Graveminder

She sat, and he poured her a cup of coffee. Momentarily she could hear the shower upstairs. It felt comforting to be there, like being in a real home—as long as she didn’t think about the other part of the house where mourners were gathering around Maylene’s body.

William set down a plate he’d just filled with scrambled eggs and bacon. “If you want to see her, you can. I know you and Maylene had your traditions, though, so we can wait till the rest of them are gone.”

Rebekkah nodded. “Thank you. I’m not going to hide all day, but the …” She felt the tears build up again. “I’ll be fine at the service. I’ll handle the funeral breakfast. I can do this.”

“I know you can,” William said. “Can I tell the ladies that they can get the meal set up at your house?”

Rebekkah paused. My house. It was still Maylene’s house. Calling it “hers” felt wrong, but arguing semantics wouldn’t help.

William looked at her expectantly.

“Sure,” she whispered. “That’s the right place to have it. I just … They took care of everything already, didn’t they?”

“Everything but bringing it into the house. They are efficient,” William said. “They have to be with the short time between death and burial.”

His words weren’t cruel, nor was his tone, but it still made her chest tighten. “I just heard yesterday and then the flight and coming home and …”

She heard herself, listened to the excuses pouring from her lips. The truth was that she didn’t want to see Maylene in her casket, still and lifeless, and she surely didn’t want to do it around other people.

“And there’s the jet lag,” William added. “No one will fault you for not being out there. Not many folks even know you’re home yet.”

“Thank you. For everything. You and Byron are both being so … I’d be even more lost without you.” She offered him a smile, a watery one, but a smile nonetheless.

William smiled gently at her. “Montgomerys will always look after Barrows, Rebekkah. I would’ve done anything for Maylene, just as Byron would do anything for you.”

Rebekkah didn’t know what to say to that. She wondered if William thought she and Byron had stayed in touch. Really not what I want to ponder. She pushed that topic away and looked at the elder Mr. Montgomery’s tired eyes. The dark circles under them could be normal, for all she knew, but his red-shot eyes revealed that he’d been crying. He and Maylene had been friends forever, and they’d been in love almost as long.

Rebekkah realized that she was staring at him. “Are you … doing okay?” she asked—and then immediately felt like an idiot. Of course he wasn’t doing “okay.” If anything happened to Byr— She shook her head as if it would erase that thought.

William patted Rebekkah’s hand and turned away to refill her coffee cup. “As well as you are, I imagine. The world is lot less worth being in without her here. Maylene has meant the world to me for a long time.” She heard the threat of tears in his voice as he said, “I need to go out front. You stay in here and eat. When they go, I’ll come fetch you, so you have a few private moments with her.”

At the thought of suddenly being alone, she blurted, “Do I need to do anything? I mean, are there papers or … something? Anything?”

He turned back to face her. “No, not now. Maylene’s orders were very precise. She didn’t want you to have to deal with those things, so we made sure everything was taken care of in advance.” William brushed Rebekkah’s hair back as if she were still a small child. “Byron will be down in a few moments, and if you need him you are welcome to go upstairs. The house hasn’t changed. I’ll be out there with Maylene.”

“She’s not here,” Rebekkah whispered. “Just her empty shell.”

“I know, but I still need to look after her. She’s gone to a well-earned rest, Rebekkah. I promise.” He had tears in his eyes. “She was more amazing than most anyone we’ll ever meet. Strong. Good. Brave. And she saw all of those traits in you. You need to be brave now. Make her proud.”

Rebekkah nodded. “I will.”

Then William left her in his kitchen alone with her grief. Her first instinct was to find Byron.

Coward.

Being alone was wiser. She’d lived alone for years; she’d traveled alone. The problem was that it was easier to keep her grief at bay when she had witnesses. Maylene had taught her the importance of hiding the hard parts years ago: Don’t let the world see your soft underbelly, lovie, she’d reminded when the barbs of strangers and classmates had hurt. Part of being strong is knowing when to hide your weaknesses, and when to admit them. When it’s just us, you can cry. In front of the world, you keep that chin up.

“I’m strong. I remember,” Rebekkah whispered.

Byron hadn’t come down by the time she finished breakfast, so she walked through the door separating the private part of the house and the public space and joined the crowd of mourners, accepting their nods and hugs without a flinch as she approached Maylene’s body.

I know you’re gone. I know it’s not really you.

But the body still looked like her grandmother. The familiar keen gaze was absent; the smile was absent; but the form was still Maylene.

Rebekkah knew what she needed to say. The flask was in her bag, but she couldn’t. Not yet. Not in front of everyone. There were words, traditions that she’d observed with Maylene time and again. Soon.

Rebekkah leaned down to kiss Maylene’s cheek. “Sleep now, Grandmama,” she whispered. “Sleep well, and stay where I put you.”

12

REBEKKAH WENT THROUGH THE MOTIONS, ACCEPTING CONDOLENCES AND listening to the reminiscences of strangers and of those vaguely familiar. She did so alone.

Byron had come down to the viewing area, now dressed in one of his dark suits. He and William both kept an eye on her, and she knew that at any time they would extricate her if she sent them a pleading glance. Instead, she gave Byron a small shake of her head when he started to approach her.

I am Maylene’s granddaughter, and I will do as we have always done. Together with her grandmother, she’d gone to innumerable viewings and funerals. She politely nodded and calmly accepted hugs and arm pats. I can do this. She was only there for the last hour of the wake, but it felt longer than any she could recall. Even Ella’s.

Thankfully, Cissy and her daughters had left just before Rebekkah had arrived. Overcome by grief, William had said with a stoic expression.

Then the viewing was over. William took charge of the mourners, and Byron came over to her side.

“Do you want a minute with her?” he asked.

“No. Not yet.” Rebekkah glanced over at him. “Later. At the gravesite.”

“Come on.” Byron deftly avoided several people who wanted to speak with her and led her back into his home.

“I could’ve stayed,” she murmured as he closed the door behind them.

“No one’s doubting you,” he assured her. “We have a few minutes before we go to the cemetery, and I thought you might want to catch a breath.”

She followed him into the kitchen. Her dishes still sat on the table. “Thank you. I know I keep saying it, but you really have been better to me than I deserve.”

To avoid looking at him, she busied herself rinsing her cup and plate.

“Our … friendship didn’t die for me,” he said, “even when you decided to stop returning my calls. It never will.”

When she didn’t reply, he came over and took the cup from her hand.

“Bek?”

She turned, and he folded her into his arms.

“You’re not alone. Dad and I are both here,” he said. “Not just last night. Not just today. But for as long as you need.”

Rebekkah rested her cheek against his chest and closed her eyes for a minute. It would be so easy to let herself give in to the irrational urge to stay next to Byron. In all her life, no one else had ever made her want to stay in one place; no one she’d met since she left Claysville had made her want to think about commitments. Only you, she thought as she pulled away. She didn’t admit that. Not to him. He wasn’t hers. Not really. Not ever.

Rebekkah smiled and said, “I’m going to freshen up before we go.”

She felt his gaze on her as she walked away, but he didn’t say anything as she fled.

When she returned from the washroom, William and Byron stood waiting.

“She didn’t want a procession. It’s just us. Everyone else has gone ahead.” William held out his hand. In it was the tarnished silver bell Maylene had carried with her to the graveside.

Rebekkah felt foolish for not wanting to take it. She’d stood here innumerable times when William wordlessly held that same bell out to Maylene. Slowly she wrapped her hand around it, tucking one finger inside to keep the clapper still. It was meant to be rung at the grave, not here.

She turned to Byron to escort her to the car for the graveside service, just as William had once escorted Maylene. Byron would take her where she needed to go. His presence at her side since she’d returned last night felt right, just as it had when she first moved to Claysville, just as it had when Ella died, just as it did every time she saw him.

I can’t stay here. I can’t stay with him. I won’t.

As she clutched the bell in her hand, Rebekkah slid into the slick black interior. She put a hand out for the door, effectively blocking him from joining her. “Please, I would prefer being alone.”

A flash of irritation flared in his eyes, but he said nothing about her rejection. Instead, his professional guise reappeared. “We’ll meet you at the cemetery,” he said.

Then he closed the door and went over to the waiting hearse.

I can get through this without him … and then leave.

Without Maylene, Claysville was just another town. It wasn’t really home. She’d tricked herself into thinking there was something special about it, but she’d lived in enough places to know better: one town was no different from the next. Claysville had some odd rules, but none of that mattered anymore. Maylene was dead, and Rebekkah had no reason to keep returning here now.

Except for Byron.

Except that it’s still home.

Rebekkah watched out the window as the hearse pulled into the street; her driver eased out behind it, following William as he drove Maylene to her final resting place.

When the driver came around and opened her door, Rebekkah could already hear the overdramatic wailing. Cissy’s here. Ringing the bell as she walked, Rebekkah made her way across the grass to the chairs that were lined up under the awning. She reminded herself that Maylene would expect her to be on her best behavior. She’d arranged everything, no doubt hoping that easing the stress would make this moment more bearable, but even careful planning couldn’t negate the headache that Cissy would inevitably cause. Maylene’s daughter was contentious under the best of circumstances. Her venomous attitude toward Rebekkah had been a source of irritation to Maylene, but no one would explain to Rebekkah why the woman hated her so much. She’ll come around, Maylene had assured her. To date, that hadn’t happened; in fact, the animosity had grown to the point that Rebekkah hadn’t exchanged words with Cissy in years. Her absence at the end of the viewing had been a wonderful respite, but it wasn’t a kindness: it was merely a way for her to be first at the gravesite.

As Rebekkah approached the grave, she swung the bell more forcefully.

The volume of Cissy’s caterwauling increased.

One hour. I can handle her for one hour. Rebekkah couldn’t toss her out as she so dearly wanted to do, so she walked to the front and took her seat.

I can be polite.

That resolve lessened when Cissy approached the now-closed casket.

Lilies and roses swayed atop Maylene’s casket as Cissy clutched it, her short fingernails skittering over the wood like insects running from light. “Mama, don’t go.” Cissy wrapped her fingers around a handle on the side of the casket, assuring that no one would be able to pull her away from it.

Rebekkah uncrossed her ankles.

Cissy let out another plaintive cry. The woman couldn’t see a casket without wailing like a wet cat. Her daughters, Liz and Teresa, stood by uselessly. The twins, in their late twenties now, only just older than Rebekkah, had also gotten to the gravesite early, but they didn’t try to calm their mother. They knew as well as Rebekkah did that Cissy was putting on a show.

Liz whispered to Teresa, who only shrugged. No one really expected them to try to convince Cissy to stop making a spectacle of herself. Some people couldn’t be reasoned with, and Cecilia Barrow was very much one of those people.

Beside Maylene’s casket, Father Ness put an arm around Cissy’s shoulder. She shook him off. “You can’t make me leave her.”

Rebekkah closed her eyes. She had to stay, to say the words, to follow the traditions. The urge to do that pushed away most everything else. Even if Maylene hadn’t made her swear on it enough times over the years, preparing her for this day, Rebekkah would feel it like a nagging ache drawing her attention. The tradition she’d learned at her grandmother’s side was as much a part of funerals as the coffin itself. At each death they’d been together for, she and Maylene had each taken three sips—no more, no less—out of that rose flask. Each time Maylene had whispered words to the corpse. Each time she refused to answer any of the questions Rebekkah had asked.

Now it was too late.

Cissy’s shrieks were overpowering the minister’s attempt to speak. The Reverend McLendon was too soft-spoken for her voice to be heard. Beside the minister, the priest was trying again to console Cissy. Neither one was getting very far.

“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.

13

DAISHA 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.

14

AS 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.