CHAPTER 1
LOREN
Mom
Don’t forget to gas up the hearse before the funeral.
Everyone has heard the saying:Love conquers all.
Well, that’s a load of bull if you ask me.
I’d love to know why the folks who came up with it didn’t write more helpful proverbs. Something like: “Don’t fall for someone at a funeral.”
I know what you’re thinking:But Loren. That’s obvious. Funeral homes aren’t for falling in love; they’re for mourning and grief and death.
Normally, I would agree with you. However, when you spend ninety-five percent of your free time stuck in the funeral home your parents own, you don’t have a lot of spare hours to troll the bars or dating apps or wherever the rest of the world’s twenty-somethings meet other twenty-somethings. Or thirty-somethings.
Or forty-somethings if they’re hot.
But let’s get back to the falling in love part.
Here I am, offering tissues to a bunch of related strangers mourning the crochety old woman who lived right next to us for as long as I can remember. Guess what I don’t remember? Any of these people coming by to help mow her lawn or bring her meals when she couldn’t leave the house anymore.
Makes me wonder how genuine these tears really are.
I actually knew Hazel VanMeter and, I’m sorry for saying this considering she’s stretched out in a pine box at the front of the room, but she was awful.
When I was twelve, she called the police because I accidentally left the back tire of my bike on her lawn. As I got older, she constantly ratted me out for sneaking out after curfew. I’m still not sure how she knew because I was pretty damn stealthy slipping from my bedroom window and down the drainpipe.
Most recently, she told my parents I was smoking in the shrubs at the back of our house.
That one, I can honestly say wasn’t true. I haven’t smoked a cigarette a day in my life except that one time back in college when my friend Erin and I were drinking out the back of a frat house and I thought I’d try it.
Disgusting, by the way. Would not recommend.
The fact that I’m a twenty-five-year-old woman and can make my own choices didn’t stop my mother from texting me picture after picture of grayish-brown lungs that became riddled with disease after their owners had fallen victim to their vices.
Needless to say, I’m not shedding a tear for poor old Hazel VanMeter.
These tear-free eyes have a decent view of the whole funeral home as those who’ve gathered “celebrate” the life of the Wicked Witch of Westmorland Street. They all bow their heads forAmazing Graceperformed by my mother on the organ in thefar corner next to two arrangements overflowing with lilies and baby’s breath—the world’s worst flower name, in my opinion.
How did someone come up with it, anyway?Baby’sbreath.
Makes me think of blended peas and sour milk.
As I’m scanning the crowd, my gaze snags on a guy toward the back. Taller than the older blonde woman and the silver-haired man next to him, he doesn’t seem that put out by the loss of my old neighbor. His head isn’t even bowed.
This should probably be some sort of red flag.
He could be a psychopath who feels no emotions.
Then again, maybe Hazel called the cops on him when he was twelve too.
Although that would mean he would’ve had to stop by her house at some point, and I have never seen this guy in my life.
That square jaw and those shoulders are two things I would definitely remember. Thirteen-year-old Loren would’ve tried sculpting his features out of clay during her artist phase. Fifteen-year-old Loren would’ve found out his full name and deep-dived his social media profiles so she could learn everything there was to know about him and then drop hints about all the things we “have in common” during a completely “impromptu” run-in at his favorite place to hang out.
Yeah, teenage Loren was weirdly obsessive.
