Mortal Remains

by Mary Ann Fraser

  “Ew. I don’t do that, do I?”

  She gave me a look like You gotta be kidding.

  “Nervous habit,” I said.

  “The thing is you said nothing, shared nothing with me.”

  I wanted to tell her that it wasn’t like I’d said anything to Adam about how I felt, either, but I let her have her say.

  “Lily, if we were best friends, you’d have told me you two were a thing.”

  “Were best friends?” I repeated. “Aren’t we still?”

  Inside the gym the band struck up the school fight song with a head-pounding boom boom of drums and a heralding of trumpets. “I’ve gotta go,” Mal said. She gathered her tryout form and stole into the gym.

  “Call me!” I said to no one.

  I phoned Rachel to tell her I was ready to go home. She replied that I’d have to wait an hour or so while she finished running errands. It was her passive-aggressive way of telling me I needed to think about someone besides myself for a change.

  I took my usual seat beneath the blue cedar that graced the front lawn of the school to wait and to do the one thing I usually avoided—think. It was bad enough Dad was selling the mortuary and gutting any hopes of keeping it in the family. I didn’t need Mal dumping me, too.

  As I mulled over her words, I began to see she was right. I had been keeping my confidences to myself. It was because I feared the day was coming when she’d finally realize I was the one holding her back. And if she left me, would she keep my secrets?

  All summer I’d seen signs of her outgrowing me—her whole reinvention campaign, the shopping sprees, the new set of friends. So what did I do in response? I gave her every reason to give up on me. Maybe it was time I gave her a reason to stay. Maybe it was time I trusted her.

  I heard the van circling the parking lot long before it pulled up to the curb. Rachel clucked at my red-rimmed eyes and shoved a tissue packet my way before asking what was wrong. I didn’t answer, so for the rest of the way home she rattled on about the vacation to Hawaii she and Dad were planning for their anniversary and how they’d been slaves to the business their whole marriage and that no one lived forever, you know.

  I knew.

  When we got home, the first thing I noticed was that the hearse was gone. “We get a call?”

  “No one told you?” said Rachel.

  “Told me what?”

  “Jim Sturbridge made us an offer on the mortuary. Why’d you think I was going on about Hawaii? It isn’t all we hoped for, but it’s decent enough and beats filing for bankruptcy. You should have seen how excited your father was. Almost left for the realtor’s in his slippers. He’s there now, drawing up a counteroffer.” She sighed. “What a relief this’ll be for everyone.”

  Not everyone.

  I retreated to the prep room to find comfort in my dearest possessions—my basket filled with a painter’s palette of embroidery floss, my favorite pair of scissors, and two pampered badger-hair brushes—but what good were they if there was no work? I was alone with no one to listen, not even the dead. Adam would listen. Always Adam. But it was too late for talk. What was done was done.

  Or was it?

  What if there was a way everyone could get what they wanted? Devlin could get the papers that cost him eight years of his life, Adam could have his independence, and I could have the mortuary. It would be risky. If Devlin double-crossed us or word got out about Adam, more than our funeral home would be at stake. Reporters would swarm him all over again, and chances were good that his entire future would be put on the auction block and sold to the highest bidder. If the truth about him were known . . . well, that would be a total game changer. Those were huge stakes compared to one little family business.

  And yet hadn’t everyone been telling me all along to take more risks?

  I dried my face on a clean towel, brushed the hair from my eyes, and pinched my cheeks to put some color in them. Time to pay my dues to the Cowards Anonymous Club and fess up.

  RULE #34

  DON’T LOSE YOURSELF IN THE NARRATIVE OF DEATH AND DYING.

  I found Adam in Paradise. He was crouched beneath the apple tree, his fingers sifting through a small mound of wood pulp at the base of the tree.

  I cleared my throat, and he looked up, not particularly surprised to see me. “Heartwood,” he said.

  “As in the heart of the tree?”

  “Yes, Carpenter ants have moved into the heart of the tree to build their nest.”

  “Does that mean the tree is dying?”

  “Most likely,” he said, standing and brushing off his knees.

  “But it was starting to come back. Can anything be done to save it?”

  “Time will tell, won’t it?” He squinted at me and tilted his head. “I would call that look on your face . . . despair.”

  “Two points to you.”

  “It’s not all bad news. Look.” He pointed to a green sprout crowned in red-hued leaves growing out of the otherwise barren Rosa ‘Queen Elizabeth’.

  I sighed. “Starting over is a thorny undertaking.”

  “That’s quite profound. But you aren’t talking about the garden, are you?”

  “No. Dad got an offer on the mortuary this morning. It’s all but sold, and to Jim Sturbridge of all people.”

  “I’m sorry. For a lot of things.”

  “Me too.”

  He held out his hand to me, but as much as his touch tempted me, it felt dishonest to accept it. “Adam, I have a confession. I tried to tell you on the beach, but . . .”

  “But I told you it could wait.”

  “Yeah.” I took a deep breath. “But it can’t wait, not if I want to stop the sale.”

  “You’re going to fight this. Good. So then . . . ?”

  I hesitated but decided it was better just to blurt it out. “I had a meeting with Miles Devlin.”

  Adam forced a blink. “You what?! How could—? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I was afraid.” My trembling voice was proof enough of that. “Look at you. You’re freaking out, and I haven’t even told you what happened yet.”

  “Freaking out?” He circled the tree like he wanted to yank it from the ground. “He killed my . . . He killed Neil.”

  “We don’t know that for sure. Please, Adam, let me explain. I think I’ve found a way for both of us to get what we want, but I need your help.”

  “How do you know what I want?”

  “I know you want to live a life of your own, to go where you please. I know you want to leave and get as far away from here as possible.”

  “Then you know nothing. You seriously think I want to leave you?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No! But it’s not like I have a choice, not if I want to protect you and your family.”

  “Then hear me out,” I begged.

  He planted his feet and crossed his arms. “I’m listening.”

  “First, know that when Devlin first called me, I had no idea who I was talking to. I figured it was some sort of screwy sales pitch. He said he had a way to help our business, and I didn’t see the harm in hearing what he had to say.”

  “You met with him in secret.”

  I backed off a step, alarmed by the venom in his voice. “Okay, yeah.”

  “What did he want?”

  I took my time finding the right words. “Your father’s research documents. In exchange he’d ensure that we could keep the family business. He claimed he never stole the documents. He said your father framed him and sent him to prison, like Veronica said.”

  “Lily, the man should be in prison for murder.”

  “You don’t know that, not for sure. Besides, even if he was tried and convicted, he’d never see the inside of a cell. Adam, he’s dying.”

  “So he says.”

  “You weren’t there. You didn’t see him.”

  “You’re right. I wasn’t there because you went without me. Does he even have the money to pay you?”

  “Pay us,�
� I corrected. “He says he does.”

  “And you believe him.”

  I gave a hesitant nod.

  “Then you’re a fool. Did he tell you what was in the documents?”

  “Only that it had to do with the Seed of Life Project. I think I can guess the rest.” My eyes fixed on the bandages faintly visible beneath his white cotton tee.

  “I suspect you can. So why are you telling me this now?”

  “I hoped you might know where Neil hid his research, if it even exists.”

  “You want to sell me out to Devlin?”

  “No! I think there’s a way for us all to get what we want. Devlin wants to prevent the information contained in those documents from falling into the wrong hands. We’ll give him only the papers that he and Neil worked on together, and we’ll destroy anything else that would compromise your . . . true nature. We’d split the money from Devlin. With your half, you could get a fresh start.”

  “And with your half, you’d stop the sale of the mortuary.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Are you sure this is what you want?”

  “More than anything.”

  He took a couple of turns around the dying apple tree, slower now, careful to mask his emotions but not careful enough to remember to blink. He stopped, leaning against the tree with one shoulder until I couldn’t tell which was supporting the other. “He give you a way to reach him?”

  “He did. So you’ll help me? You’ll tell me where the research is hidden?”

  “No. I’ll take the documents to Devlin myself. It’ll be safer that way.”

  “We do this together or not at all.” I braced myself, expecting him to refuse my terms but also hoping he was desperate enough to agree.

  “Okay, together.”

  “You promise?”

  “Yes, I promise. Now the phone number.”

  “Okay, but before I give it to you, I have one more condition. You have to give your word that you’ll hear him out. If he’s responsible for your father’s death in any way, we call the police.”

  “But I—”

  “I’ll lose the mortuary before I let you hurt an innocent man.”

  “You’re still assuming he’s innocent.”

  “Innocent until proven guilty.”

  “Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit.” He hesitated. “Okay, I promise.”

  Knowing he couldn’t lie, his word was good enough for me. I pulled out my phone and the rumpled napkin, pressed speaker, and dialed the number. At the first ring, Adam swiped the phone from my hand.

  “Clearview Extended Stay, front desk,” answered a receptionist.

  Adam asked for Miles Devlin. At first the man refused to give him any information until he insisted it was a family emergency. Technically it wasn’t, but it must have seemed like one to Adam. How else could he have said it?

  “In that case,” said the receptionist, “would you like me to put you through to his room?”

  “Please.”

  “Hello?” The deep, coarse voice on the other end was immediately recognizable as Devlin. “Who is this?”

  “Adam Lassiter.”

  There was a long silence. “Your girlfriend doesn’t follow instructions very well.”

  “No, she doesn’t.” Adam glared at me. “But let’s leave her out of this.”

  “I see,” said Devlin with a hint of amusement. “So she doesn’t know you’re calling me. Interesting.”

  “I’m the one who has what you want.”

  “How is that, exactly?”

  “I’m Neil Lassiter’s son.”

  There was a loud cough on the other end, loud enough to make me jump. Did he know what Adam was? How could he? He’d been serving time when the lab accident occurred, and for all we knew he had no idea Neil’s son had died. But just the remote possibility that Devlin suspected was enough to rattle Adam. He held the phone by the tips of his fingers, as if it might burn him.

  “Let me be clear,” said Adam, once he’d regained his composure. “I’m prepared to give you Neil’s research, but there’s a price.”

  “There always is,” Devlin said. “But this is important to me.”

  “Important enough to kill for it?”

  “How much do you want?” The charm in Devlin’s voice had evaporated.

  I quickly wrote a number in the dirt at the base of the tree.

  Adam read it off as if it were a question. “I want one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in unmarked bills?”

  Unmarked bills? I didn’t write that.

  Devlin snorted. “You’ve been watching too many crime dramas, son. I don’t do business with greedy people.”

  “The money is not for me. It’s for Lily—the McCraes,” he corrected.

  “Ah, how chivalrous. You must care for them a lot to hand over that kind of money so easily.”

  With our faces hovering over the phone, our eyes met. I do, he mouthed to me. To Devlin, he said, “The McCraes took me in when I had nowhere else to go.”

  “And how do I know you have what I want?”

  “Listen. The research documents were part of the Seed of Life Project. Its emblem consists of concentric circles. The overlapping circles form a flower. The precept was that life originated not from a chemical amalgam brought together by the tides, but from clay particles. The notes include multiple volumes of data as well as daily logs written in Greek and Latin. You went to prison for stealing them from Arman Research. Should I continue?”

  “No, that’s about the gist of it, all except for the part about Neil being the one who stole the information from me, but I don’t suppose he ever mentioned that part, now did he? Nor, I imagine, did he tell you that he was the one who set me up to take the blame.”

  “And now you want the research. To do what, clear your name?”

  “That would only work if I could prove Neil was in possession of it. Most likely they’d say I’d planted the documents. No, I want the research because I intend to destroy it. That was always my intention, which is why Neil misappropriated the documents and pinned it on me. I had learned quite by accident that a particular government agency was interested in obtaining our reanimation process. They wanted to use it to build a super army and were willing to pay an exorbitant amount of money. The one thing holding up the transaction was that we had yet to create a viable prototype.”

  A prototype? Is that what Adam is supposed to be? He must have been wondering the same, because his free hand drifted to his chest where Neil had inked his skin.

  There was a noise on the other end—a knock on a door, perhaps. Devlin’s voice was suddenly breathy and lower in volume. “Where and when?”

  Adam cut a questioning glance at me.

  “Tomorrow night at ten o’clock. Corner of Mason and Fifth, near the old post office,” I whispered.

  Adam repeated the location and time and added, “Once I see that you have the money, I’ll take you to where the notes are stashed. You don’t show, I find another buyer. Shouldn’t be too difficult based on what you’ve told me.”

  With that the call ended, but our heads remained locked over the blacked-out screen, the tension between us palpable.

  “Think this is going to work? He’ll pay us for the information?”

  “It better,” he said, eyeing me. I realized I was chewing my lower lip. Curse Mallory for knowing me better than I knew myself.

  His answer was not exactly the vote of confidence I was after, but beggars can’t be choosers, as Rachel would say, and right then I knew I needed to do a little begging if we were going to see this through together.

  He stood so close, I could nearly taste him. “Can you forgive me for not telling you about Devlin?”

  “I’m working on it.” With an icy finger he traced the curve of my mouth. It made me hunger all the more for his. I should have been focusing on how this was all going to go down with Devlin—not on how to close the distance between us.

  My fingers grazed his arms, and he drew me i
n until we were chest to chest, our lips a hair’s breadth apart.

  I frowned and pulled away.

  “I’m sorry,” he blustered, misreading my reaction. “Did I—?”

  “No, no, it’s . . . You’re so cold.”

  “Am I?”

  I slipped my hands beneath his shirt and was rewarded with a sharp inhalation. He closed his eyes as my thumbs traced his waistband, meeting at his navel. I wondered if I should keep going. A contented sigh was my answer. Boldly I let my fingers travel his sides, counting each perfectly rendered rib. Adam’s ribs. My hands came together again over his heart.

  But something felt wrong, dreadfully wrong. I withdrew my hands. They were smeared with his rust-colored blood.

  I backed away, reaching blindly for the gate latch.

  “Lily?”

  “I have to get—”

  “No, stop. Please.” He took one step and wilted beside the dying tree.

  RULE #35

  THERE’S A PERFECT VESSEL FOR EVERY BODY.

  Evan was stone-cold silent, his hand welded to the railing, his eyes fixed on the figure lying so still on the gurney. It was never my plan to tell him, but there was no way I could have hauled Adam to the prep room on my own.

  I placed a wad of gauze over the reopened wound. Evan swayed. “I swear, if you pass out . . .”

  “I’m good,” he said, clutching the counter.

  “Then go keep a lookout at the door while I work.” To my surprise, he obeyed.

  Face to the crack in the door, he mumbled, “How long have you known?”

  “Since the night at the beach. He didn’t want anyone to know. You can imagine why. So you can’t tell a soul, not even Rachel or Dad.”

  “Like anyone would believe me. I’m not sure I believe me. A golem? Holy crap!”

  “A golem, yes, but more than—”

  In his delirium Adam moaned and lashed out, clobbering me. The blow sent me into a cabinet.

  “You okay?” asked Evan.

  “Yeah, thanks,” I said, rubbing my chin. “He’s stronger than he looks.”

  Adam seemed caught in some night terror, making it nearly impossible for me to finish redressing his wound.

  “What’s wrong with him, anyway?” asked Evan. “You said it was only a scratch.”