwound, and she agreed. Carver bumped against me gently, giving me a little nod. I took Mom’s hand, and she took Alice’s, and Alice took Carver’s, and we made our way to the space in front of Dad’s casket. Elvistoo handed me the microphone.

I always went about everything on my own. I thought I could solve everything myself—though I guess I never really had to. I had family, and I had friends, and I had parents who loved me and would always love me until the end of time and—

And there were people out there, too, that I didn’t know and wanted to, like Ben, who saw me for all my chaotic flaws and my stubbornness and still wanted to stay.

He wanted to stay.

I wanted him to stay, too.

I cleared my throat, and looked out over the cemetery, and all of the people who had come with their lawn chairs, wearing party hats and telling the kids to shush on their kazoos. “Hi, everyone. Thank you for coming. This is going to be a different kind of funeral than you’re used to—though I think if you know my dad, you’re already expecting that.” I opened the envelope, and took out the letter. “Dad gave me a letter to read to you. I don’t know what the contents are, so let’s find out together.”

My hands were shaking as I unfolded the piece of yellow stationery. Dad’s handwriting unfurled like a story. He must’ve written in the quill I gave him for his birthday a few years ago, because of the ink stains and the way the letters bled together.

“?‘My dearest darlings,’?” I began, my voice already shaking.

What the letter said didn’t really matter. It was an explanation of why he asked us to go through so much for his funeral. It was an apology for not being able to stay longer. It was a goodbye filled with horrible puns and the worst dad jokes imaginable.

It was a letter addressed to me. To Alice. To Carver. To Mom.

It was a soft goodbye.

Wildflowers for Isabella. A thousand flowers with ten-thousand petals for every day he would love her to eternity. Songs we danced to in the parlors, soft and good and bright goodbyes. Banners and kazoos and party hats for all of the birthdays that he would never get to attend. A murder of crows, to remind us to look for him still. Because he would be here.

Always.

And for me to read this letter—because he knew I would try to do these impossible tasks alone.

Carver covered up a laugh, and Alice elbowed him in the side.

He hoped I asked for help because asking was not a weakness—but a strength. He hoped that I would ask more often, because I would be surprised by who would come into my life if I let them.

Not all of my companions would be ghosts.

I wish I could say that at that moment wind rustled through the trees. I wish I could say that I heard my dad in the wind, telling me those words himself, but the afternoon was quiet, and the black birds in the oak tree cawed to one another as if I had made a particularly funny joke.

And Ben stood at the back of the crowd, his hands in his pockets, and I felt a safe sort of certainty that everything was going to be okay.

Maybe not right now. Not for a while.

But it would be—eventually.

Not all of my companions would be ghosts, but it was okay if some of them were.

Because Dad was right, in the end, about love. It was loyal, and stubborn, and hopeful. It was a brother calling before a funeral to ask how the latest book was going. It was a sister scolding her older sister for always running away. It was a little girl on a stormy night tucked into the lap of an undertaker, listening to the sound of the wind through the creaky Victorian house. It was a ballroom dancer spinning around in an empty parlor with the ghost of her husband and a song in her throat. It was petting good dogs, and quiet mornings waking up beside a man with impossibly dark eyes and a voice with the syrupy sweetness of third-shelf vodka. It was a best friend flying in from New York on a moment’s notice.

It was life, wild and finite.

It was a few simple words, written in a loopy longhand.

“?‘Love is a celebration,’?” I read, my voice wobbling, “?‘of life and death. It stays with you. It lingers, my darlings, long after I’m gone. Listen for me when the wind rushes through the trees. I love you.’?”

I folded the letter back up and whispered softly, privately, one final time, “Goodbye, Dad.”