Dust to Dust

by Audrey Keown

  “So what’s for dinner?”

  It was Bea’s voice from across the room.

  In her period maid uniform with its white pinafore, Bea’s petite figure appeared even smaller next to George in his long chef’s coat. Both had their backs to where I stood.

  He unloaded a crate from the dumbwaiter, and she leaned against the dishwasher a foot away.

  “Filet and crab perloo,” he answered, as if trying to impress her. This wasn’t new. He was an excellent chef. He knew it, and he enjoyed being admired routinely by newspaper columnists and social media influencers.

  I for sure shouldn’t eavesdrop on this conversation.

  “Ooh.” Bea turned to look up at him. Her lips pouted obviously, and her blond curls blew back softly as she fanned herself with a hand. She leaned closer. “What’s the steak wearing?”

  My stomach turned, and I backed toward the doorway, crouching a little behind a steaming pot on the stove. Bea liked to play up the sexy-maid routine, and it was sometimes funny, but I didn’t like her using it on George.

  He cleared his throat. “Um, just a beurre blanc. It’s an emulsified butter sauce.”

  “Mmm. And it’s French, oui?” Bea smiled.

  “Oui, mademoiselle.”

  Okay, the French was the last straw. This was really getting on my nerves.

  But then, maybe it was harmless flirting. Maybe I was being overprotective of him.

  I’d sacrificed a lot for George last year, and I’d never been sorry about it for a second, but I wondered if those sacrifices had changed something in me, in the way I felt about him. I was aware enough to see that I was becoming possessive.

  A hot wave of shame welled up from my gut.

  And intensified in my arm. My arm burned. Pain seared my skin. I jumped back from the stove.

  My sleeve was on fire.

  I yelled something unintelligible, and my brain fired off Stop, drop, and roll.

  I was vaguely aware of raised voices and of George and Bea skidding toward me.

  I buckled and rolled and kept rolling.

  George dropped to the floor at my side and used his coat to beat at my arm.

  The fire was out, but the pain raged on.

  I lifted my arm in front of my face. My sleeve smoldered.

  “I’ll call an ambulance,” Bea said.

  “No, I’ll take her. I’ll be faster.” George handed Bea his keys. “Pull my car around.”

  She disappeared.

  My heart chambers fired fast and hard just like they would if this were a panic attack. But it wasn’t. Only adrenaline from the pain.

  “Come on.” George put one of his arms behind my back and the other under the bulk of my dress and lifted me.

  “I can walk!” I shouted, although my face was inches from his.

  “You’re not heavy, if that’s what you were worried about.”

  I groaned, partly from the intense sting of the burn but mostly from the irritation that he could see right through me.

  He backed through the swinging door and carried me out through the entry hall.

  “What happened?” Mr. Fig shouted, hurrying toward us.

  “Ask Bea,” George answered without stopping.

  I remembered Mr. Fig carrying me last year, although I’d been unconscious at the time.

  I thought briefly of my mother.

  You haven’t been to the emergency room until you’ve done it in early-twentieth-century dress. The stares I got from middle-aged women in yoga pants and men in screen-printed T-shirts made it clear that they thought I belonged in the psychiatric unit rather than this one.

  But the hours George and I spent together at the hospital amounted to the longest single block of time I’d had with him since my college classes had started back in January. It was definitely worth the funny looks, if not the physical pain.

  While we waited, he asked how I’d gotten close enough to the stove to catch on fire. I lied and said I’d been tasting what was on the stove. Not only would the truth be humiliating to me, but I was afraid he might also think I was trying to control him.

  My arm was treated and bandaged, and for once I was grateful for these sturdy cotton sleeves, which, along with George’s quick reaction time, according to the doctor, had kept a barely-second-degree burn from becoming a third.

  As George drove me back to Dad’s and my apartment, my head was heavy against the seat back, and I blinked hard to keep from dozing. It was only nine o’clock. I didn’t know if it was the hospital drugs or coming down from the adrenaline, but the pain wasn’t enough to keep me awake anymore.

  I let the side of my face rest against the window glass and closed my eyes for a moment. Besides the burn, there was another new sensation taking up my attention, a charge along the side of my body, like an echo in my skin of when George had carried me. I didn’t know what it meant, if anything.

  “Fig called while you were talking to the nurse.” George turned his pale face toward me in the darkness before looking back at the road. “He was concerned. I told him you were all right.”

  “Thanks. I guess he covered for me at the desk?”

  “Guess so.”

  Mr. Fig was supposed to have given that tour to the gravestone geeks. Though I wouldn’t put it past him to have figured out by now how to be in two places at once. “So. You and Bea?”

  “Uh, we’ve been hanging out a little,” he said.

  “Nice,” I said, ignoring the niggling dread in my chest.

  “It’s just—you’ve been busier with school and stuff.”

  “No, yeah, that makes sense.”

  He tapped my leg. “Hey, did that ER doc remind you of anyone?”

  “Your old neighbor!”

  “Mr. Duff. Yeah, the same beady eyes,” he said.

  “And the way he kept saying, ‘Now, folks!’ ”

  George laughed. “Now, folks, you can’t just cut through my yard. Now, folks, this is a serious burn here.”

  I laughed too, but it came out slow and wheezy.

  “It’s been six years since they buried him,” George said.

  Death and burial had haunted my last twenty-four hours like the rhythmic call of a katydid on a June night. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you about the graves Mr. Fig showed me. That was why I came in the kitchen.”

  “What graves?” he said.

  “At the hotel. The garden statues.” The snow-powdered harpy towered in my memory.

  “Wow. Weird. They just seem like … art.”

  “Yeah, but if you look closely, there are inscriptions. After my shift last night, I walked around in the snow for a while reading them.”

  He raised one corner of his mouth. “You know, when you said you wanted to be closer to your family, I thought you meant metaphorically.”

  “Ha-ha. You know, I looked pretty hard for my grandparents’ graves, but I couldn’t find them.”

  “I thought your grandparents were still living when they sold the house.”

  “That’s what Mr. Fig said, but he doesn’t know what happened to them after that. I asked him this afternoon about their graves, and he said he doesn’t know where they’re buried, and it’s always been sad to him that they weren’t buried on the hotel grounds because the city, who they sold the property to, probably would’ve allowed it.”

  “Maybe he overlooked them?” George asked. “Like they’re at the edge of the property where the trees have filled in?”

  “You and I both know he doesn’t miss much, but it’s possible, I guess.”

  “And you still don’t feel like you can ask your dad about it?”

  “I mean, Dad doesn’t even mention his own parents. And when we talked last year about my mom leaving, all the things I didn’t remember well, it was so hard for him.”

  “And for you.”

  “But if any of my grandparents were still living, surely I’d know them. Surely my mom’s parents would have been in my life when she left. They would’ve helped look
for their daughter, right?”

  “I guess so. Things happen in families, though. People cut off contact for the dumbest reasons,” he said.

  “I don’t wanna be like that.”

  “Of course not. You won’t be.”

  My uniform felt even more uncomfortable than usual. I started pulling the pins out of my hair and sticking them one by one into his cupholder. “It’s like, I don’t just want to know about my family. I wanna know them.”

  George sighed.

  “But … they’re dead, and I can’t, and I’m obsessed anyway. Does it seem weird to you?”

  “Not really,” he said. “Besides my parents and my sister, all my family is still in Romania. Overseas isn’t as inaccessible as dead, but still—I’d like to know them better.”

  “Înțeleg.” I understand. One of the Romanian phrases I’d picked up around his house growing up.

  “Now, a bunch of people obsessed with graves of people they don’t even know?” He raised one eyebrow. “That’s a different story.”

  “Yeah, it’s creepy, right?”

  He turned into the parking lot just outside our building. The snow had mostly melted here, but a few slushy piles hung out around the pansies that had grown leggy over the warm winter.

  As George pulled into a space, I saw Dad leaning casually against a car I didn’t recognize, a green Hyundai of some sort. From this distance, the most obvious things about him were his short silver beard and his torso, which always reminded me of a bag of chips. And then there was the fact that he was talking to a curvy blond woman I also didn’t recognize.

  As George shut off the Jeep, the blond reached up and brushed something off Dad’s shirt. Irritation hiked up my shoulders. “Who the heck is that?”

  George grunted in a way that meant he didn’t know either and understood I wasn’t really asking him. He opened his car door. “I’ll walk you up.”

  They were across the lot from us, but there was no way we could get upstairs without being seen.

  “Quick. Give me your coat,” I said to George.

  He hesitated. “You still haven’t told him about working at the hotel?”

  “I will.”

  He frowned and passed his long jacket to me. “I think he can handle it, Vee.”

  I pulled my skirt up and tucked the hem in my tights so they were the only thing visible below the coat. Dad would think I was wearing leggings. “Yeah … maybe. But it’s my choice to spend so much time digging around in my mom’s family history, and I don’t want my choices making him sad.”

  “He probably thinks of your mother anyway, though. Whether or not you bring her up.”

  I sucked my lips in. He was right.

  As we made our way down the sidewalk closer to Dad’s car, we stepped into a circle of light, and Dad looked up.

  He jerked a bit like someone had goosed him, his eyes widening then narrowing, and he eventually waved.

  George nodded at him, but I kept moving. If Dad didn’t want to tell me about his relationship, that was fine. I knew how to give him space.

  Inside, George put on the teakettle while I changed clothes in my room and stuffed my uniform dress under my bed, just in case Dad were to peek in here.

  I brought a pillow back to the couch with me and propped up my bandaged arm.

  “Strange that you burned the same arm you broke last year,” George said, slipping his hands gracefully into his pockets and leaning against the kitchen counter.

  “Yeah, I guess it has the bad juju … like your old Ford that kept getting hit even while it was parked.”

  “You should probably just amputate and get it over with.”

  I giggled, but it turned into a yawn.

  The kettle whistled. George poured the water in to steep the tea and set the mug on the coffee table in front of me. “All right, I’m gonna leave so you can rest.”

  “You don’t have to go,” I said. “Stay while I drink my tea.”

  “If I do, I’ll be too sleepy to drive.”

  But he looked at me a moment before turning to the door, and I knew that he wanted to.

  “Need anything else?” he said.

  I shook my head. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Far away from open flames.”

  As George went out, Dad came in.

  I threw a blanket over my gauze-wrapped forearm.

  “Oh, hi, Paul,” George said.

  “George. My man!” Dad reached out a hand.

  The two of them executed their secret shake. Raised by a man, I liked to think I understood their gender pretty well as a whole, but the handshake thing still mystified me. Back in high school, when George was on the basketball team, I had asked him at what point in a relationship two men decided it was time to design their own handshake and how they went about working it out, but his answer had mainly included a lot of shrugs.

  “Take it easy,” Dad said and closed the door behind George.

  I turned on the TV.

  Dad laid his jacket over the back of the recliner, sat down, and steepled his hands in front of his mouth. “Hey, punkin’.”

  “Hey.” I glanced at him and back at the TV.

  “Listen. That was Kimberly. We’ve only been out a few times. I was going to tell you about her if it got serious …”

  “Uh-huh. I understand.” I made short eye contact, keeping my face calm, but tension still laced up my shoulders.

  I didn’t want to let him get away with hiding something from me, even for a little while. But I realized how hypocritical that was, and I took a slow breath. “Looked like you were having a good time.”

  He twisted his mouth and hiked up one cheek into a crooked smile. “Yeah.”

  “Good.”

  Running both hands down the tops of his thighs and standing up, he said, “Hey, you want a cup of tea?”

  Maybe he was nervous, talking to me about a woman. I gestured toward my mug on the table. “I’m all set, but thanks.”

  “Oh, right.” He lifted his eyebrows. “Is that the ginger?”

  I picked it up and smelled it. “Uh, no, the sleepy one.”

  He refilled the kettle in our little kitchen, only a dozen feet away from the couch where I sat, and I thought about how strange it must be for him to try to date while he had a grown daughter at home and nowhere that was private.

  The cost of school meant I couldn’t afford my own place right now. I knew that Dad wouldn’t trade my going back to finish my degree for more privacy (even though my major was psychology, and let’s face it, could be more practical). But I wished there was a way, financially, to give him space and me the independence I should have at twenty-eight.

  A reporter blipped onto the local news show.

  I hadn’t been watching, but my eyes snapped to the screen.

  The reporter stood, microphone in hand, in the glare of the news camera. In front of the hotel.

  My hotel.

  The kettle squealed in the kitchen, and my internal alarm blared too. What was happening? What was a big enough story for the news? Another accident? A fire?

  I craned my head toward the TV, clenching the remote and trying to make out what the reporter was saying.

  “… unidentified person has died at Hotel 1911,” she said. “More on this and other stories at ten.”

  A death? My whole body stiffened. I couldn’t wait till ten. I needed more on that story right now.

  Dad brought his tea into the living room. “You all right?”

  I stood up and let the blanket fall. “I’ve gotta go. I’m sorry. Can I have the car?”

  “You just got home.” He sat his mug on the side table, and his eyes landed on my bandage. “Ivy, what the—”

  Irritation and worry stormed his face.

  “I’m fine. I’ll explain later.” I started putting on my shoes.

  “What the heck happened?”

  “I really need to go.” I reached for the car keys on the kitchen counter.

  But he swiped
them first. “First an explanation.”

  “I got too close to George’s stove, and my sleeve caught on fire.”

  “You got burned? What were you doing?” He stared at my arm in horror. “How bad is it?”

  “Second deg—”

  “Second degree—”

  “Barely second.” I put a hand on his arm to comfort him.

  He frowned and reached for my arm gently. “So that’s why you’re home early. Did he take you to the hospital?”

  “Yes. And I’m really fine.” I grabbed the keys he was still holding. “Let’s talk more about it tomorrow. Please?”

  “You bet we will.” He narrowed his eyes. “Were you and George … busy starting a different kind of fire in the kitch—”

  “Dad. No.”

  He let the keys go. “See you in the morning.”

  “Thank you,” I called as I swiped my jacket and rushed out the door.

  III

  The Dangerous Edge of Things

  I swung the Volvo through the hotel’s front gate, but the drive was already crowded with police cars. News vans squatted willy-nilly all over the lawn, their dark windows reflecting blue flashing lights.

  My stomach cramped. Someone was dead, and others could be hurt.

  A flock of camera-laden, microphone-proffering TV crews huddled in front of the house.

  They wouldn’t be here for a death by natural causes, would they? News of something more sinister must have been leaked to them. How could this be happening again?

  I threw the car into park and ran toward the huddle across the slick grass. Clarista was talking to reporters at the hub of the crowd, composed as ever. Her relaxed black hair was swept up in a neat chignon, and her heels matched her champagne pantsuit.

  I wedged myself between two camera people to listen in.

  Clarista gestured with one manicured hand in a winding circle. “… and then there’s the question of family and so on. Of course, we should be sure that no one else … But even if that’s the case, it’s just a thing we have to deal with.” She shook her head sadly and emphatically as if she was finished speaking.