23. The Casket of True Love
23
The Casket of True Love
“FLORENCE?”
I glanced up at the voice, quickly wiping the stray tears out of my eyes.
Ben stood in the entryway to the parlor, his hands in his pockets, but all I could see was his faint outline, his face shadowed in the yellow streetlight pouring in through the open windows. Of course he would appear now. When I least wanted him to.
“Great timing,” I muttered, sniffing. God, I probably looked hideous. Half of my eyeliner had already wiped away onto my palm.
He came into the parlor, his footsteps silent against the hardwood floor. “Is . . . everything okay?”
I took a deep breath. If it wasn’t already obvious . . . “No,” I admitted, “but it’s not really something you can help with. Thank you, though. For asking.” Then, a bit quieter, my voice cracking at the edges: “I miss him. I miss him so much, Ben.”
He came over quietly and sat down on the floor in front of me,
and for the first time—ever—he had to look up to meet my gaze, and he gave me something that I hadn’t really thought I wanted: his undivided attention.
“What was your dad like?” he asked, because he was decent. Because he was good.
What was the song Dad liked? “Only the Good Die Young”?
I was quiet as I tried to think of the right words, afraid to open up. To tell him my story. Ben and I were strangers, and he never knew Dad. Never would. And even though Ben was being decent, and kind, and made me feel like my hurt was worthy of this wasted time—
I was still afraid.
Had I always been this guarded? I couldn’t remember. I’d been closed off for so long, locked tightly, that it just felt safe and natural. I tricked myself into thinking that I could live like that forever, and until Ben showed up, I thought perhaps I could.
But now . . .
“My dad was kind, and he was patient—except when his soccer matches were on, then he would get
so
mad at the TV. He smoked too much, and he drank too much at his Thursday night poker games, and he always smelled like funeral flowers and formaldehyde.” Talking about him out loud felt like a relief, in a way, as though I were slowly dismantling the dam I had built, brick by brick, memory by memory, until I could feel again. I wish I could say I wasn’t crying, but I was because I tasted my tears as they slipped into my mouth. “When I was little, we lived here—in this old funeral home, and sometimes I caught him and Mom down here in the parlors, windows thrown open, dancing to a song they heard in their heads. He was the one who said I should be a writer. He said that my words were so loud and so vivid and alive they could wake the dead.” I laughed and said a little quieter, because it
was a secret—one I’d never told anyone before, “Somewhere, under one of these floorboards, I’ve got smut hidden.”
“Oh? Scandalous.”
“You’ll
never
find it,” I added. “Carver looked for years. Finally gave up.”
He laughed, and I really loved the way he laughed. Soft and deep and sincere, and it made my uptight muscles and my rigid bones relax. It was endearing. I mean, for a dead guy. He leaned against my chair, his head resting on the armrest, eyes closed. I clenched my hands because I wanted to run my fingers through his thick black hair. And I couldn’t.
“So, did the great Benji Andor always want to be an editor?” I asked.
He tilted his head to the side, thoughtful. “I never wanted to create words, I always wanted to bury myself in someone else’s. But to be honest, I became an editor because I’m chasing this feeling I felt when I read my—” He quickly stopped himself and cleared his throat. “When I read my first romance.”
“Which one?”
Ben shifted. He didn’t say anything for a long moment, as if he was debating whether to tell me the truth or tell me at all. I doubted he would lie to me at this point—I didn’t think he could lie his way out of a paper bag if he had to. “
The Forest of Dreams
.”
That . . . was
not
what I was expecting. “Seriously? An
Ann Nichols
novel?”
He shrugged. “I was eleven maybe?”
“You must’ve been a popular kid.”
“I mean, I read Tolkien and played Dungeons & Dragons, if that’s any indication.”
“Wow, yeah,
really
popular.”
“I feel like you’re roasting me,” he commented dryly, turning
his face toward me, and there was a smile tucked into the corner of his mouth.
I gave a half laugh that might’ve also been the remnant of a sniffle. “Admiring you, really. Do you know how healthy it is for a kid to read something other than ‘boy books’ aimed at boys?”
“So I’ve heard. I just like love stories, I guess. I like the way they paint the world in this Technicolor dreamland, where the only rule you have to follow is a happily ever after. And I’ve spent most of my adult life chasing after that high.”
“And then I came into your life and declared that romance was dead. No wonder you hated me.”
“I didn’t hate you,” he clarified. “I was caught off guard. Here was a beautiful young woman declaring that romance was dead.”
I shook my head. “I’m not that pretty, Ben.”
He gave me a strange look. His eyelashes were long, and the ocher flecks in his brown eyes glimmered in the dim evening light. “But you
are
.”
My breath caught in my throat. Because here, sitting in the dark with both my mascara and my nose running, he thought I was beautiful? At my worst, selfish and needy and cold?
I quickly looked away.
Suddenly, a gust of wind whistled through the house. The beams creaked; the windows rattled. Ben gave a start.
“It’s just the dead singing,” I replied. Maybe it was Dad, somewhere caught on the wind.
“The dead singing?” He had a peculiar look in his eyes. “Like Lee’s book title?”
I didn’t answer. He didn’t really need it.
“Florence . . .”
“Surprise.” I picked at my cuticles, something that Rose had tried to get me to stop doing for years, but she wasn’t here and I
was nervous. “I thought Lee was it, you know? I thought he was the one. My whole family is made of these impossible love stories—and I thought this was mine. I mean he was
Lee Marlow
. Executive editor at Faux. And he liked
me
. For the first time, a guy I dated looked at me like I mattered, and wanted to know every weird little thing about me.” I shrugged, chewing on the side of my lip. I didn’t like admitting how stupid I was. Even a year later, it was all still so raw. “He was the closest person I ever told about my . . .
gift
. About the ghosts I helped. I chickened out, though. I told him they were stories I wanted to write one day. I put up a barrier because I couldn’t face how he’d look at me if I told him it was real. I should’ve known better. I just became a story to him, too.”
And when the story was written, I wasn’t any use to him anymore.
A crow cawed somewhere outside. They were perched in the dead oak, unsurprisingly. There was a certain kind of silence that permeated places of death. The sound was closed and private, as if the spaces where the dead were honored were separate from the rest of the world. When I was younger and my brain was full of anxious spirals, I would lie down on the floor between funerals, and press my cheek against the cool hardwood, and listen to the house’s silence. It always gave me space to think.
Now, I feared the sadness in my soul was sopping up the silence like a sponge. I felt heavier with each breath. It was no longer a soft silence, but a still one.
He lifted his head from the armrest. A muscle feathered in his jaw. “That
bastard
.”
I gave him a surprised look. “Come again?”
“That
bastard
,” he repeated a little louder. “Of all the fucking shitty things to do to you, he ruined your memories. Things you told him in private—in
trust.
That fucking dead-eyed narcissistic
asshole
.”
Behind him, a vase full of orchids began to rattle. I didn’t think Ben knew he was doing it. “The next time I see him I’m going to—”
“Whoa, tiger, you’re dead.”
The vase stopped rattling almost instantly.
He folded his arms across his chest tightly, and harrumphed
.
“Minor inconvenience.”
His anger took me so off guard, so far out of my range of emotions about what happened to me, I dunno—I just lost it. I began to laugh. And cry. But mostly laugh as I slid off the chair and onto the ground beside him. It was one of those spiraling sorts of laughs, because I didn’t realize how I was supposed to feel about this story until just now—
“Am I that funny to you?” he lamented tragically.
“No—yes,” I added, but my voice was tinged with nothing but adoration. For a guy I barely knew. “Do you know how long I’ve wanted someone to get angry for me? I thought I was going crazy, that maybe I wasn’t
allowed
to get angry because I told Lee they were just stories. I thought maybe . . .” And I hesitated, because had I said too much? I usually didn’t talk about these things—with anyone, not even Rose. They were my problems, and not anyone else’s. But he leaned in a little closer, as if gently asking me to go on, and I felt safe admitting, “I thought it was what I deserved. I thought that’s what I got for . . .”
“For having the audacity to trust someone you loved unconditionally?” he asked, and the anger was gone from his voice. It was softer now, warm like amber.
I quickly turned my head away from him. Looked toward the foyer, and the colorful moonlight that slipped through the stained glass window.
“It isn’t your fault he’s a dick, Florence,” he said. “You deserve so much better than that fuckhead.”
“Strong language, sir.”
“Do you disagree?”
I turned my head back toward him, the specter sitting so still in the parlor room where I had buried my hopes and dreams beneath the floorboards. “No,” I replied simply, and then I smiled. “You know, you being angry on my behalf is kinda sweet. I wish I’d met you sooner when you were alive.”
He returned the sad smile. “Me, too.”