The Dead Romantics (87)

She would have annihilated him.

As the sun began to sink across the evening sky, the shadows in the parlor grew longer and darker, but we didn’t get up to cut the lights on. There was a certain kind of softness to the way the golden light filtered in through the windows and kissed the dark corners. We knew this funeral home with our eyes closed, anyway, and the floor wasn’t that uncomfortable yet.

“So, I’ve something I’ve been meaning to tell you.” Alice shifted to sit cross-legged and downed half of her drink.

“This should be good,” I teased.

Alice squirmed. She did that when she was trying to keep a secret that was physically trying to escape her body. “Karen read most of the will before you arrived, so you missed this part of it.” She pursed her lips tightly together and was quiet for a long moment. “You had your ghosts with Dad, and I thought I had nothing. But . . .” She looked around the parlor, as fondly as Dad always did. “I had this place. Well, I have this place.”

I realized with a gasp. “Dad gave you the business?”

She gave the smallest nod. “After Mom dies, of course, but—he put it in his will. He said it went to me. And Mom said she’d happily turn it over before she kicks it but I really don’t want it that badly and—”

“Oh, Alice, I’m so happy for you!”

“Really?”

“Yes, really, you idiot! I’m so freaking happy! You’re the only one who understands this place—really understands it. I can’t imagine it in better hands.”

Her bottom lip wobbled, and then she threw her arms around me. “Thank you,” she said into my shoulder.

I hugged her tightly. “I know you’ll do a great job, Al.”

She finally let go and sat back on her feet, and wiped her eyes. “I think I met my crying quota for the year.”

“It’s okay to cry sometimes.”

“Not with thirty-dollar mascara on!”

“Well, whose fault is that?”

“Impossible beauty standards and my lack of thick eyelashes?” She sniffed indignantly, and took a drink of her whiskey. “So, what’re you doing with your secret stash? Afraid someone found it?”

“Oh, no. I guess I was just looking . . . for something,” I replied. She cocked her head in question. “An answer, I think. Someone who just left told me that my book was his favorite. He thanked me for it. That—that was why he was here.”

Alice’s eyes widened. “Oh, sis. Ben?”

For some reason, someone else saying his name made me sad all over again. Tears burned at the edges of my eyes, but I dutifully brushed them away. I’d helped dozens of ghosts in the past. Most of the time I just had to listen to them—to a story—before they left.

“I don’t understand why I’m so messed up right now,” I admitted. “I’ve said goodbye to so many people—shouldn’t it be easy now?”

Alice gave me a strange look. “Who told you that lie? It’s never easy. It’s also never really goodbye—and trust me, we’re in the business of goodbyes. The people who pass through here live on in you and me and everyone they touched. There is no happy ending, there’s just . . . happily living. As best you can. Or whatever. Metaphor-metaphor-simile shit.”

I bit my cheek to keep from laughing.

“And that goes for the ghosts you help, too. I think you’ll see him again.”

I wiped my nose with the back of my hand. “He’s gone.”

“Tell that to the wind.”

Maybe there was some truth in Alice’s words, though I didn’t really believe them yet. As I took out my fan fiction and leafed through my journals, there was a certainty in that teenage girl’s words, in what she wanted, in who she was, the parts that I clung to, the parts of my first book Ben loved. She believed in happily ever afters and grand romantic gestures and one true loves that stretched on beyond their canon endings. I wasn’t that girl anymore—or so I always told myself. But maybe I was.

And maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.

Lee Marlow had said that romance was only good because you read it with one hand.

He was wrong. He had stolen my stories and rewrote them into some literary circle jerk with award potential, but I had the memories of my parents waltzing in the parlors, of Carver and Nicki kissing in the cemetery, of Alice pinning a wildflower in her hair when she thought no one was looking. He might have had the plot, but he didn’t have the heart.

Ben was gone, but Alice was right. He was still here, and I still had a book to write. And now I finally knew how to write it. I still didn’t know how to write Amelia and Jackson’s ending, but I knew that I could. I knew that I was capable.

I think knowing that would’ve made Ben proud.

“How did I get such a smart sister?” I asked her at last.

Alice grinned and punched me in the shoulder. “About damn time you realized how smart I am! You can call me Saint Alice if you please.”

“That’s going a little far.”

“Sage Alice—”

“Really?”

“And name your next book character after me.”

“Absolutely not,” I laughed, when there was a knock on the front door and Rose’s voice echoed into the foyer.