Page 6 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

“And nothing weird happened while you were out?” he asks, brow furrowing at his phone. “No weird phone calls or anything?”

That’s not a question he would have asked.

That’s not a question anyone would ask, and she blanches, before he glances up at her, eyebrows drawn together, confusion in his lovely grey eyes.

“Oh, just the…post office?” Delina says, trailing off, tapping her nails against his desk, next to the paintings. “Wrong number.”

His eyes clear with something resembling relief, and she gets a hint of the dimple again before he gestures to one of the note cards on the desk, the one with the vague impression of green rolling hills and trees just beginning to turn. “Here, for his wall with all the landscapes.”

“Yeah,” Delina says, past the lump in her throat. “He’ll love it.”

The red rockdrive to Sedona does nothing to calm her nerves, so by the time she pulls up to her father’s completely beige suburban home, she’s practically vibrating out of her skin and her hands hurt from clutching the steering wheel.

The will, the letter, and the textbook are still in her passenger seat, growing in awareness until it’s all her mind can think about.

Her dad kneels in the garden, leather gloves on his hands, as he pulls up some weeds that somehow sneak up through the reddish gravel surrounding his cacti. He gives her a quick smile, before laboriously climbing to his feet.

“What’s got you all tied up, Delly?” he asks, patting her on the shoulder. Her father gives everyone the impression of useless joviality, of maximum harmless-dad, and the suburban garden get up does nothing to combat it. “Your face is all twisted.”

She looks at him, catching his eyes and keeping them, drawing herself up as much as she can muster. “Dad, I want to talk about my mother.”

He doesn’t react for a moment, then raises his eyebrows. “Okay…?”

“I got a letter from her, and it…says some things.”

This time, her father blinks twice, then slumps, like she’s never before seen him do. Like someone lets the air out of him, taking away all the fun and the joy and leaving a haggard, worn-out man instead.

It lasts for only a second, before he straightens again. “I’m gonna go get some lemonade, go in the backyard, there’s nocameras pointed there,” he says, voice quieter than normal. “Pretend to be normal.”

Her father takes twice as longto come out to the backyard as usual, and his dog has thoroughly slobbered all over Delina’s gym shoes by the time he comes out with two glistening glasses of lemonade and, for some reason, an old-fashioned pager.

“Dad, what’s going on, why are there cameras?” Delina blurts out, and he just hands her the cup instead, placing the pager on the glass outdoor table between them. “Why would you think that, what are you going on about?”

“Did the letter, ah, tell you what she did for a living?” her dad asks instead, sitting heavily on the camp chair he keeps there year-round.

“She said magic’s real and that I have it like some really bad kids’ book,” Delina says, clutching the cool glass. “And that you knew and Maison knew and everyone knew.”

“Maison knows?” her dad asks, sharp.

“I don’t know, I didn’t ask him, the letter said he did, Dad…” Delina gapes at him, “Are you insane?”

“Probably,” he says with just a trace of his usual jocularity. “But yes, your mom was somehow a magician, I wasn’t allowed to tell you or the child support would stop, half your elementary school teachers were plants, and Mrs. Reed from down the street growing up was definitely one of them.” His dog loses interest in Delina’s shoes and plops down in front of him instead. “Didn’t know about Maison. I liked him.”

Delina carefully sets the glass on the table and, as primly as she could, turns to him and brings as much imperiousness as she possibly can to her next words, “Dad, what the fuck?”

“Fair enough,” he sighs, then nudges the pager towards Delina. “Was there a symbol on the letter?”

Delina stares down at the outdated piece of electronics, at the faded black plastic. “Yes.”

“Did it feel like static electricity?”

She hadn’t told him about that, hadn’t shown him the letter.

“Yes.”

“Touch the pager,” her dad instructs her, and she looks at him, sharp.

Her father had raised her as a single dad, all through her horrid teen years and through her extremes. Through her tantrums and her tears and everything in between.

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