Page 2 of Leo
He nodded, setting his tablet aside to come wiggle his way into my lap between me and the desk.“Click, click, click,” he agreed.
That damn pen… “Ah.Well.I guess I’m trying to work out too many things at once, boychild.”
He made a face at the nickname but didn’t really protest it.“You guess or you know?”
“Now you sound like Doctor Sadler.”
He smiled, resting his head on my shoulder.“Duh.Where do you think I got that from?”He twisted around to look up at me, his wide blue eyes startlingly bright.Why did I always forget how bright his eyes were, I wondered.It wasn’t like we went very long without being in one another’s company.But sometimes, with everything crushing down on me, it was easy to miss things, or have them dulled by the worry.
Like how he was suddenly so much taller than the last time he’d sat on my lap, but that couldn’t be possible since he sat on my knee nearly every day.But today, his head was butting my chin instead of my collar bone.And his toes were curled on his sandals like they didn’t fit.
Great.Another trip to Target.Add that to the budget, see what I can cut out.The car can probably go a bit longer without servicing.Maybe drop a few of the more intensive meals from the shopping list and focus on the pasta and veggies…
“That guy’s back,” Edward muttered.“He’s afraid to knock.”
The delivery guy tapped on the door, leaning past the opening and looking a bit sheepish, knowing he’d just been caught out.“Er, my boss said you can call him but he’s not taking the cupcakes back, especially since they were paid for and delivered to the correct address.”
Tick.
My head was going to blow off and sail around the room like a balloon losing air any second now, I just knew it.
“Your boss is wrong,” I said, forcing a smile.
It must’ve been grim, judging by the way the guy pulled back and held up his hands to me, palms out.“Look, Ambrose just said leave ‘em here and come back for the next deliveries.We got a wedding this afternoon—”
“Congratulations.”
“Huh?Oh!Not me an’ Ambrose!No, uh, it’s one of the Cullen triplets and—”
“And,” I interrupted, “I have Ms.Dennis’ requests on file.She prepaid for her arrangements.Not a single one of them included dozens of inappropriate cupcakes.”
“Are they in’propriate because of the butts?”Edward asked, staring between me and the guy.“Or because people don’t like cake at funerals?”
“This isn’t the first funeral Ambrose has made cakes for,” the guy offered.“So maybe it’s the butts?”
Edward nodded thoughtfully.“Everyone’s got a butt, but we’re not supposed to show our butts to other people unless it’s the doctor and our grown-up is with us.”
The guy nodded, his expression somewhere between wanting to laugh and wanting to flee.
“Tell Ambrose his orders were wrong.I don’t care what you do with those things, just get them out of the Perpetual Peace room.”
The guy brightened.“Oh!I can put them in another room then.That’s no problem.”
Gently, I eased Edward to his feet and stood, counting in a slow five beats on my inhale, and a slower ten on the exhale.
Nope, still felt like flying around the room like a balloon.“There is no other room available.Ms.Dennis paid for the Perpetual Peace room.She has no surviving family.She has no friends,” I added, feeling a spike of shame for that one.Delia Dennis had not been well liked by anyone in Gaynor Beach and had done nothing to change that.In fact, she seemed to revel in being disliked, going out of her way to be spiteful, mean, bigoted, and just plain rude to everyone she met, be they long term acquaintances or tourists passing through.
Ms.Dennis had been one of my first clients after I took over the funeral home.She’d taken great pleasure in informing me not one soul would come to the services and she’d rather they all stayed away than pretended to like her and fake grieve over her body.
“Then why have a funeral?”I’d mustered the gumption to ask instead of just nodding politely and murmuringof courseas people in my position were prone to do.
“Because”—she’d grinned, leaning in close—“I want them all to feelterrible.I want no obituary in the local paper, no formal announcements, no services with some preacher who never met me blabbering some mealy-mouthed platitudes to people who didn’t give a good goddamn about my soul much less my living body.No, I want them all to feel guilty.”
“Forwhat?”I’d asked, startled at her vehemence.“Why do you want the town to feel guilty?”
Her smirk had been self-satisfied as she leaned back, folding her hands in her lap.“Because I cannot stand a single one of the hippie liberal assholes in this town with their fake smiles and faux concern.Driving electric cars but importing their goddamn cheese, frowning about the unhoused problem but keeping that second home in Malibu.Depriving them of their performative grief will be the last thing I get to do.”
It was policy, both personal and company, not to argue with clients unless they were requesting something detrimental to their wellbeing or the life and limb of others, or if their requests were bigoted in some way.
