The Mortician’s Daughter

by Nan Higgins

  “But I do have a spare bedroom you can use.”

  “Are you serious?” I purposely ignored Macy’s triumphant expression.

  “Sure, if you want to. I know things with your folks have been rocky, and you’re safer with me than probably anyone else right now.”

  “That’s true,” I said slowly. “I’m not sure how my parents are going to feel about it.” That was a lie. I knew they would be angry and more than a little hurt. It shocked me a bit to realize how satisfying it would be to make them feel as upset as I’d been feeling. “If you’re sure, Nick, then I’m in. I’ll need to pack some things.”

  “I’ll help you,” Macy said.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  “I just don’t understand.” My mom stood in the doorway to my bedroom, wringing her hands. “Why are you doing this?”

  I handed Macy a couple more shirts, and she folded them and stuck them in my suitcase. She was doing an excellent job helping me pack while staying completely out of conversations with my parents.

  “I’ll be safe at Nick’s place,” I said.

  “You’re safe here.”

  “I need some time away.”

  “Away from me?”

  “And Dad, yeah.” Her face crumpled. Any satisfaction I thought I’d get from this was nowhere in sight. I felt horrible, but I knew I was doing the best thing for myself. “I’m not trying to hurt you. It’s just…all the deception, all the secrets. I don’t feel comfortable with you guys right now.”

  “We’re your parents.”

  “Mom, just give me time. I love you, and I know you felt justified in what you did, but I can’t help feeling like my trust in you is going to take a while to heal.”

  She opened her mouth, then shut it and walked away. Moments later, I heard her bedroom door slam.

  “You okay?” Macy asked.

  “I’ll be better when we get out of here.” I hadn’t been emotional leaving home to go to college, but I was deep in my feelings surrounding moving out like this. I was breaking my mom’s heart, and that was almost as unbearable as their bad choices and my broken trust that had gotten me to the point where I felt as if home was no longer a safe place for me.

  “I think we’ve packed everything you need. Ready?”

  “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Macy followed me to Nick’s place in her car. When we got there, she helped me bring in my stuff. The guest room was bright, with a sliding glass door that led to a patio. I stood at the door and looked out in the backyard with its fire pit surrounded by Adirondack chairs and a hot tub on the opposite end of the patio.

  “It’s nice you have your own bathroom.” Macy sat on the blue and gray comforter on the king-size bed. “It kinda seems like this room is the master.”

  “It is. Nick told me he intentionally took the smaller room with no windows. A lot of his CDU duties keep him out working at night, so he wanted to sleep where it would be dark during the day.”

  “Lucky for you. Do you want help unpacking?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Thanks, though. I think I might actually take a nap.” I didn’t know whether it was the tension of dealing with my mom, the extreme highs and lows of my emotions in the last few days, or the pulsating pain in my head that had driven me to exhaustion, but I was wiped out.

  “It’s been an eventful day.”

  “Yeah, especially considering that I’m still recovering from my Unexplained Fainting Trauma.” That was the diagnosis listed on my discharge paperwork. The instructions said I was to have several more days of supervised rest before beginning to return to regular activities.

  “Do you want me to stay?” Macy motioned to the recliner in the corner. “That chair looks pretty comfortable, and I have a book in my purse.”

  “No, you don’t need to. Nick is in the next room if I have any trouble.”

  “Okay. I’ll come back tomorrow. Send me a list of snacks. If you’re up for it, I can stay over.”

  I grinned. When Macy didn’t know what else to do, she could always be counted on for junk food and good company. I was beyond grateful for her. I appreciated Nick and Sloane for all the ways they were caring for me, but I would have felt really alone after having to distance myself from my parents without her. She’d been a constant in my world since we were practically babies. Right now, when my circumstances had changed so much that I barely recognized my own life anymore, Macy was the person who reminded me who I was and what was real. “I’ll text you tomorrow.”

  She squeezed me in a quick, tight hug and left. I looked around the cheerful room with its pale gray walls and blue and teal accents. It was modern, with streamlined furniture but also cozy with lots of cushy pillows and soft blankets. It felt like as good a place as any to rest, regroup, and make plans for the rest of my life.

  A quick double knock at the door gave me hospital flashbacks, and I jumped. A jolt of fear surged through me at not knowing what was on the other side of that door, and I tried to shake it off. It’s just Nick. “Yeah?”

  He popped his head in. “Hey. Just checking to see how you’re settling in.” He glanced at my suitcase and duffel bag. “Need anything?”

  “No, I’m good. I’ll unpack a little later. I’m going to nap for a bit.”

  “Okay. Any requests for dinner? I have stuff to make lentil soup or stuffed peppers. If you want meat, we’ll have to make a trip to the grocery store.”

  I’d forgotten that he was a vegetarian. It would be weird to have a roommate again. I’d only ever lived with my parents and Macy, whom I roomed with at NYU, and I was already used to her idiosyncrasies by the time we moved in together. “Stuffed peppers sound good.” I made a mental note to ask Macy to bring some ground beef tomorrow. “Thanks. For everything.”

  “No thanks needed.” He studied me. “You okay?”

  “Oh, sure,” I said. I tried to smile. “I’m great.” I was displaced and lost and sadder than I had ever been, but I didn’t want to talk about it.

  “I know you’re not great, Aria. And it’s okay. Rest and heal. Everything else can wait until you get your strength back.”

  “I’m working on it.” As sorry as I was feeling for myself, I knew I was lucky that Nick was allowing me to stay. “Thank you.”

  He rested his hand on my shoulder, gave it a squeeze, and left the room, softly pulling the door closed behind him.

  I pulled a tank top and some soft cotton shorts out of my duffel bag, put them on, and slid between the crisp, cool white and teal checkered sheets. Nick kept his air-conditioning turned up higher than my parents did, and I reached to the end of the bed where the comforter was folded and pulled it up to my shoulders. I’d set my phone on the nightstand, and I grabbed it to tell Sloane I’d made it to Nick’s and would talk to her after my nap. The last thing I saw before falling asleep was a text screen filled with x’s and o’s from her. I smiled even as my eyelids became too heavy to keep open.

  * * *

  I woke up to a tapping sound and sat up, confused about where I was for a moment. I didn’t know how long I slept, but the room was dark. The tapping was coming from the right side of the room. I squinted in the darkness and saw a figure standing outside the sliding glass door, and I pulled the blanket around me and shoved myself over so hard I fell off the side of the bed. Panic ripped through me, and I opened my mouth to yell for Nick.

  Another tap resonated through the room, and I heard a voice say my name. At first, I thought of Clara Braverman, but why would she be outside? I crawled to the end of the bed to look around the edge.

  “Aria, it’s me!”

  Sloane. I felt silly as I gathered myself up from the floor and went to open the door. I slid it open as quietly as possible to allow her to slip through.

  “Sorry I scared you.” She sat on the edge of the bed and patted a spot beside her.

  “It’s okay,” I said, sitting next to her. “I’ve been jumpy since…”

  “Yeah. I’ve been jumpy too,
and I didn’t go through anything like what happened to you.”

  “So…what are you doing here?” I asked. “Not that I’m not happy to see you, because of course I am, but why, um, in the middle of the night?” I took a moment to enjoy the way her shaggy hair fell over one eye and how good it felt to have her next to me on the bed. “And why didn’t you use the front door?”

  She laughed. “First of all, it’s barely nine o’clock, so I didn’t realize I’d be infringing on the middle of your night. Secondly, I couldn’t use the front door because I have a proposition for you that isn’t exactly what I would call…Nick-friendly.”

  “A proposition, huh?” I asked. I realized how close we were sitting. We kept our voices low, and I could feel her breath on my neck when she leaned in to speak, and her fingers intertwined with mine. I wondered how her lips would feel on my neck, my fingers tangled in her wild hair.

  She smiled and wrapped an arm around me. “That’s not what I meant, but I like where your mind was headed.”

  The familiar feeling of heat rising to my cheeks made me reach up and touch my face. “Why don’t you tell me what you mean, so I don’t embarrass myself any further?”

  “No embarrassment necessary,” she said and leaned in to kiss me. It had been several days since I’d felt her lips, and I was eager to open myself up to them.

  The arm she had around my shoulder moved so her fingers were at the nape of my neck and began to trail down my spine as she kissed me more deeply. To my disappointment, she pulled away abruptly. “Listen, before we go any further—and believe me when I say I really want to go further—I need to say what I came here to tell you.” She stood and went to the recliner in the corner of the room, dropping down on it. Bitter disappointment filled my mouth, and I swallowed, trying to conceal it.

  “I can’t be trusted to keep my hands to myself when I’m sitting that close to you,” she explained, and I nodded, relieved that I wasn’t alone in feeling overwhelmed with desire at being in a bedroom alone. “Anyway, I have an idea, and all I ask is that you give it a real chance.”

  “Okay. Should I be nervous?”

  “No. Well, maybe a little.”

  “Great,” I said, but I couldn’t help smiling. My nervous jitters mixed with new adoration for this woman who never tired of coming up with plans to try to help me.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about this whole thing with Mrs. Braverman and the danger you’re in. You can’t be under the watchful eye of an experienced interpreter forever, you know? And who knows how long all of this will be going on?”

  “It can’t be for too much longer,” I said. “Now that my dad and especially Nick know what’s happening, they’ll get it figured out.”

  “Are you sure about that? What if it turns out they want to keep her here?”

  “But why would they want that?” I asked. Sloane looked at her lap. “Do you know something?” For the first time since she’d come in, I wasn’t thinking about sex. My pulse rushed so hard I could almost hear it.

  “Since you told your parents and Nick about Clara, word has gotten around AfterCorps about what’s happening, and my mom talked to me about it.”

  “And?”

  “And my mom says protocol will probably dictate a new trial for Clara, which could take months if they don’t expedite it.”

  Months? “But…but there’s no way they can expect me to be on lockdown for months.”

  “They might,” she said. “And my worry is…look, you’re here with Nick, but he’s in the next room, just like I was in the next room the last time Clara came at you. Granted, I wouldn’t have been able to do much, and Nick can, but I also had no idea anything was happening to you. You could be in a lot of danger in the seconds or minutes it takes to get to you, and it could be worse this time.”

  “What are you suggesting, that Nick never leave me in a room by myself?” I thought the weight of all the changes and disappointments and lost trust had been suffocating, but that would be no comparison to having to be under that kind of watch. The thought alone made the air in the room turn thick and difficult to inhale. “Because that’s no way to live, Sloane. Especially not if we are talking about months.” I had to draw a line somewhere, and constant in-room supervision was where I was doing it. The slow loss of control over my life had made me feel powerless and frustrated beyond measure, but this? This I could control, and I didn’t care at what cost it came. I would not give up my privacy, the base level of quality of life.

  “No, I’m suggesting something a little more radical than that.” She sat on the floor at my feet. She took my hands and looked into my eyes. I felt a blush coming on, but she dropped the bomb she’d been holding, and all flirtatious thoughts left me. “I think you and I should cross Clara over.”

  “What?”

  “Let me explain. I know I can figure out how to do it. Before they had a designated person in charge of final transfers, it used to be a rotating responsibility. Everyone had to spend three months every two years on that job, so there are books on it. They keep a set of archived books in the storage room where we did our filing, so all I have to do is get back in there.”

  “That’s so far from all you have to do,” I said. We’d encountered a lot of incidental danger, stuff beyond our control, and that was one thing, but what she suggested would deliberately push us into harm’s crosshairs.

  “Yeah, it would take some sneaking in on our part. We’d have to figure out people’s schedules and stuff, but it’s a plausible plan.”

  “Plausible? Sloane, have you even thought about what kind of punishment there would be if we managed to accomplish this? Clara would be gone; there would be no way to hide it. People would find out it was us, and then where would we be? There’s a good possibility we would be kicked out of AfterCorps for good.” I was surprised to realize I didn’t want to get kicked out. When had I stopped wanting to run away from ghost training and the organization that had a hold on me?

  Her grip on my hands tightened. “I can’t lose you, Aria.”

  “You’re not going to lose me.”

  “I might.” To my surprise, her eyes filled with tears. She blinked hard and shook her head. “You don’t know what it’s been like watching you go through this and feeling so helpless. I need to do something, do you understand? I have to fix this somehow.”

  I looked into her eyes. They were silvery with the remains of a few tears, and her eyebrows were drawn and furrowed. She had never been more beautiful. I was moved by her concern for me, and understood that her desire to find a way to get me out of this situation and back to safety was the origin for her crazy plan.

  “Come here,” I said softly, tugging on her hands. “Please.”

  She got on the bed. I leaned in and kissed her. She tensed with surprise before she pushed deeply into my mouth with her tongue and put her hand on the back of my head. We tipped back, and our mouths began traveling each other’s bodies. Her lips grazed down my neck, opening when she reached my collarbone. I closed my eyes when I felt her tongue trace the delicate skin. I inhaled deeply and smelled the fresh citrus scent of her shampoo.

  When her mouth returned to mine, I slipped my hand inside her shirt and grazed her belly and moved up her side. She gasped and grabbed my hand.

  “Aria,” she whispered, “are you sure? You just got out of the hospital. Are you sure this is okay?”

  “Yes,” I whispered and nibbled on her bottom lip. “I’ve never been so sure.” This was the kind of danger I wanted, the kind that didn’t scare me, the kind that felt so good.

  She slipped a strap of my tank top to the side, dropping kisses across my shoulder as she slid it down my arm. Her mouth moved lower on my chest, and she yanked the top off, and my nipple was in her mouth. She licked in a circular motion, and when I felt her teeth graze across it, I grabbed a handful of her hair.

  She moved down my body, her tongue and teeth finding sensitive parts of my stomach until she got to the edge of my pants, just b
elow my navel. She lingered, pulling the fabric down slowly, almost lazily, as if she were in no hurry at all. Each time she moved my waistband a fraction of an inch, she replaced the fabric with her lips. Finally, she put her hands under my hips and lifted them so she could pull my pants off. She stood at the end of the bed, and in the darkness, I saw her slip off her T-shirt and shorts.

  Once there was nothing between us, she rushed to the center of me, her slow deliberation from moments before replaced with divine urgency. She spread my thighs apart, and when I felt her mouth on my clit, I had to press my face into a pillow to stifle a moan. I arched my back and pulled my legs toward me so she could have all of me and was rewarded with her fingers slipping inside.

  We matched each other’s speed, me rocking my hips to the motion of her tongue and fingers. I raked her hair, pushing harder against her tongue as my entire body began to vibrate. She became more forceful with her fingers, and seconds later, an intense orgasm quaked through me.

  She crawled to me, kissing her way back up my body. We found our way to each other’s mouths again.

  “You feel amazing.” I cupped her breast and ran my thumb over her nipple, enjoying her gasping into my mouth. “I want to taste you, Sloane.”

  She bit my bottom lip and pressed her body against mine before pulling away. She grabbed my hips again, this time to pull me down the bed, then she straddled my head, grabbed the headboard, and lowered herself to my mouth.

  I took her into my mouth, sucking and licking at the same time. She tasted sweet and salty, like the air when you stand near the ocean. My tongue swirled on her clit, and she ground against it, pushing against me so hard I could barely breathe and didn’t want to. I grabbed her hips and guided her to my mouth, over and over, until I felt her body clench and shatter.

  She collapsed beside me and pulled me close.