And I had leaned in, so sure it was a cure for death, a way to bat it away—
“Everything that dies never really goes. In little ways, it all stays.”
Not in the horrific way Lee wrote it. Not with moaning ghosts and terrifying poltergeists and living dead, but in the way the sun came back around again, the way flowers browned and became dirt and new seeds bloomed the next spring. Everything died, but pieces of it remained. Dad was in the wind because he breathed the same air that I breathed. Dad was a mark in history because he existed. He was part of my future because I still carried on.
I carried him with me. This house carried him.
This town.
“Florence?” Ben asked timidly. “Are you okay?”
I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the tears to stay back. I was going to cry enough today. I didn’t want to start early. “Yeah. We should probably bring the crows over.”
“At least I’m useful for something.”
“That’s why I keep you around,” I teased—and he suddenly pitched forward. “Ben!” I cried.
He caught himself on the doorframe. Shook his head. “Sorry—I—dizzy,” he muttered. His hands were shaking, and his skin had dropped to that pale, sickly tone from last night.
A knot formed in my throat. “You’re not okay.”
“No,” he replied truthfully, “I don’t think I am.”
The doorbell rang.
Ben and I exchanged a look.
It rang again.
My heart fluttered. The last time I answered the doorbell, it was Ben. Perhaps this time... maybe this time... I hurried to the front door, almost crashed against it, and flung it open—
“Rose?”
My best friend stood on the doormat to the Days Gone FuneralHome, a duffel bag in tow. She flipped down her Ray-Bans in awe. “Holyshit, bitch! You didn’t tell me you lived in the Addams Family house!”
“Rose!” I threw my arms around her and hugged her tightly. “I didn’t know you were coming!”
“OfcourseI was. I know you can handle it alone, but—you don’t have to.” She took me by the face and pressed our foreheads together. “You’re my little spoon.”
“You never cease to make it weird.”
“Never. Now where’s your bathroom? I have to piss like a racehorse and have to change into my Louboutins.”
“It’s an outside funeral, Rose.”
She gave me a blank look.
“Never mind, c’mon.” I let her into the house. She dumped her duffel bag into my arms and sprinted to the half bath under the stairs. I put her luggage in the office, where it’d be safe while we were at the funeral, and went to check on Ben in the hall. He was sitting on the bottom steps, his head in his hands.
“Hey,” I said quietly, giving a knock on the doorframe. “Is everything okay?”
“Mmn, no. A little? I’m... not sure. I keep hearing things,” he said. “It was quiet at first—but now it’s so loud.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Talking. Voices. Sounds—”
The toilet flushed and Rose stepped out of the bathroom in her red-soled high heels, the same ones that I wore years ago to that horribleDante’s Motorbikebook launch, and grabbed me under the arm. “Are you ready to say goodbye to the old man?”