“Certainly not! But it does suit his style,” she said with a soft laugh. “Oh, he was gone too soon, Florence. Gone much, much too soon.”
“I wish he was still here.”
“I do, too, and I will for the rest of my life.” She squeezed my arm tightly. “But we’re still here, and he’ll be with us long after the wind is gone.”
I swallowed the knot in my throat. “Yeah.”
We passed the ice cream parlor where she and Dad went every weekend when I was little and she was pregnant with Alice. She always craved pistachio ice cream. If I closed my eyes, I could see Dad in the booth by the window with his sundae, feeding Carver with a small plastic spoon. “Here comes the Douglas DC-3 aircraft in for landing!Zzzzzzoom!”
But the parlor was different now, with a new coat of paint, a new owner, new ice cream flavors. However much Mairmont stayed the same, it kept shifting ever so slightly. Just enough for me to feel lost, for my past to feel like another lifetime ago.
“I should’ve come home, Mom. Years ago. I should’ve visited. I should’ve...” My voice cracked. I swallowed the knot in my throat. “I can’t remember how many times you tried to convince me. But then you stopped.”
“Trying to change your mind was like trying to lasso the sun,” Mom replied. “You’re stubborn—like your father—and you take everything on your shoulders like he did. Everyone else’s problems. Never his own.”
“But I’m the opposite. I’m selfish. I—I never came home. I should’ve. I never told Dad...” That I was a ghostwriter. That Ididkeep writing novels after I failed, like he wanted me to. That, although in the strangest sense of the word, I’d done exactly what he believed I could do. And he never knew it.
“I hated this town after they chased you out,” she said scornfully.
“They didn’t chase me, I left.”
“Because other people couldn’t stand that a thirteen-year-old did something they could never do.”
“Talk to ghosts?”
“Help people. Listen. Do something so incredibly selfless, you had to leave for it—oh, don’t give me that look.” She added, “Youdidn’t have to go to the police, but youdid. You helped them solve a murder they wouldn’t have otherwise, and then when you told them the truth—it wasn’t your fault they didn’t believe you. For all I care, this entire town can fuck off.”
“Mom!”
“I said what I said. That boy’s body would still be buried on the Ridge if you hadn’t said something.”
And his ghost would probably still be badgering me about trying out for the debate team. He was adamant that I could argue my way out of trouble if I had to. And I proved him right my junior year of high school when Officer Saget caught me one too many times doing something slightly illegal for very good reasons.
Halfway back to the house, Mom said with a sigh of remorse, “Oh, what are we going todowhen Carver and Nicki get married? It isn’t quite like I can dance with your father’s corpse.”
I nodded seriously. “You don’t have the upper arm strength.”
“I couldn’t carry that sort of deadweight!”
Gallows humor.
I missed it. I missed talking about death like another step in the journey. Lee Marlowhatedmy humor. He thought talking about death was gross and immature. And the guy before Lee—Sean—thought I was weird when I joked about death. William didn’t much care. And Quinn absolutely would not hear of it.
I missed my family.
I missedthis. Mairmont’s quiet evenings, and the black dots that were palmetto bugs skittering across the sidewalk, and the moths fluttering around the streetlights, and the sound of the evenings buzzing with insects and the wind through the trees. I missed the certainty of Mom, and the defiance of Alice, and the middleness of Carver, and the steadfastness of Seaburn, and the slow bloom of Mairmont.
It seemed like New York was changing every time I blinked.One way one moment, and then completely different the next—a chameleon of a city that never fit into one box, that never clung to one descriptor. It was always something new, something exciting, something never before seen.
I loved that for a long time, the steady march to something impossible, the ability to reinvent itself again and again despite hurricanes and pandemics and elections. And I loved everyone who I met on those streets, the Williams and Seans and Lee Marlows...
But the sky was always dark, and only the brightest stars shone through the light pollution of the city that never slept.
Dad said that I’d miss the stars too much, and their permanence. In New York, it was hard to pick any out, but here in Mairmont, I could see them from horizon to horizon, and the spring thunderstorms that bubbled up on the southern edge of town.
The kind of thunderstorms Dad loved.
The ones that never made it into Lee Marlow’s book, and with a sudden realization I understood why I had felt so uncomfortable here. Coming home was one thing but—ever since I’d been home, I’d kept Mom and Carver and Alice at arm’s length. It wasn’t because I didn’t love them, or didn’t miss them.