“Fuck this,” Rebekkah muttered. She stood and walked toward Cissy. At the edge of the hole where they’d inter Maylene, Rebekkah stopped.
The priest looked almost as frustrated as she felt. He’d dealt with Cissy’s performances often enough to know that until someone took her in hand, there wasn’t a thing they could do. Maylene had handled that, too, but Maylene was gone.
Rebekkah wrapped her arms around Cissy in an embrace and—with her lips close to Cissy’s ear—whispered, “Shut your mouth, and sit your ass down. Now. ” Then she released Cissy, offered her an elbow, and added, at a normal volume this time, “Let me help you to your seat.”
“No.” Cissy glared at the proffered arm.
Rebekkah leaned in closer again. “Take my arm and let me help you to your seat in silence, or I’ll tie up Maylene’s estate until your daughters die bitter old bitches like you.”
Cissy covered her mouth with a handkerchief. Her cheeks grew red as she looked around. To the rest of the mourners, it looked like she was embarrassed. Rebekkah knew better; she’d just poked a rattlesnake. And I’ll pay for it later. Just then, however, Cissy let herself be escorted to her seat. The expression on Liz’s face was one of relief, but neither twin looked directly at Rebekkah. Teresa took Cissy’s hand, and Liz wrapped her arm around her mother. They knew their roles in their mother’s melodramatic performances.
Rebekkah returned to her own seat and bowed her head. Across the aisle, Cissy kept her silence, so the only sounds beyond the prayers of the priest and the minister were the sobs of mourners and the cries of crows. Rebekkah didn’t move, not when Father Ness stopped speaking, not when the casket was lowered into the earth, not until she felt a gentle touch at her wrist and heard, “Come on, Rebekkah.”
Amity, one of the only people in Claysville Rebekkah kept in sort of contact with, gave her a sympathetic smile. People were standing and moving. Faces she knew and faces she had seen only in passing before turned toward her with expressions of support, of sympathy, and of some sort of hope that Rebekkah didn’t understand. She stared at them all uncomprehendingly.
Amity repeated, “Let’s get you out of here.”
“I need to stay here.” Rebekkah moistened suddenly dry lips. “I need to stay here alone.”
Amity leaned closer and hugged her. “I’ll see you back at your grandmother’s house.”
Rebekkah nodded, and Amity joined the crowd of people who were leaving. Semi-strangers and family, friends and others, they walked past the casket and dropped flowers and earth into the yawning hole. Lilies and roses rained down on Maylene’s casket.
“Wasting all that beauty,” Maylene whispered as they dropped flowers on another casket. “Like corpses have any need of flowers.”
She turned to Rebekkah with her serious look. “What do the dead need?”
“Prayers, tea, and a little bit of whiskey,” then-seventeen-year-old Rebekkah answered. “They need nourishment.”
“Memories. Love. Letting go,” Maylene added.
Rebekkah waved away Father Ness and Reverend McLendon as they tried to stop and comfort her. They were used to Maylene’s eccentricities—and Rebekkah’s staying with Maylene while she lingered with the dead. They’d leave Rebekkah alone, too.
Once everyone was gone, once the casket was covered, once it was just her and Maylene alone in the cemetery, Rebekkah opened her clutch and took out the rose-etched flask. She walked up to the grave and knelt down on the earth.
“I’ve been carrying it since it arrived in the mail,” she told Maylene. “I did what the letter said.”
It had seemed wrong to put Holy Water in with good whiskey, but Rebekkah did exactly as she’d been told. There were always plenty of bottles of Holy Water in Maylene’s pantry. Holy Water and heavenly whiskey. She opened the flask, took a sip, and then tilted it over the grave once. Tears streamed over her cheeks as she said, “She’s been well loved.”
She took a second sip and then lifted the flask in a toast to the sky. “From my lips to your ears, you old bastard.” Then she tilted it over the grave a second time.
“Sleep well, Maylene. Stay where I put you, you hear?” She took a third sip and then poured the flask’s contents onto the earth a third time. “I’ll miss you.”
Then Rebekkah finally wept.
Chapter 13
D AISHA STAYED OUT OF SIGHT DURING THE FUNERAL. SHE’D STOLEN A black hoodie and jeans— and some food— from a woman who’d been taking out her trash that morning. The woman didn’t stand up after Daisha had finished eating, but her heart was still beating. And most of her skin was still on her. The thought of skin and blood shouldn’t make Daisha’s stomach growl, but it did. Afterward, the thought of it was gross, but in the moment, it was ... exactly right.
It made her mind clearer, too. That part was important. The longer she went between meals, the less focus she had. Less body, too. She felt like she was being pulled and pushed in every direction all at once. Earlier she’d fallen apart, scattered like smoke in the breeze.
This morning she stood in a cemetery and watched them put Maylene in the ground. It seemed so permanent, being killed and being buried, but obviously it wasn’t.
Daisha kept herself behind a tree as she watched. She’d had to come. When she’d heard the bell, her body was as pulled to this spot as it had been when she’d met Maylene there. The inability to refuse the strange compulsions, the impossibility of holding on to thoughts or memories, the hungers that filled her, everything had become wrong. Daisha wanted answers, wanted company, wanted to be right . Only Maylene had understood, but she was dead now.
Maybe Maylene will wake up, too.
Daisha stood waiting, but no one stepped up out of the earth. No one came to join her. She was as alone now as she’d been when she was alive for real. Daisha didn’t remember crawling out of the ground. She didn’t really know when she’d woken up, but she was awake. That part she knew.
She leaned her head against the tree.
The shrieking woman was carrying on something fierce, and the Undertaker was scowling at her. He had scanned the crowd and the cemetery. Every so often, his gaze had paused on the woman who had come to stay in Maylene’s house.
Now she glowed like Maylene had. Maylene’s skin seemed to be filled with moonlight, a beacon that drew Daisha even before she saw her. All Daisha had known was that there was a light, and she had to go toward it. As the new woman had poured her flask onto the soil, she had started glowing until her whole body was filled with brightness.
The rest of the mourners had left, but even if they weren’t gone, Daisha couldn’t walk up to them and ask. Only the Undertaker and the wailing woman waited.
Daisha started shaking, and the focus that she’d had started to fade. She started to fade, so she fled before her body could dissipate again.
Chapter 14
A S THEY WALKED TOWARD THE CAR, LIZ HELD ON TO HER MOTHER, NOT in a protective way, but as a please-Mama-don’t-make-another-scene measure. The supportive arm she offered was accepted only as long as there were people watching; once they reached the car, Cissy shook her off.
Liz pushed down her guilty relief. There was no good way to handle funerals: each and every one was a reminder of what Liz and her sister weren’t.
Not good enough.
Not chosen.
Not the Graveminder.
Truth be told, Liz had no actual desire to be the Graveminder. She knew all about it, the contract, the duties, but knowing didn’t make her eager to be a Graveminder. Her mother and sister seemed to feel that they’d been slighted, but spending life worrying about the dead didn’t appeal to Liz. At all. She talked the talk well enough—because the alternative was feeling the back side of her mother’s hand—but she wanted the same things that most women in Claysville wanted: a chance at a good man who would agree to enter the birthing queue for the right to be a parent sooner than later.
Not that Byron would be a bad man to bed.
She
stole another glance at him. He was lovestruck with Rebekkah, but that was an inevitable result of the whole Graveminder-Undertaker gig. Her grandmother and Byron’s father had made eyes at each other for as long as Liz could remember. Like to like. She shook her head. Despite everything, Maylene had been her grandmother, and she ought to be ashamed of thinking ill of her when she wasn’t even cold in the ground. And for thinking lustful thoughts at a funeral. She shot a glance at Byron again.
“Look at him,” Teresa muttered. “Can’t take his attention off her. I don’t think I’d have any struggle resisting him if I were ... you know .”
Liz nodded, but she silently thought that she wouldn’t want to resist Byron. “Not every Graveminder marries the Undertaker. Grandmama Maylene didn’t. You wouldn’t have to ... be with him.”
Teresa snorted. “It’s a good thing, too. I don’t know that I want a man who has fucked both our cousins.”
“ She is not your cousin.” Cissy dabbed at her eyes. “Your uncle married that woman, but that doesn’t make her brat your cousin. Rebekkah isn’t family.”
“Grandmama Maylene thought—”
“Your grandmother was wrong.” Cissy held her lace-edged handkerchief so that it covered the ugly snarl that twisted her mouth.
Liz repressed a sigh. Their mother, for all of her strengths, had an old-fashioned notion of family. Blood first. Cissy hadn’t approved of Jimmy taking a wife with a child, and she certainly hadn’t approved of Rebekkah’s continuing to visit a few years after that wife left him. Rebekkah had arrived during her freshman year of high school and left before graduation, yet she’d continued to visit Claysville after Jimmy and Julia divorced and then after Jimmy died. Whether or not anyone liked it, Rebekkah was as much Maylene’s granddaughter as the twins were—which was the issue.
Blood-family matters, especially for a Barrow.
Unfortunately, Liz suspected that her own blood made her the next likely candidate for the very thing that both Teresa and their mother wanted, and she was torn between the desire to please her mother and the desire to have her freedom. Of course, she wasn’t fool enough to admit that. She knew better than to call Rebekkah family; she knew better than to admit that she wouldn’t mind getting to know Byron Montgomery.
With a determined look, Cissy started across the cemetery.
“She’s in a mood,” Teresa muttered.
“Our grandmother, her mother , just died.” Liz wasn’t sure whether following or staying out of it was wiser. Years of trying to play peacemaker in the house made her want to go after her mother, but just as many years of trying to dodge her mother’s vitriol attested to the wisdom of letting someone else be the target.
“She’s not crying, Liz; she’s itching for a fight.”
“Are we going after her?”
Teresa rolled her eyes. “Shit, I don’t want to be the one she sets her sights on. You know she’s going to be a bear once Rebekkah finds out that she’s the Graveminder. Every council meeting will end with a tantrum then. You’re welcome to go after her, but I’m staying right here.” Teresa leaned on the car. “We’ll get plenty of time listening to her rant after the funeral breakfast.”
“Maybe—”
“Nope. If you want to go after her, you go ahead, but she’s about to be face-to-face with the both of them. Grandmama Maylene isn’t here to calm her down. You think you’re able to?” Teresa shook her head. “I don’t need to draw her temper. Neither do you. Let them handle her.”
Chapter 15
B YRON HAD BEEN SO FOCUSED ON WATCHING REBEKKAH THAT HE’D ASsumed that all of the mourners had left. He bit back a decidedly uncharitable remark as he saw that Cissy was marching back toward him. Behind her, the twins stood—and were apparently arguing, from the looks of it—beside the car. Liz threw her hands in the air and followed her mother. Teresa leaned on the car and watched.
Cissy had a determined look on her face, and he braced himself for her temper. However, she passed him without a glance, heading for Rebekkah.
“Cecilia!” Byron grabbed her arm. “She needs a moment.”
Cissy’s eyes widened; she moistened her lips. “But she needs to know. Someone ought to tell her about the ... what happened, and I’m Maylene’s family—”
“You needn’t worry about it,” he interrupted. He put an arm around her and steered her back toward the car. “You’ve had enough to deal with, Cissy. Let your girls take you on home. I’ll bring Rebekkah back to the house.”
Byron looked back at Cissy’s daughters. Teresa still watched from beside the car; Liz stood anxiously behind her mother. “Elizabeth, please help your mother to the car.”
Cissy glared at him. “I really should talk to Becky. She needs to know what happened, and I doubt that you’ve told her. Have you?”
“Told her ...” Byron shook his head at the unpleasant realization that of all the people in Claysville, it seemed that Cissy was the only one other than him who thought the circumstances around Maylene’s death warranted discussion. “This is not the time or place.”
“Mama,” Liz started.
Cissy stepped to the side to go around Byron. “I think Becky should hear what happened.”
At that, Liz held her hands up in defeat. She was the more reasonable of Cissy’s daughters, but she also had the sense to not want to be the object of her mother’s temper.
“I said no . Not here, not now.” Byron clamped his hand on Cissy’s elbow and steered her toward the car.
Cissy glared at her daughters—who remained motionless, one at the car, one beside her—before giving in. “Fine. I’ll see her at the house, then.” She pulled her arm out of his grasp. “You can’t keep me away from her, boy.”
Byron knew well enough that responding wasn’t going to get the result he wanted, so he forced a polite smile to his lips and stayed silent.
Liz shot a relieved look at Byron and mouthed, “Thank you.”
Byron turned his back on them and returned to the gravestone where he had been waiting before Cissy had approached. He was trying not to watch Rebekkah, but he couldn’t leave her here alone. He wished he didn’t have to tell Rebekkah about Maylene’s murder, but he wasn’t willing to let her hear it casually—or cruelly—spoken.
A black blur to his left drew his attention, but when he turned, he didn’t see anyone or anything. So he leaned on the tree beside the grave and waited.
He’d never realized that the ways of death in Claysville were peculiar. When he’d moved to Chicago, he was surprised that there was no designated final mourner. He’d decided then that it must’ve been a trait of small towns, but eighteen months later—after living in Brookside and Springfield—he’d realized that it wasn’t the size of the town. Claysville was simply unique in the way it mourned the dead. He’d watched carefully as he traveled, becoming almost a funeral-tourist of sorts for a few months. Nowhere else was like Claysville. Here, graveside services regularly had several religious representatives in attendance. Here, the graves were meticulously kept in order: graveyards and cemeteries mowed, trimmed, and planted. Here, a woman walked in funeral processions ringing a bell.
Once, as a child, he’d thought Maylene worked for Montgomery and Sons. As a teen, he simply decided that his girlfriend’s grandmother was a little odd. She had her own way of saying good-bye, and folks in town just accepted that she would be the last mourner for each and every person who passed. Now he wasn’t sure what to think, especially as Rebekkah seemed to be standing in for the last Barrow woman.
What am I missing here?
Once she stood, Rebekkah composed herself and turned to walk away. Only then did Byron step out from the shadow of the tree and move toward her.
“I didn’t know anyone was still here until”—Rebekkah motioned up the hill—“I heard the disturbance.”
He rubbed his hand over his face. “Cissy and the twins were here and ...”
“Thank you.” Rebekkah blushed. “I doubt that any conversation between us coul
d go well just now. I was a bit less than patient with her.”
Byron hesitated. “She wanted to tell you ... to be the one to ...”
“To tell me whatever you’ve been avoiding.” She lifted her chin and looked pointedly at him. “You haven’t mentioned anything about Maylene’s being sick ... I know it was sudden. You didn’t want to tell me last night, this morning. William didn’t mention it. No one at the wake did. So, what are you not telling me?”
He’d been trying to come up with a way to tell her since it had happened. There was no nice way to say it. “She was murdered.”
Rebekkah thought she was prepared for whatever Byron said, thought that things couldn’t hurt any worse than they already did. She was wrong. Her knees gave way, and if not for Byron, she would’ve fallen to the ground.
He slid an arm around her waist and steadied her. “I’m sorry, Bek.”
“Murdered?” she repeated.
He nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“But ... she was buried already !” Rebekkah stepped away from him and waved her hand behind her where her grandmother’s body was now interred. “What about an autopsy? There’s no way to do one with her ... there. Tell me what—”
“I can’t tell you anything.” Byron raked his hair back in a familiar gesture of frustration. “I tried to get answers from Chris, but there’s nothing.”
“And you tell me this after she’s buried ?”
“It’s been forty-eight hours, Bek. If we didn’t inter her”—Byron looked past her to the freshly turned soil—“she would need to be embalmed. Do you think they’d agree to that ? It’s against the law here.”
Rebekkah brushed the graveyard dirt from her hands off on her skirt. “You know that’s fucked up, too. Nowhere else has such bizarre funeral laws. I’m not sure there are funeral laws elsewhere.”
“Oh, there are, just not like here.” He pressed his lips together in a way she remembered from the times she’d seen him force his temper away. “Here they clean up murder scenes with bleach and vinegar. Here they take the body away and work to make the house look untouched.”