Page 45 of The Dearly Departed

Meanwhile, I had asked Leonard if I could just use one of the hearses as my personal ride, and he’d said it was fine.

Now, behind the wheel of the hearse I’d claimed as my own, I drove down Seint Row—the private, isolated road in Hollow Cove—with only my headlights and the occasional streetlamp to guide my way toward the eighteenth-century estate at the end.

Acres of manicured land surrounded the house, contained within a protective stone wall, and as I drove up to the iron gate, a bitterness so vile and deep tugged at my upper lip until I was sneering at the enormous mansion held within.

My mother had been a child when I was born. A runaway, living on the streets alongside people far more sinister than she possessed the ability to be.

On the rare occasions when my father showed up to grace her with his presence, she clung to him, looked at him like he had hung the moon and filled the miraculous ocean. She believed the stories he told about building a better life for him and her and us, and he’d fuck her as she told me to turn away. He’d always promise to return, and when he did, he’d be closer to that dream world than he had been before, and then he’d disappear again.

Of course, he’d eventually come back. Never knew when, but he always did, yet never because she needed him.

His entire existence was self-serving, and when he couldn’t find someone else to get him off, he’d look for my mother until he found her to warm his bed.

Again and again, he’d find her in an alley, a shelter, on a dirty corner, and because she had nothing else, she held on to his promises until there was nothing left of her existence to hold on to him with.

Then when she was gone, Gerald moved on to us—his children. Selling us dreams and promises, only to steal them away again and again.

My mother had never stopped believing him, but—God rest her soul—she was stupid. Naive and desperate. Too good to not be blinded by hope for a future she deserved, but was never going to have.

I hadn’t inherited that foolishness, or maybe I’d just been broken too many times.

I always knew better than to trust Gerald Crowley. I knew better than to trust anyone. And now, as I pulled up to the valet standing beneath the cover of the brick carport, just outside the home’s massive entrance, I hated my father more than I ever had before for somehow finding this for himself and not for her.

She might have been young, lost, and stupid, but she’d been kind. She’d been worthy. Gentle and, oh Lord, how she loved us. Even when she was wasted, she had loved my brother and me deeply, far more than she could ever love herself.

I tamped my fury down with an exhale, giving the steering wheel a final squeeze before quickly letting it go and grabbing my plague doctor mask. I pulled it on with haste, adjusting the hem of the hood to lay over my shoulders, and glanced in the rearview mirror.

The mask covered my face fully and hid my eyes behind the plastic lenses of the attached steampunk-style goggles. Nobody inside this house would know who I was, and I wanted to keep it that way. I couldn’t trust even the best of people, let alone the undesirable company my father kept, and I didn’t want any of them tracking me back to the funeral home.

Before I opened the car door, I glanced at my hands and the tattoos creeping out from beneath the sleeves of my suit jacket, and I was struck with hesitation.

Leonard hadn’t been thrilled when I began the journey of blanketing my skin with ink. He warned me that some of our clients, particularly the older folks, would have an issue with my image, and although I rolled my eyes at the time, I realized quickly that he hadn’t been entirely wrong either.

Close-minded people would see a man with sleeves of tattoos, and they would automatically make the snap judgment that he rode a motorcycle, beat women, and lived a life of crime. It was why I hadn’t yet tattooed my hands—they were harder to keep covered—and sitting in the hearse now, outside my father’s apparent multimillion-dollar house, I was grateful again for not having made the leap.

I wanted nothing to set me apart from any other anonymous masked figure inside this place.

But there were still the tattoos on my arms …

They tested their limits with harsh black lines, peeking out from beneath the cover of my sleeves. Sleeves rode up, they were unreliable, and I grumbled beneath my breath as I reached across the cab to open the glove box and pull out the pair of leather gloves I wore to burial ceremonies in the New England winters.

I tugged them on, tucking them into the ends of my sleeves, and flexed my hands, moved my arms, and ensured they wouldn’t slip out and blow my cover.

I glanced again in the rearview mirror and muttered to my reflection, “I look fucking ridiculous.”

That didn't matter though.

My identity was concealed, and that was the point.

Feeling satisfied, albeit a little silly, I climbed out of the car, straightened my lapels, smoothed the front of my jacket, and addressed the valet attendant with an air of indifference. I said nothing as I dropped the keys into his open palm, and before he had a chance to speak, I was walking away, toward the open entrance of the house.

Now, let it be clear that I lived in a beautiful house.

The Llewellyn Family Funeral Home had been erected in the late 1800s, and to this day, we—the people who had inhabited its walls over the years, past and present alike—had kept as much of its original charm as possible while keeping it structurally sound. And although the place was admittedly a little outdated in its interior aesthetic, it was nice, and it was clean.

It was a far cry from the hovels I had lived in before—that was for damn sure.

But as nice as it was, it didn’t hold a candle to this building I stood in now.