by Morgana Best
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, he was so nice, really respectful. I mean, I’m sure he was upset when I kept turning him down, but he never got rude or anything. He took it like a man, I guess. He’s a sweet guy, really, but there was just nothing there. Not on my end, anyway.”
I nodded and sat on my bed. Tiffany had drifted to my dresser. She was looking at some old framed photos I had left there when I moved. It was really ridiculous how eager I was to get out of my home town after I graduated high school. I didn’t take a lot of things I would have liked to have with me.
“You’re fatter now,” Tiffany said, pointing to the photo.
“You’re deader now,” I said in a grumpy voice.
Tiffany laughed. “Sorry. That was rude of me, wasn’t it?”
I pulled a face.
Tiffany turned to me. “When you’re dead, societal norms just sort of go out the window.”
“What’s it like?” I asked. Although I could speak with and hear ghosts, Tiffany was the one with whom I’d had the most conversation. I usually just tried to avoid them.
“I don’t know. Everything is sort of, well… just colder.”
I nodded. “My dad passed away. He’s not here. He went on.”
“I guess he wasn’t murdered, huh?”
I shook my head. “No, he wasn’t. He crossed over to the other side, which I’m happy about, but I wish I could talk with him.”
“I wish my mom could see me, or hear me,” Tiffany said sadly. “I go over there a lot, and she’s so miserable. I want to tell her that I’m still here, in a way. But I guess, I’m not really here.”
“You are really here,” I said. “With me.”
Tiffany smiled. “Yeah, well, thanks for helping me, but I’m telling you right now, you’re barking up the wrong tree. Forget about Scott, all right?”
I shrugged. “Okay.”
Tiffany started to fade.
“What are you going to do?” I asked her.
“Go push some chairs and throw some shoes, I guess,” she said, and I laughed. She walked right through my wall, and I got ready for bed, wondering if I could, in fact, help her.
Chapter 8
I knew I could fix the leak. I stood on a small ladder in a room of the funeral home. It was a small room, not much larger than a closet. I had heard the drip while I was cleaning the cold gray room next door, where my father had once prepared the dearly departed, a job now left entirely to Janet. I had opened the door and been surprised as I stepped inside and my sneakers got wet. The water boiler was in there. At first I thought it was leaking, but then I noticed that one of the pipes running along the wall was damp and dripping.
I was deep in thought, wondering what to do, when I heard a screeching sound. “The wages of sin is death!”
I jumped and banged my head on the shelf. “Ouch,” I yelled. I knew the words, “The wages of sin is death,” repeated over and over comprised Mom’s ring tone, but it took some getting used to.
“Shush, you inconsiderate child,” my mother scolded me, before turning to her call. “Hello, Ian. Please excuse my daughter.” She fixed me with a steely gaze. “That’s right, Ian. We won’t let the devil win,” she continued. “Yes, we will both pray for her.”
What? I was the devil now? I wanted to ask Mom if that’s what she meant, but I wasn’t game. I didn’t even know who Ian was. Perhaps I’d be better off not knowing any of Mom’s business. “Mom, I thought you were at a church meeting today,” I said. “Didn’t you say it was a healing service or something?”
Mom nodded. “Yes, but it was canceled.”
“Why?” I asked automatically.
Mom folded her arms. “A visiting pastor was going to take the healing service, but he had to cancel because he was sick.”
I was tempted to say something, but thought it prudent to turn my attention to the leaky pipe instead. It seemed to be the highest one, so I found a rickety stepladder.
Mom had finished her call, so I asked her to hold the ladder still. When I was close to the pipe, with my mother holding me still instead of the ladder, her talon-like fingers in a vice-like grip on my waist, I was reasonably sure there wasn’t a crack or anything. “Okay, Mom,” I said. “The leak seems to be coming from where the pipe fits into another by way of some large circular thing. I’ve no idea what it’s called.”
“It’s a flare nut,” a voice said, and I almost fell off the ladder. I looked behind me, and there was Ernie. I tried to ignore him so my Mom didn’t think I was talking to myself. It didn’t work.
“What are you looking at?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I lied. “I thought I heard something.”
“You did hear something,” the old dead man said. I didn’t turn around. “It’s a flare nut, and you need to take it off.”
“I think I need to take this off,” I said to my mother, tapping what Ernie was calling a flare nut. I didn’t know if he was right, but it sounded good.
“How are you going to do that?” my mom asked.
“Twist it?” I said, but I lifted my voice at the end of the sentence so the ghost would know I was asking a question.
“Just call a plumber,” he said. He seemed to be amused.
“I’m not calling a plumber,” I said loudly, unable to stop myself.
“Well, now that you mention that,” my mom said, as I climbed down off the ladder.
“No, I just need a gripping thing to take that thing off.”
Mom frowned. “If you say so. Hurry up about it, would you? Don’t forget that Basil Sandalwood is coming by at three to speak with us. Don’t be late like you usually are. It’s about time you started having some consideration for other people, Laurel.”
Of course, I had not forgotten about that. Basil Sandalwood was coming by, Basil Sandalwood, the hot accountant. He was handsome, interesting, and didn’t go to my mother’s church. All in all, he was the perfect man.
“I wonder what he wants,” I said.
“Who knows? His father worked for your father for a long time. Basil Sandalwood took over from his father,” my mother said, needlessly explaining something I already knew to me for the hundredth time, as she usually did. “Unfortunately, Basil Sandalwood does not go to our church, and his father didn’t either. I wanted Cyril Redwood to be our accountant years ago, but your father just wouldn’t have it. It’s not good to have heathens working for us.”
“Mom, wasn’t Cyril Redwood the one who was sent to jail for embezzlement when I was a teenager?” I asked her, and was met with a stony glare. If looks could kill!
I thought it best to avoid a lecture, and ducked my head so I could rummage through Dad’s red metal toolbox. I found a wrench, and was keenly aware that Ernie was there. He nodded when I took the wrench out of the box and held it up, but I was careful not to stare at him too obviously lest my mother was paying attention.
“You turned the water off, right?” the ghost asked me.
“Oh, Mom, we should turn the water off,” I said.
“If you think so,” my mother said. “How?”
“Let me google it,” I said, reaching into my pocket. And after a couple of YouTube videos I had the water off. However, it was not as easy to pull the pipes apart, but I finally did. I didn’t find so much as a hairline crack in the ends of the pipes. I attached them more tightly this time, and sent Mom to turn the water back on. I knew she had done it, because the pipe started leaking again.
I was almost in tears by the time my mother returned. “Just call a plumber,” I groaned.
Behind my mother, Ernie was laughing. “I told you so!” he said.
As Mom went to call the plumber, I wound Teflon tape around the pipes again and again until I’d almost used up a whole roll. That seemed to do the trick. I headed home to take a quick shower and plaster on a lot of make up before the hottie accountant arrived.
I returned to the funeral home and went into my office, a big room near the front of the funeral home,
where Dad had done his office work and met with potential clients.
I opened the office door to see my mother sitting in my office chair behind the old oak wood desk, and Basil sitting on the other side. I was left with the empty chair next to the attractive accountant. As I went to sit down, Basil rose from his chair and reached out to shake my hand. I shook his hand in an awkward half crouch, my butt inches from my chair. I felt like I could just wither up and die, and not from the jolt that surged through me from touching him.
“The plumber is coming tomorrow morning,” my mother said to me with a thin-lipped smile. She was the kind of person who always loved speaking of things that only one other person in a group knew about. It made her feel special, I guess. Basil just smiled as he waited for us to finish up with any plumbing talk.
“It’s not a stuffed up toilet or anything,” I said as I looked at Basil, and then I was pretty sure I would actually die as his smile faltered a bit and he nodded.
“All right,” he said.
“You should have just done it yourself,” Ernie said, suddenly materializing next to my mother. I was still looking at Basil Sandalwood, and for a moment I could have sworn his eyes flickered over to Ernie. But then he was looking back at my mother, and I was sure I was hallucinating. Surely Basil hadn’t seen Ernie. If he had, he would have run screaming from the room. I myself had a horrible shock with Ernie popping up like that, uninvited.
“So Basil, why did you stop by today?” my mother asked, folding her hands over one another and laying them on my father’s desk.
“Well, I intended this meeting to be with your daughter,” Basil said, pulling his briefcase onto his lap and popping it open. “I didn’t realize you would be present at the meeting, and I have to warn you, I don’t mean to embarrass you with what I have to say today.”
That certainly had my mother’s attention. I could tell she was torn between being intrigued and feeling as though she should be insulted.
“What is it?” I said, before my mother could choose and speak in response.
“Well.” Basil hesitated, and then pulled a stack of papers from his briefcase and handed them to me. I took them, and he continued speaking. “Your mother has been giving quite a lot of money to various religious groups. They appear to be mostly televangelists.”
“And is that a problem? Serving God?” my mother asked. “If you don’t tithe, you’re cursed! Read it for yourself in the book of Malachi!”
“Well,” the accountant said, “it’s starting to become a problem, with how much you’re spending. If you wish to donate any or all of your own money, that’s one thing, but you cannot spend the funeral home’s money. It’s not yours to spend.”
He paused to draw breath, and I thought Mom would explode. Before she had a chance to open her mouth, he went on. “To be honest, things are in a downturn and had been for a bit when your husband ran the business. You’re going to need to cut the needless spending, and you’re going to need to bring in more business.”
I glared at my mother, and Ernie faded away. When I turned to Basil, he was looking at the spot where Ernie had been, and I wondered once more if he could see him. Nevertheless, anger and frustration shoved the thought from my mind. “Mom, this is an insane amount of money.” I jabbed my finger at the papers.
My mother sniffed. “It’s a good cause!”
“Oh come on,” I snapped at her. “Three thousand dollars to one man! Some man on TV! What do you think he does with the money? Besides, even if he does do something good with the money, you can’t spend the business’s money.” I tossed the papers onto the desk so my mother could look them over.
She did so briefly and looked at our accountant, and then turned to me, her lips forming a thin line. “Well, did you come to tattle on me, or do you have any help to offer?” Her tone was rude.
I was reasonably sure I was going to dive over the desk and strangle my mother, but God himself must have intervened, because that was the only force that could keep me from doing it. “Mom, please be quiet,” I pleaded.
“I don’t have any ideas as to how to bring in business. I am an accountant, not a financial advisor,” Basil said, ever the professional.
“We don’t need to bring in business,” my mother said. “People die, and need our services.”
Ernie popped up out of nowhere. “It’s a dead-end business,” he said with a cackle. “A grave responsibility.”
I rolled my eyes at his puns, but then noticed that Basil suddenly seemed to be trying not to smile. Surely he couldn’t hear the ghost?
“That bigger place in Tamworth opened up last year,” Basil said. “It’s a chain, basically the McDonalds of funeral homes. It ate into your business pretty well.”
I sighed. “All right, so I’ll have to do something to make people notice us.”
“Make people notice us?” my mother asked. “Our business is death. We shouldn’t advertise.”
“We have to do something, Mom,” I said emphatically.
Bail agreed. “You really do. Your mother needs to stop spending the funeral home’s money, too. You hold the purse strings. Cut her off.”
I gasped and looked at my mother. Her face was so red that I thought her head might explode. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Her jaw kept moving up and down soundlessly.
I was so worried that she would have a temper tantrum that I said the first thing that came into my head. “Okay, what if we do something fun with a funeral. What about celebrity funerals? What if someone who died was an Elvis fan? We could dress him up like Elvis and play Elvis songs. Surely there’s a market for people who would want their funeral to be a party.”
“That’s enough!” my mother said. Her face was white with shock. “Death is not fun.”
“We need to do something,” I said plaintively.
“Death is death!” my mother said. “Jesus is calling us home, but those left behind mourn. They don’t throw a party. Why, the whole idea is disgusting. It’s a mockery!”
I sighed.
“Hey, I like the idea,” Basil said.
My mother stood up and huffed. She hurried out of the room, dabbing at her eyes with one of her white handkerchiefs. “You ungrateful child,” she said just before she vanished through the door.
“It’s certainly something to consider,” I said with a shrug.
“Really,” Basil said, “you need to keep your mother away from the money.”
“All right, I will. How bad is it?”
“It’s bad, but it’ll get worse. You need to figure something out to make sure she gets her hands off the bank account.” He stood up.
“Oh gosh.” I rubbed my temples and then stood up, too. Mom loved to spend. She went to the grocery store every day and bought enough food for a family. I have no idea where it all went. “Thanks for your help, Basil.”
“You’re welcome,” the most handsome man in the world said. He smiled at me, and I melted into a puddle.
Chapter 9
It was Tiffany’s funeral. We had a viewing in the morning, and at noon she left, headed to the graveyard in the back of Scott’s hearse. I drove along at the back of the funeral procession, with my mother in the passenger seat of my car.
Scott had not made an appearance at the viewing. He had stayed outside, near his car. It was plain to me that he had been crying all morning. I had seen his red-rimmed eyes when he opened the door for the pallbearers.
The trip to the cemetery was a short one. I stood by and watched Scott open the door once more, and the pallbearers took Tiffany’s casket to her grave. I observed the people as the funeral went on. There were fold-out chairs set up along the grave, and most sat there, but I stood back, as my father had always done to avoid intruding on a family’s grief.
The sight of Tiffany’s mother crying as Pastor Green spoke was almost too much to bear. She was nothing but a mess of tears and sobs. The young woman’s father was stoic, sitting next to his wife with one arm around her
shoulders.
I looked around for Tiffany. I had expected her to appear, but I didn’t see her anywhere. I wondered if I would go to my own funeral—if I could, when the time came—but I couldn’t decide. It would be something to see who showed up, and who was upset, but if I died young and was murdered, I wouldn’t want to watch my loved ones cry. Perhaps it would be different if I died peacefully at the age of ninety.
Scott was standing a bit behind me, next to a tree. He was wearing the same suit he always did when he worked, and tears were falling freely from his eyes. He saw me looking at him and nodded at me. I turned my attention back to the others, not wanting to make him feel awkward.
Tiffany’s boss was sitting in the back row of the chairs, and from my angle I could just make out his face. He was around twenty years her senior, with graying hair, but he was fit and handsome. His face was simply a mask of pain, and it caught me by surprise. From the little I’d heard about Tiffany, she wasn’t a very good employee. She’d called in sick on numerous occasions, and was often late. But here her boss was, sitting next to a woman I assumed was his wife, and he was holding back his tears. I supposed on reflection that it was most likely normal behavior. Just because someone wasn’t a model employee, it didn’t mean you wouldn’t care if they died. That man had worked with Tiffany every day for a couple of years. Certainly her sudden and horrible death would affect him.
If there was one person I expected to be very upset, it was Danny, Tiffany’s boyfriend. I had been told that they had been dating for three years, and from everything I’d heard, it was serious and on the road to marriage. Yet, as I looked the man over, I didn’t get that feeling at all. He sat with someone I took to be his mother, an older woman. She was crying, her face buried in a tiny handkerchief, but Danny was sitting still, impassive, looking bored. He was watching Pastor Green speak, but I doubted very much that he really heard a word he said.
As I watched Danny, my mother walked over to me. She had been standing closer to the proceedings, but when she noticed me, she came over and spoke in a low tone. “You must have taken notes from your father,” she said, indicating my position.
