Graveminder. Melissa Marr

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СКАЧАТЬ and weep. He couldn’t. Distance was as essential as the rest of an undertaker’s tools; without it, the job was impossible.

      Some deaths got to him more than others; Maylene’s was one of them. She’d had an office at his family funeral home and a longstanding relationship with his father. She’d raised the only two women he’d ever loved. She was all but family—but that didn’t mean he was going to grieve here.

      Silently and carefully, Byron and Chris carried Maylene to the cot Byron had left outside the door, and then they put her in the waiting hearse.

      Once the back of the hearse was closed, Chris took several breaths. Byron doubted that the sheriff had ever dealt with a murder investigation. Claysville, for all of its eccentricities, was the safest town Byron had ever known. Growing up, he hadn’t realized how rare that was.

      “Chris? I know some people I could call if you wanted to call in help.”

      The sheriff nodded, but he refused to look at Byron. “Tell your father that—” Chris’ voice broke. He cleared his throat and continued, “Tell him that I’ll call Cissy and the girls.”

      “I will,” Byron assured him.

      Chris took several steps away. He stopped outside the same side door where they’d exited, but he didn’t look back as he said, “I suspect someone will need to tell Rebekkah. Cissy isn’t likely to call her, and she’ll be needing to come home now.”

      2

      REBEKKAH HAD SPENT THE BETTER PART OF THE DAY OUT WALKING around the Gas Light District with a sketchpad. She didn’t have any projects right now, but she wasn’t feeling the inspiration to create anything on her own either. Some people worked well with daily discipline, but she’d always been more of a need-a-deadline or consumed-by-vision artist. Unfortunately, that meant that she had nowhere to direct the restless energy she’d been feeling, so she went wandering with a sketchpad and an old SLR. When neither sketching nor photography had helped, she’d come back to the apartment only to find more than a dozen missed calls from an unknown number—and no messages.

      “Restless day and random calls. Hmm. What do you think, Cherub?” Rebekkah stared out the window as she ran a hand over her cat’s back.

      She’d only been in San Diego three months, but the itch was back. She had almost two months before Steven returned and reclaimed his apartment, but she was ready to take off now.

      Today feels worse.

      Nothing looked quite right, felt quite right. The bright blue California sky seemed pale; the cranberry bread she’d grabbed at the bakery across the street was flavorless. Her typical edginess didn’t usually result in blunted senses, but today everything seemed somehow dulled.

      “Maybe I’m sick. What do you think?”

      The tabby cat on the windowsill flicked her tail.

      The downstairs buzzer sounded, and Rebekkah glanced down at the street. The delivery driver was already headed back in his truck.

      “Occasionally, it would be nice if deliveries were actually delivered rather than left behind to be trampled or wet or taken,” Rebekkah grumbled as she went down the two flights of stairs to the entryway.

      Outside the front door on the step on the building was a brown envelope addressed in Maylene’s spidery handwriting. Rebekkah picked it up—and just about dropped it as she felt the contours of what was inside.

      “No.” She tore the package open. The top of the envelope fluttered to the ground, landing by a bird-of-paradise plant beside the door. Her grandmother Maylene’s silver flask was nestled inside the thick envelope. A white handkerchief with delicate tatting was wrapped around it.

      “No,” she repeated.

      Rebekkah stumbled as she ran back up the stairs. She slammed open the door to the apartment, grabbed her mobile, and called her grandmother.

      “Where are you?” Rebekkah whispered as the ringing on the other end continued. “Answer the phone. Come on. Come on. Answer.”

      Over and over, she dialed both of Maylene’s numbers, but there was no answer at the house phone or the mobile phone that Rebekkah had insisted her grandmother carry.

      Rebekkah clutched the flask in her hand. It hadn’t ever been out of Maylene’s possession for as long as Rebekkah had known her. When Maylene left the house, it was in her handbag. In the garden, it was in one of the deep pockets of her apron. At home, it sat on the kitchen counter or the nightstand. And at every funeral Rebekkah had attended with her grandmother, the flask was there.

      Rebekkah stepped into the darkened room. She’d known Ella was laid out, but the wake didn’t officially start for another hour. She pulled the door shut as carefully as she could, trying to keep silent. She walked to the end of the room. Tears ran down her cheeks, dripped onto her dress.

      “It’s okay to cry, Beks.”

      Rebekkah looked around the darkened room; her gaze darted over chairs and flower arrangements until she found her grandmother sitting in a big chair along the side of the room. “Maylene … I didn’t … I thought I was alone with”—she looked at Ella—“with … I thought she was the only one here.”

      “She’s not here at all.” Maylene didn’t turn her attention to Rebekkah or come out of the chair. She stayed in the shadows staring at her blood-family, at Ella.

      “She shouldn’t have done it.” Rebekkah hated Ella a bit just then. She couldn’t tell anyone, but she did. Her suicide made everyone cry; it made everything wrong. Rebekkah’s mother, Julia, had come unhinged—searching Rebekkah’s room for drugs, reading her journal, clutching her too tight. Jimmy, her stepdad, had started drinking the day they found Ella, and as far as Rebekkah could see, he hadn’t stopped yet.

      Maylene’s voice was a whisper in the dark: “Come here.”

      Rebekkah went over and let Maylene pull her into a rose-scented embrace. Maylene stroked her hair and whispered soft words in a language Rebekkah didn’t know, and Rebekkah wept all the tears she’d been holding on to.

      When she stopped, Maylene opened up her giant handbag and pulled out a silver flask that was etched with roses and vines that twisted into initials, A.B.

      “Bitter medicine.” Maylene tipped it back and swallowed. Then she held it out.

      Rebekkah accepted the flask with a shaky snot-and-tear-wet hand. She took a small sip and coughed as a burn spread from her throat to her stomach.

      “You’re not blood, but you’re mine the same as she was.” Maylene stood up and took the flask back. “More so, now.”

      She held up the flask like she was making a toast and said, “From my lips to your ears, you old bastard.” She squeezed Rebekkah’s hand as she swallowed the whiskey. “She’s been well loved and will be still.”

      Then she looked at Rebekkah and held the flask out.

      Silently, Rebekkah took a second sip.

      “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 СКАЧАТЬ