It's a Wonderful Knife

by Elise Sax

  “No, I don’t have the gift. I don’t see things like you do.”

  “Because you don’t believe in yourself, dolly. You think you’re a quitter, a loser. But you’re not. You’re a wonderful woman, who will be great someday. You’ll match this whole town and beyond. You’ll guide people before they make mistakes. You’ll save people from bad choices. You have the gift, but you need a push. You need me to give you a gift of the gift.”

  “But Grandma…”

  She shushed me and urged me to bring my face closer to hers. “The time for talking is over,” she said. “I have just enough time to do what I need to do.”

  She cupped my face with her hands and closed her eyes. Suddenly, I felt heat course through my body. My eyes closed, and I saw a bright, white light in my mind’s eye. It was the gift, and it traveled through me, settling in my soul.

  I was bombarded with vision after vision. Some were of events that happened years before I was born. I saw my father as a young boy, stealing bubble gum from the Mini-Mart. I saw my great-grandmother wearing my wedding dress for the first time. Then, the visions moved to the present, and I saw Lucy pregnant with a baby girl named Laura growing inside her. I saw Spencer showing me the deed to our dream house with my name on it, which he had changed the day before we were married. I saw Peter falling in love with a mysterious woman in San Francisco and going on a wild adventure. I saw me living in Grandma’s house, which was now my house forever. Then, I went far into the future, and I saw Spencer old and gray and still very handsome, sitting with me on the couch and kissing me behind my ear.

  My eyes opened. “I see, now, Grandma. I see so much. Thank you for this gift. Grandma? Grandma?”

  My grandmother lay lifeless in my arms. Her body was just the shell of where she had once lived. I checked her breathing and listened for a heartbeat. There was nothing. The woman who had shown me more love than any other family member or friend was gone.

  I was alone, now. Rudderless.

  How could I continue on without my Grandma guiding me?

  “Why did you do this if you knew it would kill you?” I asked, crying. Rolling sobs wracked my body. I couldn’t see because of the tears, and my wails echoed off the walls of the mine. “Why? Why? Why?” I screamed.

  I wasn’t ready to lose my grandmother. I wasn’t prepared to mourn so deeply and for so long. The joy I had felt only hours before was gone and replaced now with a crushing despondence.

  After a few minutes, my sobs quieted to simple crying, and I smoothed out Grandma’s hair and adjusted her suit. “You were the greatest gift in my life,” I told her dead body. “I didn’t need anything more than you could give me.”

  I hugged her to me and tried to memorize this, our last moment together on the earth. In Jewish tradition, the next day she would be buried, and my grandmother would be gone from my life forever.

  But even through my grief, I knew inside me that I would go on, that I would continue her business. I even knew that Spencer and I would live in her house and love each other, and I would make matches, just as she predicted, even if part of my heart could never be whole again.

  I kissed Grandma’s forehead. “I’ll love you forever, Grandma.”

  Matilda moaned and crawled toward me. “What happened?”

  “Rockwell fell and hit his head with the crowbar. And my grandmother had a heart attack.”

  My tears flowed, again. It was hard to accept that my grandmother, who was so full of life, was lying dead in my arms.

  “She died?” Matilda asked and began to cry.

  “Yes. She was such a wonderful woman. I loved her so much.”

  “She was a wonderful woman,” Matilda agreed. “I’m so sorry.”

  We sat with my grandmother for a long moment. With each minute, the grandmother I knew was further away. Her body was unresponsive and growing cooler. My tears flowed steadily.

  Matilda reached out and touched my grandmother’s face, cupping her cheek. “Don’t go away, Zelda,” she said.

  Grandma’s body shuddered, and all of a sudden, she drew breath.

  “What the hell’s going on?” I asked.

  Matilda looked at her hand. “Did I do that?”

  “I think you did.”

  “Should I touch her, again?”

  “No! It might work in the reverse.”

  Grandma opened her eyes. “What happened? This isn’t heaven, is it? I thought there would be more windows in heaven.”

  I hugged her tight. “Grandma, Grandma, you’re back! You came back!”

  Grandma sat up. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. I’m supposed to be dead.”

  “I’m sorry, Zelda,” Matilda said. “I touched you.”

  “You touched me?” Grandma asked her. “She touched me?” she asked me.

  “She touched you,” I told her. “You were deader than a doornail, and then you were alive again. Your heart had stopped beating. You had stopped breathing. Now you’re breathing. Now your heart is beating. How do you feel? You had a heart attack.”

  “I know I had a heart attack. I had a massive heart attack that was supposed to kill me, dolly.”

  “It killed you temporarily,” Matilda pointed out.

  Grandma touched her chest. “I feel fine. Never better. It’s like I got… what do they call it with a computer?”

  “Rebooted?”

  “Yes, I’ve been rebooted. I feel seventy years old again.”

  Matilda studied her hand. “My hand never did that before.”

  “You’ve never touched a dead person, before,” I told her, sure of myself. “But you’re going to touch a lot more.” Matilda’s eyes grew wide in fear. “Don’t worry. Not in Cannes. You’re going to move.”

  “I am?”

  “You should buy a cowboy hat,” Grandma told her.

  Epilogue

  We think of life as a series of milestones, of happy events and tragic ones. But it’s the spaces in the middle that make up the living parts of life. A dinner here. A sunset there. These are the building blocks. If you focus on only the big and the bigger, you’ll miss what’s in front of you. Focus on the mundane and the everyday to create a life of love. Love is never more than a step away.

  Lesson 1, Heart Advice from

  Gladie Burger

  ONE MONTH LATER

  We moved the entertainment center with the giant television into my grandmother’s old room. It was one of the few things that we managed to salvage from the house across the street. We got the couch and two recliners, too, which Spencer was thrilled about, but his beloved refrigerator bit the dust.

  We stood back and looked at the redecorated bedroom. “Are you happy with our new bedroom?” I asked him.

  “I’m happy for more room,” he said, pulling me in close to him. “Now, I can make love to you here and there and there and there and there. We could try some acrobatics, now, see how far back your legs can go.”

  “You’re five years old.”

  Spencer smirked his little smirk and rubbed his pelvis against me. “Really? Is this five years old? Huh? I don’t think so.”

  “Is what five years old? I don’t feel anything.”

  “Oh, Pinky. You wound me. You know it’s the Guinness Book of World Records giant anaconda, biggest shlong that ever existed.”

  “Oh, I know that, do I? If I knew that, I must have forgotten it.”

  Spencer lifted me in his arms and tossed me onto our bed. He nestled his body between my legs and rested his weight on his forearms. “You’re sure you’re happy here?” I asked him. “You’re not too disappointed that we’re not in the dream house?”

  “You mean the cursed house?”

  “Maybe it’s not cursed,” I said.

  “It’s cursed.”

  “We could renovate it, if you want.”

  “It’s cursed. We’ll get the insurance money and sell the shambles. Let someone else handle the curse.”

  “It’s better to hold onto it. In two
years, a successful artist will buy it for three times the price we paid for it.”

  “Wow, I like the new Pinky. The all-seeing Pinky.”

  “Not all-seeing. Just a-lot-seeing. Hey, is that your anaconda, or your service revolver?”

  “My anaconda is my service revolver, hot stuff.”

  “We’re going to need to cool it, Mr. service revolver. Grandma is downstairs, waiting for us to take her to the cruise ship terminal in Long Beach.”

  Spencer waggled his eyebrows. “Four months alone, just you and me.”

  “You, me, and the entire town. Business has been booming.”

  “But at night, it’ll be just you and me.”

  Matilda had been staying with us, but she moved away last week, after a distant cousin left her a house and business in New Mexico. So, now, it really was just going to be Spencer and me.

  “How long are you going to make us wait?” Ruth yelled from the bottom of the stairs. “We’re old, you know. You’re taking up some of our last minutes on this planet. But take your time, by all means. Think about yourselves. Don’t bother with other people. Who cares about society?”

  “I was upset about abandoning my latte habit for four months, but she’s making it easier,” I told Spencer.

  “Zelda and Ruth on a four-month vacation together. That’s called the nuclear option.”

  Downstairs, Spencer gathered the suitcases and packed up his car. Ruth searched through her purse a tenth time before she was satisfied that she had remembered their tickets and passports.

  “It’s not easy leaving Tea Time for four months,” she said, getting into the backseat of Spencer’s car. “What if Julie burns the place down?”

  “Bridget will handle it,” I told her. Bridget was taking over Tea Time while Ruth and Zelda traveled. They had already planned on a six-week glamping trip after the cruise.

  “How about you, Zelda?” Spencer asked. “Are you worried about being in retirement and leaving Cannes to Gladie?”

  “I’m not retired, sweetie. I’m semi-retired. And Gladie has the gift. She won’t let me down.”

  For the first time in my life, I believed her. Spencer backed out of the driveway, and we started on the road to Long Beach. My cellphone rang. It was Lucy.

  “If I get a stretch mark, I will kill not get finished killing Harry,” she said.

  “You won’t get a stretch mark,” I lied. “How are you feeling?”

  “The good news is that I’ve thrown up three times today. I can fit into my skinny pants.”

  “Has Harry recovered?”

  “He was speaking in full sentences for a while, but someone mentioned diapers and he went back to gibberish.” She told me to tell Grandma and Ruth bon voyage, and she hung up.

  On the way out of town, we passed the pot bus, and I waved at my mother. We still didn’t have the world’s best mother-daughter relationship, but she had come a long way. She invited me for lunch next week.

  Fanta had made a deal to rat out Rockwell for a reduced sentence. The last I heard, he was sharing a cell with the dictator. The mayor personally asked for the harshest sentence for the dictator because he had kidnapped his donkey. He was so upset about Dulcinea that he moved her to a donkey sanctuary in Colorado.

  “I’m glad to get out of this town,” Ruth said, as we turned onto the freeway. “Crazy-ass town. I don’t know why I didn’t leave earlier.”

  “Because you love it,” Grandma said.

  “Well, besides that.”

  Ruth was right about our crazy-ass town, but Grandma was right, too, about loving it. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. It’s where I found my love and found my home.

  And where I found myself.

  Don’t miss the Goodnight Mysteries series, starring Matilda Dare, another hilarious, romantic mystery series by Elise Sax. Preorder your copy of Die Noon (Book 1) today!

  And preorder the next in the Matchmaker Mysteries, Ship of Ghouls.

  And don’t forget to sign up for the newsletter for new releases and special deals: http://www.elisesax.com/mailing-list.php

  Also by Elise Sax

  Matchmaker Mysteries Series

  Road to Matchmaker

  An Affair to Dismember

  Citizen Pain

  The Wizards of Saws

  Field of Screams

  From Fear to Eternity

  West Side Gory

  Scareplane

  It Happened One Fright

  The Big Kill

  It’s a Wonderful Knife

  Ship of Ghouls

  Goodnight Mysteries Series

  Die Noon

  Five Wishes Series

  Going Down

  Man Candy

  Hot Wired

  Just Sacked

  Wicked Ride

  Five Wishes Series

  Three More Wishes Series

  Blown Away

  Inn & Out

  Quick Bang

  Three More Wishes Series

  Forever Series

  Forever Now

  Bounty

  Switched

  Moving Violations

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Elise Sax writes hilarious happy endings. She worked as a journalist, mostly in Paris, France for many years but always wanted to write fiction. Finally, she decided to go for her dream and write a novel. She was thrilled when An Affair to Dismember, the first in the Matchmaker Mysteries series, was sold at auction.

  Elise is an overwhelmed single mother of two boys in Southern California. She’s an avid traveler, a swing dancer, an occasional piano player, and an online shopping junkie.

  Friend her on Facebook: facebook.com/ei.sax.9

  Send her an email: elisesax@gmail.com

  You can also visit her website: elisesax.com

  And sign up for her newsletter to know about new releases and sales: elisesax.com/mailing-list.php

  Or tweet at her: @theelisesax