11. Past Tense
11
Past Tense
I SLEPT FOR almost three hours.
Almost
.
I knew how ghosts worked. They always popped up in the most unexpected places, and I wasn’t sure when Benji Andor would show up again.
If
he showed up again. A very small, very unreliable part of me well and truly hoped I’d imagined him. But tell that to my anxiety, which was dead set on not letting me get a full REM cycle of sleep. Every groan and crack of the old house startled me awake, until my phone finally went off at 9:30
A.M
.
And I felt like a truck had run me over, backed up, and hit me again.
At least I had packed my heavy-duty concealer—the good stuff. I slathered it under my eyes and hoped I looked at least a little alive as I traipsed down the steps to the foyer, where a larger redheaded man sat on the stool Dana occupied last night. He had on an anime T-shirt and about half a dozen piercings in his face, and it took me a moment to recognize him.
“John?”
He looked up from his magazine at the sound of his name, and put on a smile. “Flo-town! Dana said you were staying here!” He stood and quickly hurried around the desk to give me a bear hug. Approximately three of my ribs cracked and I died. He set me down with a laugh. “It’s been—how long, ten years?”
“About,” I conceded. “I barely recognized you!”
He blushed and rubbed the back of his neck. He had on a hat with a pizza design on it, and a loud floral button-down. Miles from the guy I dated in high school—polo shirts and short buzzed hair and a football scholarship to Notre Dame. “Ah, yeah, a lot’s happened.”
“You’re telling me. Congrats on you and Dana!”
“Yeah, can’t
believe
my luck. How’s New York been treating you?”
“Good. Well—not bad,” I amended.
He laughed. “That’s good to hear. And how’s your wr—” The old rotary phone at the desk began to ring, and he apologetically excused himself to go take the call. “Mairmont Bed-and-Breakfast, John speaking . . .” Then he put his hand over the receiver and whispered to me, “It’s good to see you, though I’m sorry about your dad. He was a real good guy.”
The words hit me like a hurricane, because for a moment I’d forgotten. “Thank you,” I forced out, fixing a smile onto my face.
He went back to the person on the phone, and I left as quickly as I could. I think he shouted after me about breakfast, but I was already late to the Waffle House to meet my family, and no offense to the breakfast at the inn—nothing topped hash browns scattered, smothered, and covered.
The WaHo was at the end of Main Street, near the elementary school and the bookstore, and the parking lot was jammed with
travelers stopping through Mairmont on their way through South Carolina to North Carolina and Tennessee. It was close enough to Pigeon Forge to visit Dollywood whenever you wanted or pop over to Asheville to tour the Biltmore. Mairmont was situated just on the outskirts of the Appalachian Mountains, hilly enough to have great walking trails but flat enough for the mountain roads to not kill a Prius. My family sat in the farthest booth at the diner, already eating their cheesy hash browns and sausage-and-egg omelets. I quickly hurried over and slid into the booth beside Mom.
She said, “We already ordered you a waffle and hash browns,” as she slid over a cup of coffee.
I took a long drink. “Mmh, battery acid.”
“Late as usual,” Carver added dryly, mocking a look at his expensive Rolex.
Alice agreed. “Some things never change.”
“No one said there was a
hard
meeting time,” I scoffed. “Ooh, yum,” I added as the waitress came over with my waffle and a side of hash browns. They smelled absolutely delicious, and my stomach grumbled, reminding me how many meals I skipped yesterday. (Three, all three.)
“Blessed nutritious breakfast sugar,” I said, starved, as the waitress left for another table.
Carver gave me a strange look from across the table. “That hungry?”
“They don’t have Waffle Houses up in New York,” I replied, digging my fork into the soft waffle, cutting off a piece so large I had to angle it to get it into my mouth. It was syrupy and sweet and soggy, just like I remembered.
Mom asked, “So how’s the bed-and-breakfast? I heard it was renovated after Nancy Riviera passed. Is it pretty?”
“Gorgeous,” I said between mouthfuls. “Dana did a great job.”
“Your father and I talked about spending the night there on our anniversary and . . .” Mom frowned into her almost-empty cup of tea. “Well, I guess that won’t be happening.”
Alice gave me a pointed look, as if it was my fault.
“Anyway,” Mom went on, “staying in hotels
always
gives me such sore muscles. You know, your room
is
exactly as we left it. Well, with the exception of a sewing machine in the corner. And some paints. And some reclaimed furniture pieces I found on the side of the road—”
Alice interrupted, “She turned it into her art room.”
“It’s my crafting office,” she corrected nobly.
“That’s fine. I like the bed-and-breakfast.” I took another large bite of waffle. “So, what’s the family meeting this morning?”
Mom clapped her hands together. “Right! The schedule.”
I blinked. “Come again?”
Alice said, “There’s two funerals we have to get through first. Mr. Edmund McLemore and Jacey Davis.”
Carver shook his head. “I know no one else’ll point this out—but don’t you think it’s a bit insane that we have to do other people’s funerals when Dad’s dead? Can’t they get someone else?”
Alice gave him a tired look. “Who, exactly? There’s not another funeral home in town.”
“Then the
next
town? Asheville? Pop on the interstate and you’re there in no time. C’mon, Mom,” he said to our mom when he realized that he wasn’t gonna get Alice to budge, “you can’t honestly be expected to work right now.”
But Mom was having none of it. She waved her hand dismissively. “They want to be buried by a Day, and it’s an honor and a privilege to do so! I won’t send them somewhere else when we can give them the best ending.”
It was next to impossible to argue with Mom when she had her
mind set. Much like Alice, she was immovable. Carver was the sensible one, but he also knew when it was a lost cause. He shook his head and mumbled something under his breath (that sounded suspiciously like “this is why we never went on vacation”), and I was left sopping up the syrup and asking, “Can I do anything to help?”
“Oh, sweetheart, I don’t think so,” Mom replied. “Besides, Alice has most of the funerals this week under control. I just have to be there to—to be there. Xavier would haunt me if I didn’t. Though I don’t think I can do all the heavy lifting.”
“I can do that,” Carver suggested. “I have some time accrued.”
I frowned down into my waffle. Business as usual, even though one of us was gone, and it was strange in the way that
The Twilight Zone
was strange. As though, on the plane ride home, I’d fallen into a parallel dimension. Everything was off-kilter enough to be wonky. How everyone’s life was still running, still going, still pushing forward when Dad—
I fisted my hands. “But what about Dad’s funeral arrangements?”
“Aren’t they just so eccentric?” Mom sighed wistfully.
“Someone needs to do them, Mom.”
“Meaning us,” Carver guessed, and stirred his glass of water. “I’m afraid I can’t help all that much. I have a tech report due at the end of the week, and if I’m helping with the other funerals . . .”
“I won’t have time between the two services and the embalming processes,” Alice added, somewhat annoyed. “His requests are just—just so—so
inane.
”
“They’re what Dad asked for.”
“I know, but we don’t have the time, Florence.”
That struck a nerve. “Well,
I
have time, so I’ll do all of them.”
My younger sister rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to do
all
of them. I just meant—”
“You don’t have time, I get it.”
She threw up her hands. “Sure! Whatever! Do it yourself. Florence Day, always being the lone hero!”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it—”
“Girls,” Mom interrupted in her steady, soft voice. Alice and I both sank back into the booth. “Fighting about this won’t solve anything.”
No, but I wasn’t the one picking the fights. I began to say as much, when Carver checked his smart watch and said, “Karen’s supposed to come by with Dad’s finances in a few. Want to go ahead and head over there, Mom?”
“If we must,” Mom sighed. “Xavier could’ve at least given us a
hint
on how to go about the Elvis one . . .”
Yes, but I’d figure it out.
I wanted to ask about the lawyer, and the finances—I hadn’t heard anything about a meeting, but it seemed like my siblings had. Maybe they didn’t want me to be a part of it, or I’d missed the memo, or . . . I didn’t know. A myriad of things.
But whatever—I tried to brush off the feeling that I was missing out on something that I should’ve been a part of as I grabbed the ticket for the bill.
“Go on, I’ll pay,” I said. “I think it’s my turn, anyway.”
My family scooted out of the booth and started talking about the funeral and how widely to send out the invitations. To the relatives in the Lowcountry, and the poker club, and most of Mairmont (including the mayor, Fetch, a bubbly golden retriever who had won reelection three times).
Mom sighed as she followed Alice and Carver out of the WaHo. “I wonder if it would be frowned upon to dance with his portrait at the wake? You know the picture—him in the dovetail tuxedo? So dashing.”
“
No
,” Carver and Alice replied, and the door chime dinged as they left.
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. I was still angry with Alice—she was hurting, we all were—but I missed them. I missed mornings like this, and bad soggy waffles, and I missed Dad.
I didn’t think missing him would feel so lonely, though.
I leaned on the counter, beside a guy muttering to himself—small towns, they always had at least one weird guy—and handed the cashier a twenty. She smiled and said, “You must be Florence!”
The man beside me went rigid.
“Your dad comes here every Saturday,” the cashier went on. “Always orders the same thing—the All-Star with extra hash browns. Scattered, smothered, and covered. Where is the old man today?”
“He passed away the other night,” I said, and the man glanced over. We locked eyes. Dark hair, brown eyes, an angular face. He didn’t have anything in front of him—no food or coffee—and no one seemed to pay him any attention. And that was a feat when you sat up at the counter at a Waffle House. You had to be either highly disliked or—
Or not really there.
And worse yet, I recognized his dark hair and navy trousers and the articulate way he had rolled up his sleeves tightly to his elbows. He looked like he could’ve been a painting of a forlorn businessman . . .
. . . of the slightly dead variety.
I paled.
“M-Miss Day?” Benji Andor asked.
The cashier’s smile faltered. “Oh, no. I’m so sorry to hear about your father—”
Suddenly, the jukebox gave a loud screech, and the lights
flickered with a start. It picked a random album and inserted it into the player. The neon lit up, and a song crackled from the forty-year-old speakers.
I winced. And whispered, “Stop it.”
His wide eyes darted to the jukebox, then back to me. “I—that’s not me.”
“It
is
.”
“That thing keeps acting up,” the cashier apologized as she counted out my change. “Got a mind of its own sometimes, I think.”
The piano beat. The tambourine. And suddenly I’m back in the red parlor after a wake, dancing on Dad’s feet as he sings “buttercup, don’t break my heart” in an awful key, golden afternoon light streaming through the window. It fills me with bitterness, because it’s gone. The moment’s gone—all those moments are gone.
My throat constricts.
“Four dollars and thirty-seven cents is your change. Have a great day, miss,” the cashier said as she handed me a few bills and coins. I quickly pocketed them into my coat and left the diner. Ben followed, squeezing through the open door as it swung shut.
“Last night—at that door—it was you, wasn’t it? You answered the door,” he said, following me.
I trained my eyes at the sidewalk in front of me. “This isn’t happening.”
“
What’s
not happening?”
Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him.
An older gentleman walking his dog decided to cross to the other side of the street, and I didn’t know if it was because of
me
or because the dog had to take a poo in an azalea bush on the other side, but it didn’t stop me from guessing. I fished my phone out of my pocket and mimed answering a call.
In two steps, he had caught back up with me. “Please don’t
ignore me—everyone is.
Everyone
. I sat in that diner for—for
hours
—trying to get someone to see me. No one could! No one! What’s happening to me? Last I remembered I was at your front door, and then I was in the diner and—things don’t make sense—and you’re not listening—”
“I
am
,” I interrupted. “I just can’t be seen, you know, talking to myself.”
His shoulders slumped. “So it’s true . . . no one can see me. Except you? But—why?” About fifty emotions crossed his face, from disbelief to confusion, before he finally settled on accusatory. “What makes
you
special?”
“Wow. You’re charming, you know that?”
“I am when I’m not scared out of my mind, Miss Day.”
I winced. Even though I was walking at a pretty fast pace, he was keeping up on his long legs without even breaking a sweat. There was no way I’d outpace him. Sometimes, I hated being short.
Often, actually.
On top of my father’s funeral, Benji Andor’s ghost was something I didn’t need.
But . . . I couldn’t
ignore
him, either.
Especially hearing his voice crack like that, begging for me to see him because—
My dad would tell me to help him. My dad would say it was our job, our duty, our
responsibility.
A responsibility I hadn’t risen to in about ten years. Not since I left Mairmont. And of course I felt like I had to now, because if Dad was here,
he
would have.
I stopped at the street corner, and decided, well, to make my dear dead dad proud, and spun on my heels to face Benji. He came to an abrupt stop a few inches away, and I realized just how silly I probably looked to him from his angle. I didn’t care. “You’re a ghost,” I started. “A spirit. Working through a post-living experience.”
“Working through a post-living—
what
?” Baffled, he ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m not
dead
. This is a bad dream. A nightmare. I’ll wake up and—”
“Everything will be exactly the same,” I interrupted. “Because you won’t wake up.”
“No—
no
.”
His voice wound tight again, like Alice’s used to when she began to have a panic attack. I’d never encountered a ghost this adamant about being alive before. When I was a child, every ghost that came looking for me knew they were dead. It wasn’t a hard leap to make, but Benji Andor seemed to be the kind of straitlaced guy who dealt in facts and figures instead of midnight ghost stories and myths.
And I couldn’t believe I was doing this.
“Mr. Andor,” I said, because Benji or Ben sounded too informal, and I wanted to keep as much distance as I could. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m
not dead
—”
I punched my fist straight through his chest.
“That tingles,” he murmured, frowning down at my fist that should’ve been massaging his heart in his chest if he were alive.
“See?” I pointed out. “Dead.”
“I can’t be. I don’t—I don’t
feel
dead.”
I removed my fist. Touching a ghost tingled for me, too. It felt cold, and a bit crackly—like my fingers had fallen asleep. “Not even inside? Not even a little?”
He ignored my very funny joke. “I can’t be dead because I don’t remember dying, thank you very much. And ghosts don’t exist. It’s scientifically proven.”
“Is it now.”
“Yes.”
“Then, buddy, I’m not sure what to tell you.”
We came to the roundabout in the middle of town. There was a green park in the middle with a white gazebo, and a man who looked like my old orchestra teacher on the steps practicing a rousing rendition of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” on his cello. He was really tearing up the strings.
“If I’m dead,” Ben proposed smartly, “then how can you see me?”
What a question.
One that Lee Marlow never asked as I told him all of my ghost stories. He simply suspended his disbelief as I weaved my memories into his fiction. Did he ever find a reason for why I could see ghosts? Did his editor ask how? Did Lee finally have to make something by himself?
I didn’t know—and I didn’t want to know.
But leave it to an editor to ask the questions that burn into plot holes.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, “but what I do know, Ben, is that you’re dead. Very dead. Dead-as-a-doornail sort of dead.
Ghost
dead—”
He held up his hand to stop me, his other massaging the bridge of his nose. “Okay, okay, I get it. I just . . . I want to know why. And why
you
.”
“That makes two of us, then.” I crossed the street, back toward the bed-and-breakfast, and he followed slightly behind me with his long, leisurely legs. “The only thing I can think of is that manuscript—but if you’re dead, I don’t have to turn it in anymore.”
“Not that you had it finished to begin with,” he muttered.
I opened the wrought iron gate to the inn—and froze. “Wait . . .” I turned back to him. “You
knew
?”
“That you were Annie’s ghostwriter? Yes,” he replied, a bit perplexed. “I’m her editor—of course I knew. I just didn’t expect . . . well, it was a surprise when you walked in.”
I blinked. “
Oh
. Well then.”
“No, wait, that’s not what I meant—”
I whirled around and marched up the front walk to the veranda. “No, no, I definitely get what you meant. Me, the failure that I am.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me you ghostwrote for her?”
“Would it have changed anything?” I challenged, and he pursed his lips in reply. Looked away. Because I was right—it
wouldn’t
have changed anything. “See? It didn’t matter anyway. Whether I told you or not, you knew I was a failure.”
“That’s
not
what I think of you,” he stressed somberly.
I wanted to believe him. Wished I could. But I knew myself better than someone who had talked with me for thirty minutes and kissed me behind a hipster bar, and I knew exactly what I was—
who
I was.
A coward who ran away from the only home she ever knew. A gullible idiot who fell for guys who promised her the world. And a failure who couldn’t finish the one thing she was good at.
Suddenly, a strange look crossed his face. Confusion. Then curiosity. He cocked his head. “Do you hear th—?”
The next second he was gone, and I was left standing on the veranda alone.