14. Moonwalks
14
Moonwalks
FINDING A THOUSAND wildflowers would be the death of me.
I didn’t want to take Mr. Taylor up on his offer because I didn’t want anyone to go out of their way for me. If I was going to do something, I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone else. It might’ve been because I was stubborn, or because I just didn’t like help, but I resolved to do all these things on Dad’s list alone. So, I called a florist within twenty-five miles from me and asked about the price and delivery fees of a thousand fucking wildflowers. Turns out, they cost more than my first apartment in Brooklyn, and
that
was the place that I shared with a cockroach big enough to contend with Godzilla.
“They’re
weeds
!” I cried, slamming my phone down on the bar. “Why do
weeds
cost so much?!”
After Ben disappeared, I went back to the inn, where I returned to my search for a thousand wildflowers. I had moved from my room to the tiny bar downstairs that didn’t have a bartender, but a bell I could ring to summon Dana and ask them for another
rum and Coke. Which I did. Often. I had my laptop with me, opened to Yelp and Google Maps and twenty other tabs that I’d rather not mention.
Could I pick the flowers in the wild? Where even
was
a wildflower field? Maybe the Ridge? But it was April. And there had already been more than one cold snap. They’d be dead and crispy by the time I found them. And it was the
Ridge.
I didn’t want to go there. Not ever.
Dana poked their head through the doorway behind the bar that led to the check-in counter. “Everything okay in here?”
“Weeds!” I cried, throwing my hands up. “They want a thousand dollars for
weeds
!”
“I think I got a dealer who can cut you a deal—”
“Wildflowers,” I corrected.
“
Ooh
. Yeah, I’m afraid I can’t help you there.” The front door opened, and Dana glanced back and smiled. “But you know what
can
help?”
“A bullet to the head?”
“The mayor! Dun, dun, DUN!” they sang as the clatter of paws came up behind me on the hardwood floor.
I turned around on my stool.
And there sitting so perfectly behind me was a golden retriever named Fetch. A little grayer than I remembered around his snout, he was still just as
fetching
as he had been the day I met him, before I left for college.
That was ten years ago—holy shit, I suddenly felt old.
“Doggo!” I cried, sliding off my stool onto the ground. He gave a soft yip, tail wagging, and smothered me in kisses. A laugh bubbled up from my throat. There was no way to
not
feel a little happy when you’re being licked by a dog with breath that could knock an elephant out cold.
“You remember me, boy? You miss me?” I asked, scrubbing him behind the ear, and in a happy reply, his tail went
thump thump thump
. “Of course you remember me, right, boy? Have you been keeping the town safe?”
Thump thump thump!
“Pass any good laws?”
Thumpthumpthumpthump—
“There is now officially a water bowl in front of every shop on Main Street that is changed daily,” said a voice behind the dog.
I glanced up.
Seaburn, his owner, stood with his hands in his pockets. “Thought we’d find you here.”
I looked up as the mayor tried to go to second base with his tongue. “Mom sent you?”
“Nah. She’s busy with a funeral this evening. I asked to help but . . .”
“I also asked,” I supplied. After the florist, I’d stopped by the funeral home to help out with the visitation today, but Mom was having none of it.
In fact, she seemed a little bit angry. “It’s not like I can’t run my own business!” she cried. “I’ll be fine! I’ve been doing this for
thirty years
!”
It was all I could do to leave with my head intact.
Seaburn sat down on the stool next to me. “Your mom does things in her own way, on her own time. We should leave her to it.”
That didn’t mean I wasn’t
worried
. And focusing on my mother felt a lot more constructive than focusing on my own sadness. Hers I felt like I could at least try to fix. Mine? It was a hole in my chest filled with all of the things that made my grief so heavy, it was hard to breathe sometimes.
I gave the mayor one last good scrub behind his ears before I resumed my seat and took another long gulp of my rum and Coke.
Seaburn and I had graduated within a few years of each other.
He was a junior when I started at Mairmont High. His family owned and maintained St. John’s of Mairmont Cemetery on the other side of town, so it felt only natural that, when Dad needed someone to help manage the funeral business, he asked Seaburn if he wanted to work together. For the last seven years or so, Dad and Seaburn had managed the funerals and the gravesite services for the majority of the town. And apparently Dad had started to train Alice in the same thing.
“You’re more than welcome to keep me company,” I said. “I’m not up to much. Just . . .” I waved at my Word document.
Seaburn asked Dana for a beer, and asked me, “Still writing?”
“Stubbornly.”
He barked a laugh. “Good! I liked your first book—
Ardently Yours.
So funny. Loved the romance bits, too.”
“Oh no”—I burrowed my face in my hands—“please tell me you didn’t read it.”
“Don’t worry, I closed my eyes during the sex scenes.”
I groaned into my hands, mortified.
“We even did a book club for it when it came out,” he went on. “Everyone loved it. It was—I dunno how to describe it.” He tilted his head, taking another sip of his beer. “
Happy
’s a close word.”
That was flattering, especially from Seaburn, who read so much and so widely my reading habits probably paled in comparison. “A romance leaves you happy—or at least content—at the end. Or it’s supposed to. I think.”
Because I didn’t know anymore.
“It was good. You’re a fantastic writer,” he added. “I think everyone in Mairmont bought a copy.” If only the sales in my small hometown could have changed the course of that book, my entire life could have been so, so much different.
I rubbed my thumb against the condensation on my glass.
The mayor came and put his head on my lap. I scrubbed him good behind the ears again, and his tail assaulted the floor.
THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP—
“Thanks,” I said, because I felt as though I didn’t deserve that sort of praise—not in my current predicament. “I’m trying.”
“All anyone can do,” Seaburn replied, and then took a deep breath. “And speaking of trying something . . . I heard from Carver that you’re taking on the old man’s will alone.”
“No one else has time.”
“That’s not true.”
I gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I can do it. Everyone else has things to do, and anything I can do to help out . . . I don’t know if you know this, but I’ve been kind of MIA for the last ten years,” I added sarcastically.
“The town ran you out. There’s a difference.”
“But I could’ve come back, right? It wasn’t like I was ostracized or anything. I was just . . .”
Bullied. Called
ghoulie
behind my back. My social media was bombarded, day after day, with memes and names and joking questions of “Can you solve the Black Dahlia next?” And “Do you commune with the devil?”
Or, more commonly,
liar.
All because I helped a ghost solve his own murder when I was thirteen—too young to know better but too old to chalk it up to imaginary friends.
“No one who knows you faulted you for leaving,” Seaburn replied sternly. He reached over to my hand and took it tightly. My knuckles grated together, how hard he squeezed. “Especially not your dad.”
A knot formed in my throat. “I know.”
But it was still nice to hear.
“I just want to help my family,” I said helplessly. “This is the only thing I know I can do. Or at least try to. Carver and Alice . . .” They had been talking about finances with Mom before I came to breakfast this morning, and had changed the subject
way
too quickly to be inconspicuous about it. They had meetings today with Dad’s life insurance reps, and the budget for the funeral—and I wanted to do something, anything, to help. “They’ve already done a lot. A lot more than me. This is the least I can do, right?”
Seaburn sighed. “You don’t have to do everything alone, love.”
But oh, it was easier that way.
“Thank you,” I said instead, with a soothing smile I’d learned over the years of saying,
I’m fine.
“All right, just as long as you know,” Seaburn said, and raised his glass. “To the old man. The weirder, the better.”
“The weirder, the better,” I replied, and we clinked glasses and drank quietly. When he’d finished his beer, he checked the time and figured he’d ought to start moseying home, so I thanked him for the conversation and went to give one last pat to the mayor—but he was gone.
“Now where did he wander off to . . .” Seaburn began to get up to look for him, when I said I would find the mayor. I needed to stretch my legs anyway.
“I’ll go find the mayor. Stay for another beer—on me,” I added, signaling to Dana, and went to go search for the mayor. He couldn’t have gone far. Dana pointed outside, and I followed their direction. “Fetch,” I called, clicking my tongue to the roof of my mouth, “here, boy.”
I searched around the side of the veranda. It was a warm evening, and it brought quite a few lightning bugs out of hiding. They blinked between the blooming rosebushes and the hydrangeas in the garden.
Outside, I found Fetch—and a friend.
Ben was sitting in one of the rocking chairs, and Fetch had gone up and put his head on the armrest. Ben tried to pet him, but his fingers passed through the dog’s ears, and he quickly jerked his hand away.
Fetch wagged his tail, anyway.
Dogs were pretty good judges of character. And I hated to admit that it was nice to see Ben, and see him not . . . losing it. Like he did earlier. Because real emotions were complicated. If someone started crying, I started crying with them, and it turned into a whole ordeal—like with Ben. Oh, that was
mortifying
.
I put my hands into my jean pockets, steeled my nerves, and wandered closer to him. “So, you like dogs, Mr. Andor?”
He seemed surprised that I’d noticed him because no one else had. “Oh—ah, Ben, please.”
“Ben.” I said his name and it sounded—friendly. Nice. Pointed at the front, and a hum at the end. I motioned to the mayor. “This is Fetch.”
“He’s a good boy. I heard that he’s the mayor?”
“Yep, won reelection twice already.”
“What a
good
dog,” he told Fetch, whose tail began to whip the porch in a happy
THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP—
Oh yeah, Ben was definitely a dog kind of guy. Nailed it.
Fetch whined and I clicked my tongue to the roof of my mouth. He came trotting over and I scrubbed him behind the ears. He licked at my hand.
The night was soft and warm, like most spring nights in the South. There was still the undeniable snap of the last of winter’s chill, but the lightning bugs were already out and performing loops in the garden outside. The moon was so bright, it looked almost like a silvery daytime, and a group of kids played kickball in the street.
There wasn’t much to Mairmont. It was quiet, and the traffic was token, and the cicadas buzzed so loud you could barely think.
I don’t know why I said what I said next—maybe it was the buzzing of the insects, or the kids kicking a ball down the street, or the two glasses of rum and Coke, but I said, “Dad used to say these kinds of nights were best for a good moonwalk.”
Ben gave me a peculiar look. “A
moonwalk
?”
“It’s a stroll—most of the time, through a graveyard. Dad says you can only take a moonwalk when there’s a good moon. No clouds, no rain. Don’t look at me like that—
yes.
Graveyard. My family runs a funeral home. My dad’s the director.” I stopped myself, and corrected, “
Was
the director.” I shifted uncomfortably on the rail and shook my head. “It doesn’t matter—”
“Do you want to go?” he asked suddenly.
“Go . . . where?”
“On this, erm,
moonwalk
. I have some questions about”—he motioned to himself—“and about you. I don’t quite understand, and I’d like to. And maybe you need to talk, too. Besides, a change of scenery might be nice.”
“Through a graveyard.”
“I
am
dead. It seems apt.”
I bit my lip to keep the smile from my face. He had a point. But him asking was . . .
unexpected
. And I didn’t know what it was—probably the rum and Cokes—but it might’ve also been the way the silvery moonlight fell across his face, and the way his hair was a little floppy and his eyes were dark and deep and not at all cold or cruel, like I’d imagined in my head. As though he was actually looking at me, really looking, and wanted to know me and this weird life I lived. No lies, no walls of fiction—only this strange little secret no one knew.
And, anyway, I
did
need a change of scenery.