He nodded, jaw working, then sat down next to me with a slow and careful precision, as if he thought I might shatter from the motion. He didn’t touch me, but his elbow brushed my arm, and I was startled by the heat of him. I’d forgotten that other people could be warm.
“Do you remember where it is?” I asked.
He made a noise. “Corner of Fifth and Foster. Near the Dairy Queen. Used to skip class to get Blizzards.”
I stared at the peeling wallpaper, the line of decay under the window ledge. “I haven’t called them. Does it work like a regular appointment?”
He shrugged. “They’re probably expecting you. Small town. News travels.”
Judy Langston, gone. No surprise, but still. Another one in the dirt.
I jammed my fists into my thigh.
We left our bags in the room. The walk back to the car was silent, except for the wind scraping old salt off the asphalt and the crows perched on the power lines, black ticks against the film of morning.
My mother had hated crows. She claimed they could smell death and would follow it for miles, feasting on roadkill and the souls of the unlucky. I imagined her now, somewhere between this world and the next, a flock of them waiting at the end of her street.
Caiden drove. The heater blasted stale air.
I watched the town unspool outside the window, all the landmarks shriveled and small.
The funeral home was a low-slung ranch house with a smile of black-tinted windows. The sign out front, PATHOSBURY MEMORIAL, was flanked by a pair of ceramic angels, their faces smudged by decades of pollen and smog.
I hesitated at the door, expecting it to resist, but it swung open with a sigh, like it was glad to see me.
A receptionist greeted us, her smile just wide enough to be mistaken for sympathy. I spoke first.
“Hi. I’m Amelia Langston. Here for my mother’s death, Judy Langston.”
The receptionist’s smile faltered at my words. She gestured to a pair of chairs in the corner, draped in funereal mauve. “Please have a seat, Ms. Langston. I’ll let them know you’re here.”
She vanished down a narrow hallway, and Caiden and I sat in the hush.
The waiting room was decorated in a way that made me want to die all over again: doilies on every surface, watercolors of tranquil lakes, and a faint hint of lemon disinfectant drifting through the vent. There was a bookshelf stocked withpamphlets. I kept my hands jammed in my jacket pockets, but Caiden reached for one called “Grief and You: What to Expect.”
I didn’t want to be told how to grieve. I wanted to be done with it.
A minute later, a middle-aged woman appeared, small and birdlike, with restless hands and a face that looked pained by nature. She wore a blazer the color of rainwater.
“Amelia? I’m Sandra. I’m so sorry for your loss.” She said it like she meant it, but I knew from the way her smile resealed afterward that she’d said it a thousand times before.
She led us into her office, which was painted a shade lighter than the outside sky. She had a soft, padded chair for every conceivable emotion. I picked the one with the lowest seat, so my knees came up awkwardly against my jacket, and Caiden hovered behind me, folding himself into a corner.
Sandra’s desk was bare except for a box of tissues, a single ballpoint, and a glass orb filled with polished stones. It rattled faintly as she sat down and scooted the chair closer to mine.
“I’m so sorry again, Amelia. I worked with your mother sometimes; she was a volunteer for the food drive when she was herself. She was a bright spirit, even when things were hard.”
“She was a lot of things,” I said, and then realized I hadn’t meant to say it out loud. “Sorry. I just mean—I didn’t expect to be back here.”
Sandra nodded, a sadness in her expression. “People rarely do. But we try to make it as gentle as possible.” She glanced at Caiden, took him in with a practiced flick of her eyes, then turned back to her paperwork. “Is this your partner?”
I barked a laugh that cracked the surface of the room. “No. Just a...friend, here for support.”
“Childhood friend,” Caiden added.
She shuffled some forms. “So, ah, there are a few things we need to go over. Your mother left some instructions. They’re not, um, specific, but I can walk you through the steps.”
I felt Caiden’s hand on my shoulder, just for a second, before he pulled it away. It left a heat mark on my spine. I didn’t need him to be strong, but I didn’t want him to vanish either.
