The Mortician’s Daughter

by Nan Higgins

“Well,” she said, “this isn’t the reason I came here tonight. Not that I’m complaining, of course.” She kissed my cheek and trailed her fingers across my shoulder. “This was incredible.”

  “It was.” The moon was almost full, and it seemed low and close tonight. Some of its soft light swathed Sloane’s face, and her eyes looked like a shock of lightning across a dark sky.

  “Aria?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I love you.”

  I sat up and stared. “You do?” She had the ability to surprise me in a way that healed the sting of all the other bad surprises I’d endured.

  “Yes, I do.” She sat up too, and I realized how embarrassed she looked. I needed to respond before she thought I didn’t share her feelings.

  “I love you too.” I took her hand. “I’ve actually never said that before. To a girlfriend, I mean.” I’d never even come close to love before, partly because I was always too busy singing to get too deeply involved with anyone, and partly because it had seemed such a daunting thing. Somehow with Sloane, it felt right and natural.

  She smiled. “Well. Here we are, then. Loving each other.”

  I laughed. “Here we definitely are.”

  We lay back down, facing each other, smiling. When Sloane’s expression darkened, I touched her cheek. “What is it?”

  “This is why I can’t lose you.” She pulled my hand from her face and laced her fingers into mine.

  I sighed. “Sloane—”

  “I know. I know you think it’s crazy. All I’m asking is that you think about it.” Her eyes were so dark and wide, and she gripped my hand so tightly. Her fear was palpable, and in that instant, I would have done anything to keep her from worrying about losing me anymore.

  “Okay,” I said. “I can’t promise I’m ever going to agree with you, but I’ll think about it, and we can talk about it some more. But not tonight, okay?”

  “Deal. Not tonight.”

  We settled into the bed together. She fell asleep in minutes, but it took me longer to relax. For one thing, it finally registered that all this had happened at Nick’s house, and I felt weird about having Sloane in my bed when I was his guest. For another, I couldn’t stop turning her plan over in my head. She hadn’t gone too deeply into the logistics, and I considered what they might be until my vision wavered, and my brain was cloudy. When I finally allowed my eyes to close, it was only moments before my drowsiness overtook me. I fell asleep in Sloane’s arms for the first time.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  A knock at my door the next morning jolted me from a deep sleep. I looked beside me, and the space was vacant. Frowning, I pulled the covers to my chin and yelled, “Come in.”

  Nick poked his head in the door. “Hey, we need groceries. How soon can you be ready?”

  “I’ll need to shower and get dressed. Twenty minutes?”

  He nodded and popped out.

  I let the blankets drop down on the bed and got up, crossed over to the sliding glass door, and peeked through the blinds. The yard was empty. Grateful as I was not to have been caught in an embarrassing situation with my girlfriend, I didn’t like the hollow feeling in my chest that came with the realization that Sloane had crept out in the night.

  “Good morning, babe,” said a quiet voice behind me, and I jumped and whirled around.

  Sloane came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, her hair still wet from a shower. It took me about a second and a half to remember that I was still naked, and I bolted to the bed and grabbed the comforter to wrap around myself. She smiled, and I knew she was remembering last night, when there wasn’t a shred of fabric covering either of us, but she didn’t say anything. I was relieved for her slow, nonchalant manner since last night had been so unexpected. She didn’t seem embarrassed or freaked out; in fact, she seemed even more laid back than normal, which set me at ease too.

  “I heard Nick,” she said, keeping her voice low. “I’ll get dressed and slip out of here, okay?”

  “Sounds good. Macy is coming over later if you want to come back and hang out this afternoon.”

  “Yeah, I might do that. Text me when she’s here, and let me know if you still want me to come back.” She leaned in to kiss me, and water from her hair dropped onto my temple and rolled down my cheek.

  Another, louder knock came at the door, and Sloane rolled off the bed and onto the floor so she was hidden in case Nick popped back in. I pulled the comforter tightly around me and told him he could come in.

  “Here’s the grocery list I made so far.” He strode over and put a small pink sheet of paper on the nightstand. “Look it over and add whatever you want.”

  “Okay, thanks.” I picked it up and pretended to read it.

  Nick walked back to the door. On his way out, he paused. “Sloane, you can come grocery shopping with us too, if you want.”

  * * *

  She did come with us after Nick waved off my embarrassed, stuttering apologies for having a girl in my room overnight without running it past him. “You’re a grown woman, and I have no interest in policing your personal life. You’re with me for your safety, and that’s all.” Macy met us at the store to pick out carnivorous snacks before heading back to Nick’s place.

  “Do you need me to run to my house to cook this?” Macy asked Nick, holding up a container of ground beef.

  He laughed. “No, I’ll fire up the grill for you. Know how to use one?”

  “What do you think I am, an amateur?”

  “I did, and now I know otherwise.” Nick went out the side door from the kitchen and pulled a cover off an enormous charcoal grill. Macy started forming the ground beef into patties, and Sloane and I chopped up veggies for stir fry. We’d all slipped into our duties, and as I looked around, I saw that, albeit temporary, this was my new home, and these people loved me. This was as much a family as the one I’d grown up in, and I was overcome with gratitude.

  The open floor plan allowed us to see into the living room from the kitchen, and Nick had turned on a show I didn’t recognize.

  “Nick, what is this?” I asked when he came back inside.

  “Are you serious?” He looked at each of our faces, and when he saw that none of us were familiar with the program, he shook his head. “You kids today don’t even know what you’re missing. You don’t know Columbo when you see him. Guys, this is one of the best procedural crime dramas of all time. The detective seems like this bumbling, absentminded nincompoop, but he’s actually smarter than everyone and always solves the mystery in less than an hour.”

  He sat on the edge of his couch, leaned forward, and clasped his hands together, and it was a posture I was accustomed to seeing when he and my dad watched basketball. I hadn’t realized his television passions extended to ’80s detective shows. I glanced at Sloane and smiled, and a slow movement on the far side of the living room caught my eye.

  Clara Braverman stood in the corner, gently waving at me.

  At first I didn’t believe what I was seeing. I blinked and looked away, but Clara was still there. Panic and terror took over, and a familiar cold began in my fingers and traveled to my throat so quickly that I nearly choked on it. Pain seared through my hand, and when I looked down, I saw that I’d sliced myself with the knife I’d been using to cut zucchini. Sloane must have noticed because seconds later, she was at my side with a hand towel.

  “Shit, you’re bleeding a lot.” She wrapped the towel tightly between my finger and thumb where a steady flow of blood streamed out. Once she’d completed her bandage, she raised my hand in the air. “You need to sit down and keep this above your heart.” I let her hold my hand in the air, but my body hadn’t even recognized any physical pain. All I could feel was the icy freeze that had taken over my entire torso, like a frigid wave of terror had made a home in me.

  “What happened?” Macy and Nick asked, almost in unison.

  “She cut herself,” Sloane said, guiding me over to the chair next to Nick. I couldn’t move my eyes away from the
corner of the room where Clara stood, motionless and solemn.

  “She’s here,” I said, allowing Sloane to settle me into the chair. “Mrs. Braverman, she’s right over there.”

  Nick, who’d been focused on my hand, turned to the corner, stood, and approached Clara. “What is it you want?”

  “I want to leave this place.” Her voice sounded garbled, as if she were speaking under water.

  “We’re working on that,” he said.

  Clara shook her head. “He won’t let me go.” She pointed at me. “Her father won’t let me leave. I can’t rest. I can’t rest. I’ll never rest. I’ll never let her rest.” Her voice had gone from low and gurgling to high and shrieking. She turned and faced me, her arm still outstretched. “You won’t have a peaceful night of sleep until I transfer. Tell that to your daddy.”

  Nick moved between Clara and me, murmuring something I couldn’t distinguish, and when he turned around, she was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “What the hell just happened?” Macy wailed.

  Sloane, who had been standing behind me with her hands on my shoulders, was now sitting next to me. We huddled together, trying to regain warmth we’d lost being so close to Clara. The couch trembled, and I began to realize how violently we were shivering. Nick had made her go away somehow, but not before she could threaten me. He’d made her go away, but he hadn’t been able to keep her from appearing. Could he keep her from making good on her threat? Frightened thoughts ricocheted off the edges of my aching head.

  “The prior was here,” Nick said, rummaging through a cabinet in the kitchen. “She’s gone now.” He found whatever he was looking for and came to stand in front of Sloane and me.

  “Open your mouth,” he said. I looked at him, not completely comprehending what he wanted me to do. He held up a thermometer in front of my face. “Mouth. Open.” I did as he asked and slowly closed my mouth around the device. When it beeped and he pulled it out to examine the electronic window, he shook his head and moved to shove it in Sloane’s open mouth.

  “Macy, go to the bedrooms, grab all the blankets off the beds, and bring them in here.” He was only halfway done with his sentence before Macy ran down the hallway. She came back with her arms full of quilts and comforters and began wrapping us up. My attempts at trying to make sense of what had happened gave way as the cold consumed me. I’d had several moments where I felt I was just keeping my head above the suffocating freeze that occurred when Clara came around, but now, against my will, I succumbed to it. My heartbeat slowed, and my mind went blank, and all that existed was the glacier that lived in my body.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Their temperatures are just barely above ninety-five degrees. That’s almost hypothermia. We have to get their body temps back up. Macy, sit here beside Aria. I’ll get next to Sloane. Sit as close to her as you can, with as much of your body next to her as you can manage. They need our heat.”

  “Why are they so cold when she was only here for a minute?” Macy asked. “Sloane told me it would take extreme contact for Aria to have such a bad reaction.”

  “The longer Clara is earthbound, the worse their reactions to her will be.”

  I wasn’t sure how much time had gone by when I felt Sloane shift. I turned my head, and she was staring at me with tears in her eyes.

  “Are you okay?” Her words were careful and slow.

  It took several seconds for my lips to form the words I wanted to say. “I think so. Are you?”

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  “Can you walk?” Nick asked. “We’ll help you up.”

  “Where are they going?” Macy asked.

  “I think the best thing is to get them into bed. We can cover them in blankets, and if they’re together, their body heat will gradually rise.”

  Macy and Nick leaned down, each putting an arm around my waist, and helped me to stand. I hobbled down the hallway between them, stumbling as if I were drunk, and let them lay me down in the bed. On the edges of my periphery, I registered some alarm that I couldn’t feel my extremities, but I didn’t have the clarity to worry about it further. Macy ran back to the living room and returned with the blankets that had covered me on the couch. They left, and just when I was starting to think they’d changed their minds about bringing Sloane to the bedroom, they came back, and Sloane tumbled onto the bed beside me. While Macy got us covered in blankets, Nick hovered over us.

  “Sloane, where’s your phone?” he asked. “I have to call your mom and tell her you’re staying here tonight.”

  Sloane rocked toward me a little and felt in her pocket. She handed Nick her phone.

  “It’s locked,” he said. “Can you remember your code?”

  “Zero, three, two, seven,” Sloane mumbled.

  I’d been close to falling asleep when I heard those numbers, and the smallest touch of warmth filtered through my heart. March twenty-seventh was my birthday. I searched my memory, trying to think if I had told Sloane my birthday, but I couldn’t seem to remember any of our specific conversations, nor could I build up the energy to ask her about it. I closed my eyes and smiled. My birthday.

  I heard Nick speaking to Sloane’s mom in the hallway before I let sleep overtake me. I had dreams about being alone in Nick’s empty apartment and Clara coming to hover over me, to threaten and hurt me again.

  * * *

  The smell of bacon and eggs woke me, and when I opened my eyes, I saw Macy and Nick, each with a tray of food. Sloane stirred and sat up, rubbing her eyes, and I scooted up so I could lean against my pillows.

  “Good morning.” Macy brought a tray, set it on my lap, and sat on the edge of the bed near my feet. Nick got Sloane situated with her food and then settled into the recliner in the corner of the room.

  My fingers felt a little stiff, and I rubbed my hands together like I would if I was outside in the winter, getting the blood flow going. I didn’t feel cold, but I had pins and needles in my hands and feet. When it had subsided a little, I picked up my fork and ate a bite of eggs. It felt strange to be doing something so ordinary as eating breakfast after going through something so traumatizing, but I tried to focus on the taste, feel, and texture of the food, afraid that even thinking too much about Clara would bring back that heart-stopping freeze.

  “Nick even made you bacon,” Macy said. “I told him he didn’t have to, that we could give you eggs and fruit, but he insisted.”

  “You need a hearty breakfast,” he said. “You went through a lot yesterday, and it all went down before dinner.” He smiled at his joke, but his lips were thin.

  “Thank you,” I said. “For everything.” I took a large bite of bacon to show my appreciation.

  Sloane took a big swallow of orange juice and cleared her throat. “Yeah, thank you,” she said. Then, after a pause, “Nick, what are you doing to make sure this doesn’t happen again?”

  “Sloane—” I began.

  “No, I’m serious. How many times does Aria have to get hurt for someone to do something about it?”

  I loved her for asking, for her anger and indignance.

  He leaned back in his chair and crossed one leg over the other. “You both got hurt this time.”

  “I wasn’t the target, and you know it.”

  “What do you think should be done?” I couldn’t interpret the look on his face. Bemused, maybe, with a touch of solemnity. I didn’t appreciate that he didn’t appear to be taking this seriously, and like Sloane, I wondered what terrible thing would have to happen to me in order for him to take notice. Maybe he’d care when I was dead and he had facilitated my transfer.

  “We have to get Clara transferred,” Sloane said. “It’s the only way she’ll leave Aria alone.”

  “I’m working on that.”

  “How?”

  “You need to trust me.”

  I scoffed at this and crossed my arms when Nick raised an eyebrow. The time when I’d blindly trusted the people in my life was lon
g gone.

  Sloane pushed her tray away as well as she could with its legs tangled in her blanket. “That’s not good enough. It’s gone too far, Nick. I want a plan, I want answers, and Aria needs them. She deserves that.” This was the reason loving Sloane had come so easily.

  Nick sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, his gaze was pointed. “You’re right. I didn’t want to discuss it until the investigation had given me substantial results, but you’re right.” He turned to me. “After everything that’s happened, Aria, you have earned some answers that haven’t been filtered through a misguided attempt to protect you from your own life.

  “I, along with a few other AfterCorps leaders, have begun an internal inquiry because we suspect that Clara may be right and that your dad might be keeping her here against her will without cause. And not only her, I’m afraid. There may be as many as a dozen or so others.”

  “But…but why?” I hadn’t realized I was trembling until I felt Macy rest her hand on my shin and squeeze. Throughout all I’d endured, I hadn’t really been able to bring myself to believe my dad was capable of something like this, even on my worst days. This couldn’t be real.

  “What motivation could he possibly have to sabotage priors to whom he feels such a deep responsibility?” Sloane reached under my blanket to find my hand. “Not to mention the business his family built over multiple generations.”

  “We aren’t sure about that yet,” Nick admitted. “That’s the main reason I’ve held off telling you; we aren’t positive about his reasoning, although we do have some theories.”

  “Like?” Sloane sounded more impatient than ever, and I squeezed her hand. I was as ready as she was to hear what Nick had to say, but I couldn’t seem to find my voice.

  “How much do you know about your father’s financial situation, Aria?”

  “Practically nothing.” I couldn’t imagine what his finances had to do with anything. My parents had always lived comfortably. Not extravagantly but definitely comfortable. I couldn’t remember a time I’d wanted or needed anything they couldn’t provide. But that didn’t really answer the question, did it?