by Jill Orr
I spent the morning getting up to speed on my assignments and thanking the people who covered for me over the past few weeks. Everyone had really pulled together. Even Gerlach Spencer, who is the closest thing I’ll ever have to a nemesis, had been uncharacteristically helpful.
“Let me know if you want me to finish up that piece on the grand opening of The Grind coffeehouse,” he’d said. I felt a rush of unexpected warmth toward him a split second before he added, “The lady that runs that place is suuuuper hot. I wouldn’t mind giving her something to grind on!” He stretched his hand over his cubicle wall to high-five Bruce Henderson, who (unfortunately) responded by saying “booyah.”
When I refrained from pointing out to them that if they weren’t such misogynistic pigs, they might not die alone, I considered us square. That level of restraint constituted repayment of my debt as far as I was concerned.
Around noon, Holman stopped by my cubicle and asked if I wanted to go to lunch at Mysa, formerly Rosalee’s Tavern. Ridley and Ryan bought the restaurant from the bank after its former owner, Rosalee Belanger, went to prison. “Rosalee is synonymous with murder, and murder is unappetizing,” Ridley reasoned. So she chose a word from the Swedish language, her mother tongue, as a start of the rebranding process. “Mysa doesn’t have an exact translation in English—kind of like me,” she explained with a giggle to a small group of regulars who gathered out front the day they hung up the new sign. “Snuggle is closest but not quite the same. Mysa is the act of being cozy. You can mysa by yourself, with friends, family, lovers. Technically, it’s a verb, but it’s more like a feeling.”
“Ohhhhh, okay,” Betsy Norbitt had said with a furrowed brow. “So…Mai-zah?”
“Actually, it’s Mee-sah,” Ridley corrected.
“Meeza.”
“No, it has a hard ‘s.’ Mee-SAH.”
“Mee-SAHHH!”
“Well, you don’t actually accentuate the ‘sah.’”
“Okay, mm-hmm.” Betsy looked more confused than ever, but being the good Southern girl that she was, she added brightly, “That’s a real pretty shade of blue on your sign there, sweetie.”
As the group turned to leave, Charlotte Van Stone—another good Southern girl—whispered loudly, “Honey, just call it Rosalee’s. No one’s ever gonna remember that new name anyhow.”
I told Holman I couldn’t go to lunch with him because I had an appointment, which strictly speaking wasn’t exactly true. The real reason was that I already had lunch plans with Ash, the new director of Campbell & Sons Funeral Home. I would have told Holman the truth, but lately I’d gotten the feeling he wasn’t a member of the Ash Campbell fan club. He’d never said anything directly, but a few times over the past month when I’d mentioned Ash’s name, either in the context of funeral arrangements for Flick or just times we’d hung out, I’d felt a distinct chill from Holman. Better he should think I was at the dentist.
Ash and I planned to meet at my house for lunch so I could walk Coltrane before going back to work. My sweet dog had gotten spoiled over the past month by having me home, so I wanted to ease him back slowly into being alone for hours during the day. Plus, if there was ever a cure for the midday blues, it was a ninety-four-pound German shepherd looking at you like you were a combination of steak, bacon, and a slow-moving squirrel.
When I pulled into my driveway, Ash was sitting on my front porch swing holding a bag from Landry’s.
“Hey,” I said as I walked up.
“Hey.” He gave me a big smile and moved like maybe he was going to follow it with a hug, but I buzzed past him to unlock the door before he had the chance.
When Ash moved here from Texas about six weeks earlier, our relationship flip-flopped between flirty one minute and contentious the next—or more accurately, Ash had. He came to Tuttle Corner to run his family’s funeral home after his grandfather had a debilitating stroke. He was just out of law school and had given up his dream job at a law firm in Austin to take over the family business, so he was understandably conflicted about the new direction his life had taken. We’d met when I was doing a story about a murder victim whose body had gone unclaimed, and he’d quite literally slammed a door in my face on Monday; by Friday he suggested we go out for a drink. It nearly gave me whiplash.
Ash Campbell was smart, witty, and good-looking—and he knew it. I’d found his arrogance both appealing and repellent, and when you combined that with his mercurial nature, I wasn’t sure how close I wanted to get to a guy like that. But for all of his volatility, when I showed up blearyeyed and overwhelmed at Campbell & Sons to make the arrangements for Flick’s funeral, Ash had been amazing. He’d walked me through everything, helped simplify my choices, and literally held my hand through the tough decisions. He’d shown me more compassion than I would have expected from him.
We started talking every day because of funeral stuff, but somewhere along the way we’d settled into a pattern. Calls, texts, pop-in visits to each other’s work, offers to walk Coltrane or bring over pizza. And yes, over the past few weeks there’d been a few moments when if circumstances had been different—if I hadn’t been mired in grief—something might have happened between us. But as of now Ash and I were just friends. Pretty much.
“They were out of Cubans so I got you a turkey club,” Ash said, pulling a foil-wrapped sandwich from the bag. “Hope that’s okay.”
“Perfect. How much do I owe you?”
“Don’t worry about it.” He shrugged.
“No, seriously. You don’t have to pay for my lunch…”
“I know I don’t have to.” He smiled. “I want to.”
“Fine,” I said, looking down to conceal the involuntary blush I could feel spreading across my cheeks. “My treat next time.”
“How was this morning? Did you tell Kay you were ready to go back to full speed?” Ash had been gently encouraging me to get back into my normal routine. He said that was one of the best ways he found to move forward after his mom died.
“Uh-huh,” I said, my mouth full of sandwich. I held up one finger as I chewed. Ash waited with an amused look on his face as I swallowed the way-too-big bite I’d taken. “She was great about it. Classic Kay. Gave me a handful of assignments and plugged me right back in.”
“That’s good. There’s nothing like being busy to keep your mind off…” he let his sentence trail off. “By the way, did you find anything in Flick’s office about your grandfather’s book?”
I’d recently found out that at the time of his murder, my granddad was putting together a collection of obituaries about people who had died and had no one to bury or mourn them. The working title was The Lonely Dead, and his goal, according to Flick, was to find out what happened in these people’s lives to isolate them so thoroughly—and then to give their story a voice. It was so like Granddad to want to shine a light on the less fortunate among us. As a journalist, he’d spent many years tuned into the imbalanced distribution of privilege in our country. It was one of the many things I’d admired about him. Flick’s theory was that Granddad had been killed because of something he found out while researching that book.
“No,” I said. “Not that I can make sense of anyway.”
Flick had never been able to find a shred of evidence that Granddad had been working on this book. The only reason he knew anything about it was because Granddad mentioned it in passing during one of their morning coffee sessions. It was like the entire project—his notes, files, source lists—just evaporated the moment he died. Even his laptop had been destroyed. Sheriff Tackett told me at the time that Granddad must have knocked over a glass of water and fried the system, but the computer expert I’d taken it to said, based on the amount of damage, it looked to him like the machine had been submerged in water “for a significant length of time.” Flick was the only person with whom Granddad had discussed the book, so no one else knew anything was missing. His notes in the file were messy, disjointed, and cryptic. I’d been working my way through Flick’s file every chance I got, try
ing to make sense of what was in there.
“I’ll keep on looking, though,” I said. “Hopefully, I’ll find something eventually.” I changed the subject and asked Ash about how things were at the funeral home, and if there’d been any change in his grandfather’s condition.
“Not really. He eats just enough, opens his eyes just enough, squeezes my grandma’s hand just enough…but he’s not getting any better.”
Franklin’s sudden illness had been hard on the whole Campbell family, perhaps Ash most of all. With his mother gone, his father in and out of prisons and rehab centers, and his sister living out in California as a single mom to three kids, Ash was the only member of the family in a position to take over the 143-year-old business. But it didn’t come without a cost.
“Have you decided when you’ll go back to Texas to get your stuff?”
He sighed like he always did when we talked about Texas. “I’d like to go before the end of next month, so I can stop paying for the storage locker. I’ve just been putting it off, I guess. I’ve been busy, but really I think I’m just delaying the inevitable.” He let out a small laugh that was one part humor and three parts regret. Making the decision to leave behind his career in Austin had been a very difficult one, fueled more by obligation than choice.
“But you like your new place, right?”
“Yeah, I really do,” he said. “I love being on the water. It’s so peaceful out there. I can just sit out on my back porch, have a beer, and watch the sun set. I still can’t believe that place was available.”
Debbie Forrester, a retired P.E. teacher from Tuttle Middle School, had decided to take up a second career as a cruise ship dance instructor. She was a widow and said she’d always loved to dance, so she couldn’t think of a better way to spend her post-retirement years than dancing while out at sea. “It’ll be just like living on the Love Boat!” she told Ash when they’d met to sign the rental agreement for her cabin on the James River. Debbie signed a ninemonth employment contract with the cruise line, “with an option to extend indefinitely,” so Ash did the same.
“You need to come out and see it,” Ash said. “We could watch the sunset…open a bottle of wine…”
This wasn’t the first time Ash had invited me over to see his new place. He’d suggested I come over a few times over the past couple of weeks, but I’d always made some vague excuse to get out of it. It just seemed like going over to his house to watch a movie or have a drink was more of an official date than meeting for lunch or seeing each other at Campbell & Sons. I liked Ash and was learning to trust him but wasn’t sure I wanted to take that next step. And given how his amber eyes sparkled under my kitchen lights, I didn’t trust myself to resist them during a Virginia sunset.
“Sure,” I said, taking our glasses over to the sink. “Hey—did you know that Skipper Hazelrigg is planning to run for sheriff against Carl in the next election?” I turned on the water and started washing the dishes.
I didn’t need to turn around to know Ash had followed and was right behind me. I could feel the heat from his skin a split second before I felt his fingers sweep the hair off the back of my neck. My whole body went still.
He leaned in close. “Riley Ellison, are you trying to change the subject?”
I shut off the water but didn’t turn around. “No, I—it’s just—” I stammered, confused by the electric sensation of his fingertips. “It’s just—”
Ash put a hand on each of my shoulders. It was like time slowed down. I stood frozen, afraid to move. I knew I could stop this by wriggling out from under him, and I knew I could escalate it by turning around to face him. The only thing I didn’t know was what I wanted.
I closed my eyes. “Ash—”
He pulled back slowly, running his hands down my arms and squeezing my hands before letting go. “It’s okay,” he said softly, taking a step back. “I just thought that maybe since you were ready to get back to work, you might be ready to move on in other areas, too.”
I turned around now that we would no longer be nose-to-nose, but when I looked at his face, the slight pink in his cheeks, those sexy hooded eyes, I completely lost what I was going to say. My mind went blank, and I just stood there looking at him.
After a few moments, Ash let out an embarrassed sort of laugh. “Okay, I guess not. I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be sorry,” I said quickly. “I’m just a mess right now.”
“No—I misread the situation, clearly.”
“You didn’t, it’s just—”
“It’s okay, Riley. Really.”
I took a deep breath. “I just don’t know about a lot of things right now. I’ve probably sent mixed signals—I’m sorry—it’s not on purpose, I promise. I just don’t know whether I’m coming or going these days. But I like you…and I like our, um, friendship, or whatever we have. And I know there’s, like, this chemistry between us, but I’m just not sure what the best thing to do is, you know? I’m not sure if I’m ready for whatever this is, if it’s anything at all.”
“Wow, you really like to complicate things, don’t you?” He was joking, but the comment still stung. I looked down.
He sighed, sounding frustrated that his joke didn’t land. “I like you too, Riley. Obviously.” We stood there silently for a few seconds marinating in the awkwardness. “Let’s just forget about it for now, okay? We can revisit our raging sexual tension another day.”
That made me laugh, and as I did, all the weirdness went out of the room. We were friends again. Or something like that.
“Hey, my cousin Toad is having a New Year’s Eve party. Wanna come?”
I’d nearly forgotten about the holidays this year, given everything that had happened. I’d spent a somber Christmas with my parents. None of us felt much like going to church, though we did anyway, and my mom prepared her infamous tofurkey and we all sat around their house trying not to talk about the man we’d just buried. It hadn’t even registered that soon we’d be ringing in a new year.
“Um, sure,” I said, mostly because I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t want Ash to think I was saying no because of what happened earlier, and besides, it was probably not a bad idea to get out of the house and spend New Year’s with people my own age.
“Cool. He’s going with a Gatsby theme this year.”
“Like, costumes?”
“Yeah, he gets really into his themed parties. He’s kind of known for it, but you don’t have to if you don’t want—”
I’d never met Toad, he was several years ahead of me in high school, but I’d heard about his legendary parties for years. It was kind of exciting to think I could be going to one. “That actually sounds really fun. I’ll do some research.”
“Great,” Ash said. He’d finished cleaning off his place from the table and had put his coat on. “All right, well I’ve got a one-thirty so I should go.”
“Thanks for lunch,” I said. Just before he turned to walk out, I added, “Hey—”
He turned around.
“I…um, I…” Now that I’d started the sentence, I didn’t know exactly where I was going with it. I think you look amazing in that color blue. I like how a strand of hair falls down and covers just one eye, and you have to flick it away every so often. I hope you’ll try to kiss me again someday. In the end, all I could come up with was, “I think you’d make a really good Nick Carraway.”
Ash titled his head to the side. “I can’t remember, was he a good guy or a bad guy?”
“Both—neither,” I said, then laughed. “More complicated than anything else, I guess.”
Ash flashed me a mischievous grin. “But he was handsome, right?”
“Definitely.”
“Does he get the girl in the end?”
“Afraid not,” I said, feeling the smile slide off my face. “He actually decides he was in love with an illusion and heads west.”
Ash winked and said, “Oh well, guess you can’t win them all.”
CHAPTER 3
By the end of the day I was feeling pretty good about my reentry into the world of the Tuttle Times. I’d already filed two stories and had picked out the subject for the weekly editorial obituary. Since most of the obits that ran in our paper were technically death notices—small tributes sent in by families or funeral homes—Flick had had the idea to bring back the obituary in its traditional form, a news article detailing the life of someone who had an impact on our community. The column had been a huge success, increasing our circulation with many readers citing the “Life in a Day” column as the reason they decided to take the paper after all this time.
I’d decided (and verified with Kay) that this week’s subject would be Myrna James Rothchild, known to all in Tuttle Corner as the “Christmas lady.” Myrna kept her house decorated for Christmas, inside and out, year-round. You’d often see her dressed up as Mrs. Claus on a sunny day in April or raking leaves in October, though her husband, Doug, refused to dress up as Santa during any month other than December. Throughout the years her obsession with the holiday grew, and she began offering tours of her 2,400-square-foot home that boasted more than thirty-seven Christmas trees, twelve bunches of live mistletoe, and 350-plus nutcrackers. And for two weeks every December, Myrna would rent a buck from Swanson’s Venison Farm in West Bay and tie up the poor beast in her front yard for photo ops. Whenever someone would point out that Rudolph looked more like a white-tailed deer than a reindeer, Mrs. Rothchild would wag her finger and say, “Santa doesn’t visit doubting Thomases.”
Myrna had been struggling with a heart condition for the past few years. She died in her sleep on Christmas morning, and although she would be missed, it was almost hard to feel sad, because Myrna herself could not have designed a more fitting exit.
Doug Rothchild cried when I’d called to let him know I’d be featuring Myrna for the New Year’s Day edition of the paper. “Bless you, Riley,” he’d said. “She’dve been so honored.”
On my way out of work for the day, I stopped by Holman’s office to let him know I was heading home. He certainly didn’t need to know where I was every second, but checking in with Holman about my comings and goings from the office was a habit I’d gotten into. He’d often do the same to me as he passed by my cubicle on his way into or out of the newsroom. He was on the phone and held up a finger when he saw me in his doorway.
