The envelope contained a thank-you from Brianna Marshall’s family, praising my work and thanking me for respecting the family’s privacy. In a town like ours, where rumors spread like influenza, secrets could become a heavy load to bear. They were a burden I was used to carrying, but it was nice to know my discretion was appreciated.
Feeling slightly empowered, I slipped the note under my keyboard. “Dad, I can set it up so you can pay those bills online, if you like.”
“My method works just fine.” Dad was not into change, especially when it came to technology.
“It’s easy. And look here—I made us a new website. It’s loading right now. I even redesigned our logo.” I pointed at the image on the website: a simple white calla lily on a field of muted green. “It was Adam’s idea.”
“You think we can up and print new business cards and stationery? Come on, Lily, those things cost money we don’t have. Adam I can understand, but you? You’ll have to get that into your head if you’re going to keep this all afloat someday. The old logo’s fine.”
As if he did any better. Well, that was a responsibility I didn’t need. With a click, I deleted the logo from the page.
“What’s this nonsense?” My father flipped open the glossy pamphlet I’d left on his desk. “Hawg Heaven Hearse? ‘Take your final ride, biker-style.’ This your idea, too?”
“It’s the newest fad.”
“If your grandfather could see this, he’d be rolling over in his grave. You know that, right? Adam, am I out of touch or is this just wrong?”
As if Adam knew the first thing about the latest funeral trends.
Adam glanced at the photo of a motorcycle pulling a glass-sided coach and shrugged. “I think it’s—what’s the word?—cool.”
“Guess that makes me out of touch then.” My father tossed the pamphlet into his out-box. “Your job is to honor the dead,” he quoted. “Page sixty-four in your grandpa Ted’s book, The Funeral Director’s Rules of Conduct.”
“Twenty thousand copies sold,” Evan and I said in chorus.
“Then you know,” said Dad.
He slit open the envelopes like he was slitting throats and chucked the empties at his wastebasket. Half ended up at my feet. “Well, hallelujah! Finally some good news. The bank approved our loan for the crematorium.”
“That’s great!” I said, relieved to see his face fading to its usual ruddy color.
Rachel poked her head in through the open door. “Have any of you seen a Tupperware container with a green lid? It was sitting on the table in the parlor. I can’t find it anywhere.”
“I put it in the dishwasher,” said Evan.
“Oh, dear. That was supposed to be for Bud Velman’s cremains. They’re being delivered this afternoon.”
“I thought it was from lunch yesterday. How was I supposed to know?”
“Fine time to start picking up, Evan,” she scolded. “And, Lily, enough with the new website already. I asked you to work on the garden this morning. It’s the least you can do after the stunt you and your brother pulled the other night. Do you know what it cost to get that hearse back?”
Yup, she was still pissed.
“I’ll get to the garden as soon as this finishes loading, I promise.”
“Well, an acre of performance is worth a world of promise,” Rachel replied. Right, because why say what you mean when a cliché will do? She stomped from the office to retrieve the missing container.
“Cremains?” asked Adam once she was out of earshot.
“It’s what we call the bits of bones and carbon left over after cremation,” explained Dad. “Technically it’s not ashes, like most people think. A machine pulverizes it all and then it’s sealed in a bag and placed in a container of some sort. Could be an urn, or anything, really.”
“Could be Tupperware,” I said.
“Tupperware?” asked Adam.
“Plastic storage containers,” I clarified. I guess his father didn’t host many kitchenware parties.
“Yeah,” says Evan. “People come up with all kinds of wild ideas.”
“They’re not wild,” I said. “They want something personal. Remember Agnes Shreve?”
“No.”
“Tina Turner’s doppelgänger, pigeon-toed, appendectomy scar? The woman loved hats. She had more than two hundred in her collection when she died. Her grandchildren wanted her cremains placed in a hatbox. I had them draw pictures of special memories and then I pasted them all around the outside. And there was that bull rider, Malcolm Flisk. He left instructions for his cremains to be placed in his best boot. I had to figure out a way to stitch a leather lid on it. My hands had blisters for days after that one. People get very creative.”
There was a beep and my monitor went black. “What? No!” I pressed every button on my keyboard as if that were the answer to resuscitating a hard drive. “No, no, no!” An error message having something to do with a backup battery flashed briefly before the entire office plunged into darkness for the third time that week.
“Three solid days of work, gone!” I wailed.
“I’d better go call an electrician,” groaned Dad. “That loan can’t come through soon enough.” The creak of a chair and the dragging of feet over the worn carpeting marked his passage through the office and into the hall.
“Well, no point putting off the garden now,” I said.
“I’ll help,” offered Adam.
Together we followed the gravel path that led to the back of the property. It wound past the chapel, which used to be a carriage house when horse-drawn caissons were in vogue. Adam read aloud the small sign tucked between a pair of hibiscuses. “This way to Paradise. That’s a big promise for such a small sign.”
“You have no idea how big,” I grumbled.
“I can fix that.” He gave the sign a twist until the arrow was pointed heavenward.
I applauded. “Much better.”
We passed the caretaker’s cottage, where Nana was prying nails out of recycled barn siding, and ducked beneath the apple tree she had planted as a child. Its barren branches stretched over the stone wall surrounding the garden. A second hand-painted sign swung from a lopsided post. WELCOME. MAY YOU FIND PEACE AND COMFORT WITHIN THESE WALLS. I swung open the creaky wooden gate and a slat fell to the ground. Some Paradise. Purgatory, more like. Neglected rose canes arced over weedy flowerbeds, their river-rock borders lying scattered beneath a blanket of dropped leaves.
“My grandma Daisy and her sister Violet built all this after the caretaker left,” I explained. “They stacked the stones for the walls, laid out the paths, and planted the beds. They especially loved calla lilies, but all that’s left now are those sad, droopy things.”
“Is that how you got your name?”
“That and my lily-white skin. Anyway,” I continued, now feeling totally self-conscious, thank you very much. “After Daisy and Violet passed, Nana reluctantly took up the baton—or should say I spade? It was never her thing, so Rachel hired a gardener. It looked better for a while, or at least greener, until Dad discovered that the gardener was using the back beds to grow pot.”
“You’re mocking me now. Even I know you can’t grow a pot.”
“Honestly, Adam. He was growing marijuana.”
“Oh, you mean Cannabis sativa. Did you know sativa means ‘useful’?”
“Yeah, well, he was using it, all right.”
The garden paths converged where a white-marble angel balanced on a pedestal in the center of a fountain. Algae-green water dribbled from the angel’s mouth and into the basin below, forming the perfect mosquito nursery. At least the pump still worked—barely.
“I’ll tackle these,” I announced, and snapped off a withered rose hip. “Did you know that in ancient times the rose represented respect for the dead? They’re also masters of self-preservation and are unbelievably resilient.”
“Sounds like someone I know.”
“Really—ouch!” I plucked a thorn from my thumb and held it
up. “See what I mean?”
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“How hard can it be? Snip snip.” I made cutting motions with my fingers. “Why don’t you see if you can resuscitate that fountain-turned-cesspool.”
Adam went in search of something he could use to scoop out the water while I dove into clipping and pruning, pinching and deadheading. Within an hour my arms were scratched and my hair had become so entangled in the briar that I risked tearing it from my scalp if I turned my head.
Adam returned to check on my progress just in time. “Hmm.” He flipped over a metal tag wired to the nearest rose and read, “Rosa ‘Queen Elizabeth.’ Seems the queen has taken a prisoner of war.”
“Don’t just stand there. Do something!”
He kicked at the pile of hacked canes littering the ground. “Haven’t you done enough?”
“I was trying to reshape it, but I think I may have killed it.”
“Fortunately, like you said, roses are very resilient. As long as the rootstock still has life in it, the rose can come back. Now hold still while I free you.”
He pulled a cane aside with one hand while reaching over my back with the other to retrieve my clippers from the ground. Our bodies were close, both warm from the sun and dewy with perspiration. I could almost imagine the sensation of his touch. The mere thought of his skin meeting mine made me light-headed. “Hurry up,” I said. “The blood is rushing to my head.”
With a couple quick snips I was freed of the butchered queen’s thorny grasp. I stepped away with a new respect for my captor. “Thanks.” I wiped my forehead, stalling while I pulled myself together. Adam seemed equally off-balance. He couldn’t look me in the eye and ground the soil under a foot. I cleared my parched throat. “So what next?”
“You could divide that agapanthus over there. You’ll need a shovel.”
“Aga-what? Never mind. I think there’s a shovel in the shed. I’ll get it.” I made a hasty retreat. I couldn’t let him see how flustered he’d made me. This was Adam, after all, the “boy unearthed” who wasn’t even the guy I’d dreamed him to be. I had no business getting all swoony over him.
From the shed I could see him straddling a desiccated lavender bush, its bare branches thrusting out of the cracked ground in a way that reminded me of the fiberglass arms I’d found in the Lassiter house ruins. He grabbed the shrub at its base and plucked it from the soil as easily as an errant blade of grass, then pitched it onto the compost pile. Dirt flew everywhere. Cursing in Latin, he brushed it from his hair and face, stripped off his tee, and hung it on the bough of the apple tree. His back, still mottled with oddly colored bruising from the incident at Hayden’s, glistened in the sun like a battle-worn bronze shield. “I see you watching me,” he said.
I quickly averted my eyes. “Don’t be so vain. I’m looking for a rake—I mean shovel.” Damn, he has eyes in the back of his head, too.
Once I’d scrounged up one, he pointed out my target—a sword-leafed, clumpy mass. First he had me dig around its tangled roots so it could be pulled free. I took hold and heaved. The slick leaves slid through my hands, and my ass landed on a little stub of a plant that sadly will never be the same. I tried again and this time came away with a handful of leaves. I’d had enough and flung the shovel at the demonic thing.
“You okay?” Adam asked coolly.
“We’re never going to get this garden back to what it was. It’s nothing but hard-packed dirt and weeds and more weeds and dead things.”
“Not dead. Waiting.”
“For what?”
“Opportunity.” He picked up a shriveled bulb lying in the dirt. “See this?” He dropped it into the loose soil where a lilac once grew. “With the littlest care, that’ll grow into something glori-ficus.”
He had me brush enough dirt into the hole to cover the bulb, pat it down, and water it. I stared at the mound. Not so different from a mini burial mound, I thought. How ironic that new life could rise from such a thing. “It’s sort of magical, isn’t it? I mean, a bulb can grow and bloom again and again. An acorn takes in air, water, and sunlight and goes from a little lump to an oak.”
“Not magic. Science. I don’t believe in magic.”
“Oh, I do. There are too many things in this world that can’t be explained by science.”
“Name one.”
“Hmm.” I scrunched up my face. “Can’t right now, but I will.”
“Let me know when you do.”
“Uh-huh.” I wasn’t really listening.
“You’re staring again,” he said.
“Oh, am I? It’s that tattoo.”
“Tattoo?”
“The inked characters on your chest.”
“What about them?”
“What do they mean?”
“Emet. It’s Hebrew for ‘truth.’ A birthday gift from Neil.”
“I didn’t know your family was Jewish.”
“We’re not.”
“Well, regardless, that’s a strange gift for a father to give his son.”
“Much of what Neil did was strange, I’m finding.”
“But why truth?”
“Because Neil valued truth above all else.”
“Is that why you can’t lie? Because honesty meant that much to him?”
“Something like that.” He plucked his shirt from the bough and pulled it over his head. “I think I’ll remove that dead branch from the apple tree.” Guess it was his turn to be self-conscious.
I plopped down on an old stump, propped my head in my hands, and watched him snap off the split limb as if it were a twig. “You sure know a lot about plants, especially trees. Ever consider becoming a professional gardener? Or, hey, how about an arborist?”
“I’ve never thought much about my career options. When Neil was alive, there weren’t any.”
“I know how that feels, but I think you’d be great at it. Look at all you’ve accomplished in a couple hours.”
“You mean we.”
“Yeah, we. We make a good team.”
“Like we did on the website?”
“That too. We should call it a we-site.”
“We-site. That’s funny.” Not funny enough to make him crack a smile, though. “What about you? What are your . . . options?”
I sighed. “My father wants me to stay here and study mortuary science at the local college, then take over the mortuary as director so he can retire.”
“And you don’t want to.”
“What if I run the business into the ground?” Like it isn’t already six feet under. “And, I mean, I’m fine taking care of the dead, you know, doing the cosmetics and office work, and I think I’d be a good mortician, but a big part of running a funeral home is working with the people left behind. I don’t know if I can handle that.”
“You handled Mrs. Tomopolo.”
“Only because you were there.”
“Is that true?”
“I value truth above all else,” I mocked playfully.
Adam saw right through me. “So you’re afraid?”
I stared at the ground. “Yeah.”
“Of the dead?”
This was all uncharted territory. I didn’t talk about this stuff with anyone, not even Mal. “Not of the dead. Of the living.”
“Why the living?”
I thought about all the broken hearts and lives I’d seen stumble through our front door. Of Nana Jo, who still cried every time she pulled Grandpa Ted’s tobacco tin from her dresser drawer or found one of his padlocks. Of Mallory, who had the power to crush me with a few misspoken words. I remembered the look on my father’s face the day I found a photo of my mother between the pages of a book and had to ask who she was. And I recalled the boy in the orchard, the boy who gave me my first kiss and then vanished from my life—because I let him. “I’m afraid of the living because I find it so easy to disappoint them and so hard to lose them.”
A shadow passed over Adam’s face. He took on an air
of gravity I hadn’t seen since the day he learned his father perished in the fire. “I understand.”
And I believed him. Like me, his mother abandoned him. I could guess at the reasons she left his father, but to leave a child? Unforgivable, or so it had been for me. I changed the subject. “So how’s it going over at Zmira’s? Are you any closer to getting that lockbox back?”
“No. I finished digging the pond two days ago, but now he wants me to clean out his flower beds and dig him a vegetable garden.”
“I don’t like how he’s taking advantage of the situation.”
Adam shrugged. “I don’t mind. He’s nice enough.”
“Zmira? Nice?”
“In his own way. I think he likes my company.”
That makes two of us.
“We should get back to work,” I said, passing him a bucket and brush. Together we scrubbed down the fountain and cleaned out the leaf trap. Adam refilled the basin using a garden hose, then gave me the honor of turning on the pump.
“Oh my god, look at that!” I cheered at the first gurgles. And although I was covered in muck, sunburned, and scratched, I felt as though we’d taken a solid step toward resurrecting the garden. To celebrate, I flipped off my sneakers and tiptoed into the cool, clear fountain. “Ahh . . . This feels so good. Try it.”
“No thanks.” He turned his back to me as he coiled the hose. I couldn’t resist and kicked up the water, dousing him. It was an invitation for trouble—an invitation he was more than willing to accept. He stuck his hand in and flicked water back, but I was ready. I grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him in. He looped the hose around me and together we went down in a tangle of limbs and spraying water.
I sat up, and my laughter stopped so abruptly that I found myself short of breath. Our faces were a slip, a tip, a lean apart. That’s all it took to trigger the craving I’d sworn off for good. I wouldn’t need much. The tickle of an eyelash, an accidental brush of skin against skin, a heartbeat, whatever it took to get me through until tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. But isn’t that what an addict says just before the last, lethal dose?
Mortal Remains Page 13
