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CHAPTER ONE
FLORA
I shut my rental car door, and out of recent habit, lock it.
Which gets me a strange look from the funeral home director, since nobody bothers to lock their cars or even their houses in tiny Dogwood Falls, NC. That’s just one of the things I miss about my hometown, the trust and friendliness here.
“All my stuff is in there,” I explain to Mr. Bruce, as a kind of apology.
“Well, that’s understandable,” he says in his warm, sympathetic voice. “Of course you’ve come home to look after Miss Zinnia’s things. You look like you could do with a rest, bless your heart.”
He’s saying I look like crap on a cracker, in his polite southern way, and my mouth twists in embarrassment because he’s probably right. I caught the first flight I could get on, and then I got a rental car at the airport in Greensboro and drove the rest of the way, fighting down panic the whole time.
There are two reasons I am practically shitting bricks: Everett’s here, and Aunt Zee’s not.
Combined, they make me want to rip out first my hair and then Everett’s handsome face, and stomp over top of both of them.
And lord, listen at me, less than ten minutes in the mountains and even my silent speech patterns have gone native. I tried so hard to modulate my accent and word choices for work, so none of my colleagues would make fun of the hillbilly gal who thinks she can write code.
They make fun of me anyway, until they find out I really can write code.
I’ve made a career out of it. I work for one of the Big Five tech companies as a software developer, and they pay me well. I feel valued there. The only problem with my job is having to live in California, where rising housing costs keep eating bigger bites of my salary. But just last month, my bosses decided that many employees could complete their assignments remotely. I’m one of them. Ever since, I’ve been wondering whether I should come back home.
Inside the funeral home, Mr. Bruce sits me down in the comfy chair in the office and shows me what Aunt Zee had already arranged. “She came in last year and wanted to prepay, said it was just in case. She picked everything out, from her casket to the flowers and readings for the service. Everything’s all set, Miss Flora.”
I sit back in the chair, feeling dizzy. Had Aunt Zee known that she had heart trouble, and not told me?
It would be like her, to keep her troubles to herself, so as not to burden anyone else with them.
As a self-declared old maid, she’d never planned to have children. I think she was surprised at the turn her life took when her nephew and his wife—my parents—were killed in an auto accident when I was ten, and she had to choose whether to take me in or let me enter the foster care system.
I will always be grateful that she took me in.
The funeral goes by as if I’m in a dream. I stay buried in my own thoughts, barely acknowledging neighbors and friends who keep telling me that they’re glad to see me, and that they hope I can stay in town.
As if.
Because Everett is here.
I see him on the other side of the church, solid and dependable and handsome in his dark blue suit, and I look away. He’s grown a beard in the past few years, and it looks damn good on him.
He’stoo handsome for my own good. If he catches my eye, he’ll be up in my face next thing, and God help me but I might take the broad shoulder he’s sure to offer, and cry my heart out on it.
That’s dangerous.
We just got married too young, maybe. We went down to the courthouse to tie the knot right after high school, back when he was thinking that he’d work for his uncle and eventually take over the family construction business, and I’d do the books in between having babies. He was surprised when I told him that I’d still be going to UNC-Greensboro in the fall, married or not, because my aunt was paying for college.
I would have said we were happy, for the three years it took me to finish my bachelor’s degree, while he worked an afternoon-shift factory job and I balanced classes with taking care of our little city apartment.
I was happy, anyway. We were in love.
It was when I came home from a career fair at the college, floating on air at having been offered the exact job I wanted, at a salary which sounded huge to my small-town mind, when everything started to fall apart for us.
I packed up my things, and I borrowed money from Aunt Zee for a plane ticket to Menlo Park. I never looked back.
I was scared to.
At the reception in the Methodist Church fellowship hall (food provided by the ladies of the church, because that’s how we do things around here, y’all), I manage to find an out-of-the-way place to eat my ham biscuits and pineapple casserole. I’ve been trying not to think of Aunt Zee and how much I’m going to miss her, because I can’t stand the thought of sobbing my heart out in public.
