Page 47 of Stay in Your Lane!

I was useless the next morning. Not even a four-cup pot of coffee just for me was enough to resurrect my brain from the depths to which it had fallen. Thank God there was only one service today and Dad was in charge of it (the Morriseys were family friends, and he liked to help those folks out personally). Stuart was off running bodies into other states, so that meant I was on pickup duty if something was called in. The rest of the time, I was supposed to handle the phones, answer emails, and help out in the front office while Leanne worked on Kurt Davidson in the back. Kurt Davidson Junior, actually—just twenty-four and dead from an overdose a week ago.

God, it was weird to see him there. I knew him, kind of. I knew him in the way you knew someone you passed in the hall every day in high school. The way you caught the name ofsomeone who wasn’t in your class but who was a friend of a friend. Kurt was two years younger than me, but we’d seen each other around and gone to a few of the same parties. We even had driver’s ed together, since I had to go back for a “refresher” course after getting a few too many tickets. I’d never expected this. The last I knew he was apprenticed to his dad, who was an electrician, and prepping to take overhisfamily business. That was a few years back, though.

Those few years hadn’t been good to him. He had scars from injections on both arms, and he’d gone from lanky to stringy. I didn’t realize I was staring until Leanne gently nudged me as she came around the table. “Are you all right?”

“I—yes,” I said. “I think so, just…it’s weird, seeing people I know die. He was so…he was straight-edged in high school, I think. He never drank at parties. He never smoked. Kurt getting into drugs is really bizarre to me.”

“I hear you,” my sister said, pulling out her makeup palette and going to work on his face. “Two of my friends have gone to rehab in the past year. It’s gotten so easy to find drugs downtown. Theo thinks that—” She paused and cleared her throat. “Hethoughtthat the city’s become something of a ground zero for dealers recently. He wasn’t sure why, and his boss in the DA’s office isn’t focusing on the dealers, either. They keep pursuing the users, I guess because they’re easier to get evidence against. It frustrates him.”

Ha, I forgot that Theo was a lawyer. “Doesn’t that seem weird?” I asked.

She smoothed a layer of thick foundation over Kurt’s face, giving his skin a false glow. “Weird how?”

“That they wouldn’t have some sort of, I don’t know, operation in place to go for the dealers. If that’s where the root cause is, then that’s what they should focus on, right?”

Leanne snorted. “I mean, what’s the root cause when it comes to someone deciding to do drugs? Access is a factor, sure, but it’s tougher and tougher to make a living out there. People need a distraction from the shitshow of their lives, and drugs are a good one.”

That sounded a little ominous. “You’re not…I mean, I know you’re not doing anything, but if you needed help you would tell me, right?”

Leanne laughed tiredly. “What couldyouhelp me with, Ev?”

“Anything,” I told her, kind of annoyed but trying not to show it because I knew she was in pain and didn’t mean to imply that I was useless. “I could help you with anything you wanted. I could listen if you need to talk about Theo, or I could stand in and do makeup in here—you taught me how, don’t pretend I’m not good at it—or I could be a sounding board if you wanted to tell me about the different aesthetician programs you’re considering, or?—”

My sister dropped the sponge she was holding and turned to me with wide eyes. “How did you know about that?”

“You put in the mortuary’s email address for one of the responses,” I said. “I thought it was spam at first, but then I opened it and it looked kind of official, so I forwarded it to you. Was I not supposed to do that?”

“Don’t tell Dad.”

I almost laughed. “You assume he’d listen to me even if I tried to talk to him.”

She frowned at me. “I’m serious, Everett.”

So was I, but whatever. “I won’t,” I said. “But I think he’d be supportive of you going back to school.”

She sighed. “Not when he learned that it would mean not working here anymore.”

Oh. Oh wow. Both of my siblings were thinking of jumping ship. If they did, and if Dad didn’t hire more help or trust me to take on more responsibilities, then the business would go under.

Weirdly, that didn’t scare me as bad as it might have a while ago. Change happened. And my siblings clearly needed that change.

“Not that I’m really going to do it,” she said, picking up the sponge and turning back to Dwayne. “It was just a thought. Theo used to—I mean—he always said I’d be good at it. He helped me narrow down the programs I was interested in before he called things off.”

Oof. I wondered if that meant,“He encouraged me to do something, anything, rather than staying in a holding pattern that didn’t seem to make time for him.”Damn, maybe I should have been a therapist.

“So, I might have a boyfriend.”

My sister dropped the brush again and glared at me. “Thanks for rubbing it in!”

Nope, never mind, I didn’t have the sensitivity or timing to be a therapist.

“I don’t mean to rub it in, I just—” The bell on the front door sounded, giving me the out I needed to escape Leanne’s glare. I darted out of the prep room and headed for the front office. There was a guy standing there in a plain black T-shirt and jeans who I didn’t recognize. He was checking out sample pictures from some of our nicer memorials, hands in his pockets.

“Hi, welcome to Mulligan’s Mortuary Services,” I said as I came around the desk to stand beside him. It was a little weird to have someone in our front office without an appointment…or had I forgotten one? “What can I do for you?”

The man smiled. He had a small scar in his cheek that got deeper with the motion, and his canines projected over his lowerteeth—it kind of made him look like a vampire. “Are you Everett Mulligan?”

“I…yes.” Not that there was any reason for him to know that. “Have we met?”

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