Page 2 of A Love Song for Ricki Wilde

“Girls, let your sister be,” fussed Carole. Once extravagantly pretty, she now had the disoriented look of a prom queen stranded in the wilds of her midseventies with no ride home. “She looks likeme, way back when. Though I never exposed my bosom. I always say, ‘To look your best, don’t lead with breasts.’”

“I’ve never heard you say that,” said Regina.

“Well, you’re flat as paper,” said Carole, swirling the ice in her tumbler.

Richard Wilde Sr., an impeccably suited gentleman who was not a debauched megachurch pastor but looked like one, stayed silent. A millionaire CEO, TED Talk king, andNew York Timesbestselling author of the iconic business bookTill Death: Monetizing the Inevitable, Richard talked for a living but was a man of few words at home. The less he gave, the hungrier his family was for his attention. Especially his oldest daughters, who each owned several Wilde Funeral Homes franchises and were in competition to be the family’s next greatest business mind.

Ricki did not own a franchise. She didn’t own anything of her own. Yet.

“Back to business,” said Rashida. “As I was saying, I’m swamped this week. My designer and I have been finalizing the interiors of my new house. Massive undertaking…”

“Are you using Baylor Washington this time?” asked Regina.

“No one uses him after he did thatformer reality star’srental.” Rashida’s voice lowered to a whisper. “Rhymes with BeBe Reakes.”

Carole yelped.

“Anyway,” Rashida continued, “despite being booked and busy, I just signed the contract on our first Pass Away Café!” She beamed proudly. “Now we can discuss final plans with grieving families over fruit tarts and cognac-spiked lattes.”

Ricki paused midbite. “The brunchification of death, Rashida? Really?”

Rashida tossed her hair. “It’ll be a nippy day in hell when I takebusiness notes from areceptionistwho barely graduated from astateschool.”

“I’m not a receptionist, okay? My official title is director of first impressions.”

Technically, they were both correct. Ricki was the director of first impressions at Wilde Funeral Homes’ flagship property on Peachtree Street, and it was, indeed, a fancy synonym for “receptionist.” Suffice it to say, Ricki’s life hadn’t unfolded the way it was supposed to. Like her sisters, Ricki was meant to graduate with an Ivy League business degree, excel in an entry-level position at Wilde’s, work her way up to a customer-facing role, and finally, open her own franchise—at which point she’d be awarded a weighty trust fund. But from the moment of her accidental conception, Ricki had never followed the plan set out for her.

When it came to the Wilde Funeral Homes businesses, all Ricki ever cared about was one thing: the flowers. The bouquets, the branches, the petals. The fantastical sprays. Growing up, her one respite from the rigidity of the Wildes—and the chilly business of dying—was the wooded garden a mile or so beyond their estate. She’d bask languorously in the crisp, dew-soaked grass, burying her fingers in the soil and dreaming of her own nonsensical, perfect world. She’d plant every seed she could find, coaxing life to spring from the earth. She’d trudge home, breathless, in pollen-dusted shortalls with dirt-encrusted fingernails and grass-strewn hair, and Carole, horrified, would escape to her bedroom suite and speed-dial her therapist.

Little Ricki had her head in the clouds, lost in fairy-tale scenarios so vivid that, till she was twelve years old, she’d whisper to herself in her imaginary friends’ voices. This did not bode well for real friendships. And her dreaminess didn’t translate into business success at Wilde Funeral Homes, either. Hence her careertrajectory. The receptionist salary was abysmal, but it paid for her one-bedroom rental and used car. It was fine. Her life was small.

Ricki had acquaintances, but close friends? Nope. She was too scared to drop her guard. Dating was easy, though, due to her attraction to hot, shallow guys who weren’t super concerned with who she was, beyond being a pretty Wilde. She’d even been engaged three times before coming to her senses and bolting.

Real intimacy—platonic, romantic, or sexual—paralyzed her. What if people saw what the Wildes saw? That she was a joke? Her family had mythologized her black sheep personality. But Ricki wanted to create her own mythology. To stand in herowntruth, as self-help culture dictated. She’d always felt that her real life was unfolding somewhere else, far away.

She did have an inkling of how to get there, though. Ricki had a dream, one that she’d been obsessing over since she was that dirt-dusted kid in the forest. And unlike most childhood dreams, this one hadn’t faded into memory. It had stuck to her, growing and growing, and she’d been cultivating it at every turn. But she’d never breathed a word of it to her family. Wilde Funeral Homes was the planet around which they orbited. Choosing any other future was akin to sin.

“Ricki, it’s your turn to share business news. We’re waiting with bated breath,” prodded Richard in his mellifluous baritone. Lost in thought, Ricki hadn’t realized her sisters had already shared their updates. She was up next.

“Y’all know she doesn’t have news,” mocked Rashida.

“Unless she’s engaged again,” tittered Regina.

“Remember the fiancé who photoshopped their faces on a stock engagement photo and sold it to theAtlanta Journal-Constitution?” asked Rae, giggling.

“Lord! Don’t speak of it,” sighed Carole, spilling a bit of vodkaon her linen sheath. “I could barely show my face at the Orchestra Noir winter ball.”

Rashida snickered. “If only she was as dedicated to work as she was to humiliating us.”

Weary-eyed, Ricki sat silent, disassociating, as her sisters picked her apart, united in their perfection, their smug sameness. If living in this family had taught her anything, it was that compared to Rashidaginarae, she’d never measure up.

Tell them your plan. What you’ve prepared for. Set yourself free.

“I do have news,” she spit out, almost too loud.

Her sisters perked up, looking both suspicious and intrigued.

“What would you think if I… well…” She paused and restarted, adding more gravitas to her voice. “Okay, hear me out. I’d like to open my own shop. A… a flower shop.”

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