Мелисса Марр – Graveminder (страница 5)

“If anything happens to me, you mind her grave and mine the first three months. Just like when you go with me, you take care of the graves.” Maylene looked fierce. Her grip on Rebekkah’s hand tightened. “Promise me.”

“I promise.” Rebekkah’s heartbeat sped. “Are you sick?”

“No, but I’m an old lady.” She let go of Rebekkah’s hand and reached down to touch Ella. “I thought you and Ella Mae would …” Maylene shook her head. “I need you, Rebekkah.”

Rebekkah shivered. “Okay.”

“Three sips for safety. No more. No less.” Maylene held out the silver flask for the third time. “Three on your lips at the burial. Three at the soil for three months. You hear?”

Rebekkah nodded and took her third sip of the stuff.

Maylene leaned down to kiss Ella’s forehead. “You sleep now. You hear me?” she whispered. “Sleep well, baby girl, and stay where I put you.”

Rebekkah was still clutching the phone when it rang. She looked at the readout: it was Maylene’s area code, but not either of her numbers. “Maylene?”

A man said, “Rebekkah Barrow?”

“Yes.”

“Rebekkah, I need you to sit down,” he said. “Are you sitting?”

“Sure,” she lied. Her palms were sweating. “Mr. Montgomery? Is this …” Her words faded.

“It is. I’m so sorry, Rebekkah. Maylene is—”

“No,” Rebekkah interrupted. “No!”

She slid down the wall as the world slipped out of focus, collapsed to the floor as her fears were confirmed, closed her eyes as her chest filled with a pain she hadn’t felt in a very long time.

“I’m so sorry.” William’s voice gentled even more. “We’ve been trying to call all day, but the number we had for you was wrong.”

“We?” Rebekkah stopped herself before she asked about Byron; she could handle a crisis without him at her side. He hadn’t been at her side for years, and she was just fine. Liar. Rebekkah felt the numbness, the need-to-cry-scream-choke grief that she couldn’t touch yet. She heard the whispered questions she’d wondered when Ella died. How could she not tell me? Why didn’t she call? Why didn’t she reach for me? Why wasn’t I there?

“Rebekkah?”

“I’m here. Sorry … I just …”

“I know.” William paused, and then reminded her, “Maylene must be interred within the next thirty-six hours. You need to come home tonight. Now.”

“I … she …” There weren’t words, not truly. The Claysville tendency to adopt green burial procedures, those that relied on the lack of embalming, unsettled her. She didn’t want her grandmother to return to the soil: she wanted her to be alive.

Maylene is dead.

Just like Ella.

Just like Jimmy.

Rebekkah clutched the phone tightly enough that the edges creased her hand. “No one called … the hospital. No one called me. I would’ve been there if they called.”

“I’m calling now. You need to come home now,” he said.

“I can’t get there that quickly. The wake … I can’t be there today.”

“The funeral is tomorrow. Catch a red-eye.”

She thought about it, the things she’d need to do. Get Cherub’s carrier. Trash. Empty the trash. Water the ivy. Do I have anything respectable to wear? There were a dozen things to do. Focus on those. Focus on the tasks. Call the airline.

“Thank you. For taking care of her, I mean. I’m glad … not glad”—she stopped herself. “Actually, I’d really rather you hadn’t called, but that wouldn’t make her alive, would it?”

“No,” he said softly.

The enormity of Maylene’s being gone felt too huge then, like stones in Rebekkah’s lungs, making it hard to move, taking up the space where air should be. She closed her eyes again and asked, “Did she … was she sick long? I didn’t know. I was there at Christmas, but she never said anything. She seemed fine. If I’d known … I … I would’ve been there. I didn’t know until you called.”

He paused a beat too long before replying. “Call the airline, Rebekkah. Book a flight home. Questions can wait till you get here.”

3

WILLIAM SLID HIS PHONE ACROSS THE DESK, FARTHER OUT OF REACH. “She’s on her way. You could’ve called her; you probably should have.”

“No.” Byron sat beside his father’s desk and stared at the page of crossed-out numbers for Rebekkah. Some were in Maylene’s handwriting; others were in Rebekkah’s. She was even worse than he’d been. That doesn’t mean I need to go running to her side. He wasn’t going to be cruel to her—couldn’t—but he wasn’t going to chase after her hoping for another kick in the face.

“Julia won’t come with her. Even for this, she won’t return to Claysville.” William looked directly at Byron. “Rebekkah will need you.”

He met his father’s gaze. “And despite everything, I’ll be here. You know that, and so does Rebekkah.”

William nodded. “You’re a good man.”

At that, Byron’s gaze dropped. He didn’t feel like a good man; he felt tired of trying to live a life without Rebekkah—and utterly unable to live a life with her. Because she can’t let go of the past. Byron’s desire to be there for Rebekkah warred with the memories of the last time they’d spoken. They’d stood in the street outside a bar in Chicago, and Rebekkah had made it very clear that she didn’t want him in her life. Never, B. Don’t you get it? I’m never going to be that girl, not for you or anyone else, she’d half sobbed, half shouted, especially not for you. He’d known when he woke the next morning she’d be gone again; she’d vanished while he slept enough times that he was always a little surprised if she was actually there in the morning.

William pushed away from his desk. Briefly he clasped Byron’s shoulder, and then walked to the door.

Maybe it was only to avoid the topic Byron didn’t want to think about, but it was still a truth they needed to address. Byron started, “Rebekkah only lived here for a few years, and she hasn’t lived here for nine years.” He paused and waited then until his father looked at him before finishing: “She’ll have questions, too.”

William didn’t cow easily, though. He merely nodded and said, “I know. Rebekkah will be told what she needs to know when she needs to know it. Maylene was very clear in how to handle matters. She had everything in order.”

“And Maylene’s planning … is that all in her nonexistent file? I looked, you know. The woman had an office here, but there’s no paperwork on her. No plot. No prepaid anything. Nothing.” Byron kept his voice even, but the frustration he’d felt for years over the unanswered questions seemed ready to bubble over. “One of these days, you’re going to have to stop keeping secrets if I’m ever to be a real partner in the funeral home.”

“All you need to know today is that Maylene didn’t need a file. The Barrow woman pays no fees, Byron. There are traditions in Claysville.” William turned and walked away, his departing footsteps muffled by the soft gray carpet that lined the hallways.

“Right,” Byron muttered. “Traditions.”

That excuse had worn thin long before Byron left Claysville the day after graduation from high school, and it hadn’t gotten any more palatable in the eight years since. If anything, the frustration of these answerless discussions grew more pressing. The traditions here were more than small-town peculiarities: there was something different about Claysville, and Byron was certain his father knew what it was.

Normal towns don’t lure you back.

Most people never moved away. They were born, lived, and died in the town limits. Byron hadn’t realized how securely he was rooted in Claysville until he’d gotten out—and instantly felt the need to come back. He’d thought it would lessen, but the need to return home grew worse rather than better over time. Five months ago—after eight years of resisting it and not being able to ever assuage the need—he’d given in.

During those years away, he’d tried to stay in small towns, telling himself that maybe he wasn’t cut out for city living. Then he’d tell himself it was the wrong town, wrong city. He’d tried towns so small that they were specks of dust, and larger ones, and then more cities. He’d tried living in Nashville, in Chicago, in Portland, in Phoenix, in Miami. He’d lied to himself, blaming each move on the weather, on the pollution, on the wrong culture or the wrong relationship or the wrong funeral home. On everything but the truth. In eight years, he’d lived in thirteen places—although, admittedly, a few of them were only for a couple of months—and he couldn’t stop thinking the next move should be home every single time. The moment he crossed over the town line, every bit of wanderlust he’d been unable to sate dissipated; the vise that had tightened across his chest little by little over the years had suddenly vanished.

Will Bek feel the same way?

She had only lived in Claysville for a few years; she’d moved there with her mother at the start of high school, and they were gone before graduation. Somehow those three years were the ones that set the events for the last nine years of his life. Ella died, Rebekkah left, and Byron spent the next nine years missing them both.

Byron heard his father’s voice in their office manager’s office. He listened to William ask about the preparations for the wake and burial. After William was sure all was in order, he would go down to the preparation room to visit Maylene. She had been bathed and dressed; her hair and makeup made her look more lifelike. However, as was traditional in Claysville, she had not been embalmed. Her body would be returned to the earth with no toxins other than the lingering traces of those she’d ingested over the years.