Page 15 of Stay in Your Lane!

I pulled the side of the pillow I wasn’t sleeping on a little harder against my head.

“Everett.”

“Mnnn.” Why was I being bothered at whatever o’ clock in the morning? It was Saturday, it was time tosleep.

“Everett William Mulligan, we have a funeral to do in less than anhour!Now get up!”

A what? A…I blinked my sticky eyes open and stared blearily at the clock on my bedside table. A little after nine a.m., so yeah, I should still be asleep, except…

Funeral. Mrs. Martin. “Shit,” I muttered, pawing around until I found my phone. I had alarms for this, I had alarms forlotsof things, why hadn’t it gone off?

Oh. My phone battery was dead.

“Everett, I swear to God, if you make me come into the garbage pile you call a room?—”

“Sorry, sorry.” I threw back the covers and stumbled out of bed toward the door where my sister was standing, arms crossedand frowning. “I’m up. Sorry, my phone died and my alarm didn’t go off.”

“Isn’t there a charger right beside your bed?”

“There is,” I acknowledged, and—good idea. “I’ll take care of it.” I plugged my phone in and watched the battery symbol come to life on the screen. It was at zero—no, one percent. Not cool, but at least it was charging now.

I looked over at my sister, who stared at me as if expecting another apology. Long experience, though, had taught me that in circumstances like this, it didn’t matter how many times I apologized or how sorry I was. None of that made anyone feel better. The best thing I could do at this point was get my ass in gear and keep from making thingsworse, which was the next step. “I’ll be downstairs in ten minutes,” I said.

“You know, this sort of thing is why Dad won’t give you more responsibility in the business,” Leanne said, apparently determined to drive the point home this morning. “You’re just not reliable.”

“I’m reliable,” I replied, stung. Yes, I’d maybe stayed up way too late last night thanks to my midnight snack at Waffles? with Kyle, but for the most part I was very reliable thanks to the literal dozens of pings and alarms and notes I got on my phone every day. Time-blindness was a real thing, but my mom had helped me figure out ways to deal with it in my teens. For the most part, the system worked flawlessly.

Just not today.

“Oh, please. Look at you. You can’t be depended on even with a million reminders and?—”

“Ten minutes,” I broke in, and shut the door in my sister’s face. Was it nice? No, it wasn’t nice, but it appeared that nobody was in a nice mood this morning, her included, so why shouldn’t I also be a petty little asshole?

I washed, dried, dressed, and styled—aka combed my hair and pulled it back into a manbun, my go-to when I was low on time—and was downstairs from the loft over the top of the mortuary in nine and a half minutes, thank you very much. I made my way to the main house and into the kitchen to find my dad pouring the last of the coffee from the pot into his mug.

He must have read the disappointment on my face, because he sighed and held the mug out to me.

“Don’t coddle him,” Leanne snapped. “He could have had coffee if he’d just gotten up on time.”

“Who pissed in your Cheerios?” Stuart asked, flicking through pictures of cars on his phone as he spooned his own Cheerios into his mouth.

“Why are you so disgusting?”

I waved my dad’s offer away and got the coffee out of the cabinet. “It’s fine, I’ll make some more.”

“Might as well get started filling the big pots, then.” Dad sipped his coffee and immediately grimaced. He grabbed the cream and added enough to turn the brew ghost-white, then nodded appreciatively. “We need enough on hand for forty. Mrs. Martin didn’t have a lot of family, but there’s a group from her church coming, and you know how those church ladies can put it away. Leanne, you got the snacks?”

“I—” My sister paused in her tirade at Stuart and looked at Dad. “I…I forgot to go to the store yesterday.”

Dad frowned. “What are you talkin’ about? You were out for two hours after lunch.”

“I know, but I just didn’t get around to it then, and?—”

Stuart snorted. “You want to lecture Everett about having his shit together when you can’t even remember the same snack run you make every week?”

To my surprise, her eyes filled with tears. Everyone in the room kind of froze. Leanne didn’t cry—ever. She gave as good asshe got and she never seemed to let her emotions get the better of her, unless she was pissed off. But tears? “I’ll go now,” she said, pushing back from the table. “I’ll?—”

“I’ve got it!” Stuart, true to form, grabbed his car keys and ran out of the kitchen like his pants were on fire. “Back in twenty!”

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