Page 59 of The Dead Romantics

Alice glared at me. “No! The company sent me the wrong refill. And it’s stage makeup, so it isn’t like I can go to CVS and get a new jar. Ugh, this is a nightmare,” she added, putting her face in her hands. “First I ran out of embalming fluid last night, and now this.”

Mom patted her on the shoulder. “Murphy’s Law, hon.”

“Murphy can fuck off for thisone funeral.”

Just as I always wanted to be a writer, my little sister always wanted to be a mortician. Ever since I could remember, she’d followed Dad like a shadow. She went to Duke for forensic chemistry, and on weeknights, just for fun, she got her mortuary sciences and funeral services degree online. A part of me always thought that it was Alice who should’ve inherited Dad’s gift. She would’ve been so much better at it, and I doubt she would’ve been run out of town because of it. She was the kind of person to tackle things head-on. Nothing frightened her. Especially after I solved that cold case, and everything got worse. She fought people on my behalf. Another reason why I wanted to leave as quickly as possible when I graduated high school—so she didn’t feel obligated to anymore.

“Anything I can help with?” I asked, poking at my waffle.

Alice said quickly, “No.”

“Are you sure? You don’t have to do everything alone—”

She looked up from her plate, and I instantly realized I’d said the wrong thing. “Oh?Are we going to talk about this now?”

“Alice,” Mom warned.

My entire body went rigid. “No—what does she mean? What do you mean, talk about this now? What’s your problem, Al?”

“Myproblem? It’s not my problem I have a problem with,” she snapped. “The second things get difficult, you leave. No matter what. We can always rely on you for that.”

“That’s not fair. Youknowthat’s not fair.”

“Then why didn’t you ever come home?”

“Everyone visited me in New York!” I batted back. “Every year. You came up for the lights and the Christmas tree and—”

“BecauseDadwanted to see you. And he knew you wouldn’t come home no matter how much he asked. You can ask Mom. We would’ve loved to stay home for Christmas justonce.”

That wasn’t true. Iknewit wasn’t true. They loved coming to visit me during the holidays—they’d said as much! And Dad never once asked me to come home, not once—

“Mom?” I asked, turning my attention to her. “Is that true?”

She turned her eyes to the ceiling tiles, then closed them and took a deep breath. “Your father never wanted you to come back when you weren’t ready.”

A sinking feeling burrowed into the pit of my stomach.

“No, we always catered to you,” Alice added and shoved herself to her feet. “We all’ve got ghosts, Florence. You just happen to be the only one who can’t handle yours.” Then she shoved her arms into her black jacket, and stalked out of the diner.

I didn’t feel hungry anymore.

Mom said patiently, “Florence, you know she didn’t mean that—”

“I’ve got to go write something,” I said, lying,obviouslylying, as I excused myself from the table. Carver gave me a pained look, as if to say,Sorry, but he had nothing to be sorry for. Mom asked if I wanted to take a to-go coffee mug with me, but there was coffee at the bed-and-breakfast, and god knows I’d forget the to-go container in some unspecified location and never find it again.

The thing was, Alice wasn’t wrong.

It was another argument we had been avoiding—for years. And now all of them were bubbling up to the surface.

Not only that, but I had my dead editor to contend with, Dad’sfuneral preparations, and Ann’s manuscript. Everything all at once.

I hated complicated.

When I got back to the bed-and-breakfast, John waved at me without looking up from hisSpider-Mancomic. I climbed the stairs back to my room, and decided that a long and relaxing shower wasexactlywhat I needed. Head empty, water hot, nothing but the white noise of the shower echoing in my brain. I didn’t want to think right now. Not about anything.

So I pulled out my NYU sweatshirt again and picked up my jeans from the floor, and laid them out on the bed before I went for the claw-foot tub with a shower. As it turned out, thankfully, the inn didn’t skimp on water temperature. I let it get as hot as I could—hot enough to boil me alive, exactly how I liked it—and stood under the spray for a long time. Until the steam was thick and the constant shower of water over my head quieted all the buzzing thoughts in my head and my skin was flushed and my fingers began to shrivel.

Too long, probably.

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