Page 1 of Leo
CHAPTER1
LEO
“What the ever loving hell?”
“Cupcakes!”Edward sighed, looking as happy as I’d seen him look in weeks.“So many, Dad!Can I—”
“No.Nope.No, no, no!These can’t be here.”The young man didn’t even slow down as he trundled past me, carrying a bright blue box withNice Bunsemblazoned on the side, the B looking distinctly callipygian.My blood pressure made a near-audible tick upward at the name of the bakery.I’d only met the owner once, and that was more than enough.“Ms.Dennis’ wishes expressly prohibit food, drink, or any sort of wake around her funeral.”
The young man, wide-eyed and startled as a deer on a country road, stared at me, mouth flapping like a fish.
“Who ordered these?”I asked, marching to the nearest table with my six-year-old, Edward, in tow.“Oh my god…”
“Dad!Just one?Please?”Edward was practically levitating with excitement—he didn’t get as much sugar as he insisted he required, thanks to my very mean and terrible parenting, which included insisting he eat things other than simple carbohydrates.“That one,” he shouted, pointing to a bright pink number with more frosting than cake, a very well-wrought middle finger sticking out of the top.“That weird unicorn one!”
“Uh,” the delivery guy finally blurted, “I don’t know who ordered ‘em!I just deliver things for Ambrose when it’s too busy for him to come on his own!I’ve got, like… six more boxes?”
“Is that a question?”
“No?”
I closed my eyes and tried not to grind my teeth.Doctor Nichols had just repaired two crowns last month and I wasn’t in any place to get more dental work done.“I don’t know who placed this order, but it was not Ms.Dennis, nor was it anyone here.”
“Are you sure?”
I opened my eyes to find him still staring at me but edging ever so slightly closer to the already overfull table someone had set up near the back of the Perpetual Peace room.
“Positive.There’s been an error.Maybe they’re meant for the Demaris funeral on Tuesday,” I suggested.“Or”—I glanced at one of the open boxes with it’s very well decorated butrudecupcakes—“somewhere that isn’t a funeral for a ninety-year-old woman.”
The man shook his head.“No, it was definitely a delivery for today, for the funeral home.”His expression brightened.“Oh!I can call Ambrose!”
“Ambrose is your boss?”I confirmed.“The owner of the bakery?”Of course he’d have a name likeAmbrose.The man had looked like some sort of Renaissance painting the one time we’d met at a Rainbow Chamber of Commerce open house.He’d come with a few other new business owners from the area.He’d mingled and sipped and taken a brochure about the chamber, ignoring the glares from Willis Dempsey and some of the staid old guard while charming his way through the rest of the partygoers.He’d joked about how the town didn’t need two different chambers of commerce as it was the queerest town he’d ever seen.“And I lived in San Francisco for two years after baking school!”Everyone had laughed at that ridiculous, unfunny comment, and he’d grinned with that slightly crooked eye tooth flashing between lush, pink lips, his wild curls falling over his eyes before he could shake them back out of his face.
Of course, everyone loved him.And I wasn’t jealous, not really.Just annoyed he’d won over the entire chamber in one meeting while I’d been busting my ass for four years, trying to get the board to realize I wasn’t some creepy ghoul just because I ran the funeral home and crematorium.
The fact they tended to “forget” to include Morris Family Funeral Home and Crematorium in things had gone from being awkward to infuriating, and I wasn’t quitting just because people were squeamish about death.
The delivery guy nodded, startling me back to the moment.“He made all these.Well, I kind of helped.I mostly made the, er, middle fingers.”He blushed at that.“And some of the, um…”
“The butts?”Edward chimed in.“Dad, this one has a butt on it!”
“Edward, I think you left your dinosaur show running in the office.Want to go rewind it?”
He raised a brow at me, and it was like looking back in time at my own self at age six.“It’s streaming.You don’t rewind those.Rewinding is for old videotapes, and no one uses those anymore.”He glanced back at the cupcakes.“Why does that one have a penis on it?”
“Okay then!”I was far too loud for a funeral home, but I didn’t care at that point.“You can put those back in your van and give your boss a call.I’ll be in the office.Come through when you’ve got it sorted out.”
Edward made a beeline for his tablet when we got back to my office, but the way he kept darting glances at the door, scooting to the edge of his chair to see into the Perpetual Peace room, told me I hadn’t heard the last of his plea for cupcakes.I was on the verge of giving in—there had to be at least a hundred of them, easily, not counting however many were still in the van, and the guy had said they’d already been paid for…
No.No, it’d be setting a precedent.Or something.And besides, knowing my luck, I’d need to pay for it or somehow end up paying for the entire order because one was missing and whoever had placed it would be pissed and demand a refund…
“Dad, you’re spiraling,” Edward muttered, scrolling through an e-book about dimetrodon.
I thought about denying it, but it was not only no use, but it’d be a broken promise.When Edward started seeing the child psychologist in San Dimas, we’d made an agreement to look out for one another’s mental health.
It sounded like a lot for a kid his age, but that promise meant that he’d listen to me when I pointed out his own spirals starting or ask if he needed to talk.
“How could you tell?”I sighed.“Was I fidgeting again?”
