by Meier, Susan
The nurses smiled sadly.
“So you can call me any time he gets agitated.”
They nodded and she left Harmony Hills Hideaway with tears in her eyes. It was sad that one of her fondest memories of her dad would be that he remembered who she was.
But as she drove into Harmony Hills, she saw Finn’s bulletin boards and snorted. B.B. as an angel? That suddenly struck her as incredibly funny, and she laughed out loud. She laughed because she was running a funeral home, a newly minted member of the Dinner Belles—the group who ruined her mother’s name—and had slept with Finn Donovan…again.
Her life was now officially out of control.
…
The following morning, two people died. Samantha Johnson, a thirtysomething woman who’d been battling cancer, went to Finn. Oscar Franklin, Jeff Franklin’s granddad and a former attorney, came to McDermott’s.
Dressed in her green scrubs, with her beautiful blond hair tucked into a green paper hairnet, Barbara Beth helped Dan navigate the door as he wheeled Oscar into the basement.
Ellie leaned against the embalming table, watching the scene. After five funerals in the past few weeks, she realized she didn’t feel like running. It should have surprised her, but it just sort of fell into the whole shocking my-life-has-changed-so-much-I-don’t-even-recognize-myself category. She needed to run this place, probably for years. And she wanted those days when her dad would recognize her. In fact, she’d fight for them. To the death. Not that she thought Finn would kill her, but two funeral homes would not survive in this town. One of them was going to go belly-up. And it wouldn’t be her. Too much was at stake.
The buzzer for the front door sounded and Ellie headed upstairs. Oscar’s wife, Mitzie, an octogenarian with snow-white hair, stood in the funeral home’s foyer, flanked by two sixty-something daughters.
Ellie caught her hand. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Oscar went to be with his maker. He’s singing in an angelic choir right now.”
She nodded respectfully and faced the two daughters. “Let’s go into the office.”
After offering everyone coffee or tea, which was refused, Ellie got down to the business of arrangements. Though Oscar had a reputation for being stingy, his wife went all out with his funeral. Best casket. Best floral spray (for which she had the coupon). And only the best for his after-funeral lunch.
With the menu in hand, Ellie rose. “I’ll call the Dinner Belles.”
Mitzie stood shakily. She grasped Ellie’s hand and squeezed. “Thank you so much. I know you’ll do a very good job for my Oscar.” She smiled fondly. “And tell your dad we miss him.”
The mention of her dad tugged at her heart. “I will.”
The Franklin family left and Ellie slid the cheat sheet her dad had left for her under the desk calendar again. She didn’t feel like a fraud for needing some help remembering everything, because she was catching on. She’d worked with her dad when she was in her teens, and she was beginning to remember. And the more she remembered, the better she’d be at getting business away from Finn.
“Knock, knock.”
She glanced up and saw Finn at her door, and her heart froze. Even wearing his sedate white shirt and gray pants, he was gorgeous. Short as his hair was, he couldn’t seem to tame it, but that only made him sexier. And the sparkle in those blue eyes? If he could teach other men how to give a woman that look, he’d make millions.
Tingles formed and cascaded out to her limbs. Once again, she’d thought about him and he’d appeared. He must have radar, because she couldn’t imagine why he was at her office door.
“Hey, High Heels.”
Her face heated. Arousal bloomed in her stomach. And she fought the urge to squeeze her eyes shut. She’d slept with him, then gone to his house with wine, making him think she wanted to sleep with him again. No wonder he was so happy.
She had to nip this in the bud. Now.
“You shouldn’t call me that.”
“Why not?” He walked into her office, fell to the chair in front of her desk. “I like the memories it brings back. Plus, it’s just the two of us. Nobody heard.”
“That’s just it. People who have to hide a relationship shouldn’t be in one.”
“I’d be perfectly happy to take this out in the open.”
“Really? Geez, Finn, we’re fighting for the same business. We can’t be lovers.”
“All right, fine. Whatever.” But when he smiled at her, she had the horrible feeling he really didn’t agree. “Have you spoken with the Franklins yet?”
She frowned. What did he care? “They just left.”
“So you have your times?”
“Times?”
“For the wake, the funeral? You know when you need the grave digger, the Dinner Belles, the minister or priest, so we can coordinate times?”
“Yes. Sorry. I…” You’re here. And just looking at you rattles me. Which is wrong because we’re competitors—
That was when she remembered he’d told his mom they were cooperating, and she hadn’t contradicted him. She understood his mother had needed some reassurance, but her dad needed to stay in a personal care facility. She could not actually share business with Finn. Neither one of them would make enough money.
“Um, Finn, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea here. We’re not in business together.”
His brows knit. “I never said we were.”
“You told your mom we were cooperating.”
“Yes. Cooperating. Not splitting the business.” He rose, leaned across the desk. “If that’s what has you worried about our”—he motioned with his hand from himself to her and back to him—“little tryst, don’t give it another thought. I can keep business and pleasure separate.”
Oh, Lord. Those blue, blue eyes. She had to resist them. Get the conversation back on track. “So why are you here?”
“Because this is what funeral homes do. We share the same gravedigger. The same religious leaders do our services. Hell, we share the Dinner Belles. When two people die on the same day, we have to coordinate times. But we’re still in competition.”
“Oh.”
He made everything sound so simple. So doable. But he didn’t know everything about them. She’d lied to him… Well, maybe tricked him was a better way to describe it. And now here he was being friendly. Because she’d made him think her visit to his house had been for good, friendly reasons.
Her guilt returned, spewing the red-hot lava of shame from the top of her head to the tips of her feet.
He was being nice to her after she’d lied.
He laughed. “What’s up with you today?”
“You mean aside from the fact that when I visited my dad last night, a little old lady ran screaming because she thought I was there to take her.”
Another Finn laugh escaped. This one loud and long. “We should have warned you about visiting the rest home without having the nurses prepare the patients.”
“I guess.”
“So the visit with your dad was bad?”
She toyed with the pen she’d been using to write out the Franklin arrangements. “Abysmal.”
“I thought he was doing okay.”
“He seems fine health-wise.”
“But…”
“But the nurses told me he’s no longer lucid enough to live in his own little unit. I guess I knew it was coming because the last couple of visits he hasn’t remembered me. A few nights ago we had a talk as if we were strangers. Two people who’d just met. Last night, he talked to me as if I were twelve.” She snorted. “He remembers B.B. But me?” She shrugged. “I guess it’s my own fault. I barely visited in the past nine years.”
He rose from his chair, walked around the desk, and leaned against it. “I never visited at all in nine years.”
She swallowed. “You had good reason.”
“Really? I left my mom with a man I knew beat her for nine years. You condone that?”
“You we
re getting your bearings, putting yourself into a position financially and personally where you could fight him. I was just staying away, writing ads for scooters and toothpaste.”
“Somebody’s got to do it.”
Guilt and shame swelled in her again. Especially since she now knew Finn hadn’t lied to her. Maybe ever. She could think back to high school and remember him trying to psych her out, but mostly he beat her by competing fairly, by just being better. And that’s why it felt so odd being around him. All these years, she’d thought he was a fraud. But he wasn’t the fraud. She was.
“Don’t be nice to me.”
“Hey.” He stooped by her chair, brushed her hair behind her ear. “Your dad is sick. Your life just got turned upside down. Stop being so hard on yourself.”
She rolled her chair away a few inches. “I brought that wine to your house last night to catch you in a lie.”
His brow furrowed. “What? What lie?”
She swallowed. “For the last nine years I believed you told me you’d gotten kicked out of your house to get my sympathy so you could…” She refused to say make love. Refused. “…psych me out on the calculus exam.”
He rose. “You thought I’d lied about being kicked out?”
She swallowed again. Her voice was as soft as a newly brushed kitten when she said, “Yes.”
“Which means you thought I’d lied about my mother living with me.”
“Yes.”
“So the wine was your way of getting into my house?”
“To see if your mom really was there.”
He grabbed the arm of her chair and whipped it around, forcing her to face him. “How little you must think of me.”
Righteous indignation flared. “You took my virginity. Made me such an emotional mess, I slipped on the calculus exam, and then you took B.B. to the graduation party. It all seemed rather obvious.”
He leaned in until their faces were almost touching. “I was better in math. And I’d asked B.B. to the party six weeks before that.” He pushed off her chair and pivoted away from her. “All these years you thought I was a liar?”
“And sort of a creep.”
“Well, thanks for adding that.”
“You never called. We never spoke. It was just one night. One night we seemed to be friends, then even before I got adjusted to that, we had sex. Something I would have never expected to happen, and then we never even spoke again.”
“I didn’t have a phone. I didn’t have a home.”
“Well, I know that now! At seventeen, it all looked pretty condemning.”
He put his head back, gazing at the ceiling. “All these years I thought we had a frenemies thing going, competing but deep down liking each other, and you just thought we were enemies.” He shook his head. “Well, that explains a lot.”
“Finn, we were competitors for twelve years. Was I just supposed to think our status had changed?”
…
He didn’t know what she was supposed to think. He also didn’t know why her believing he’d lied hurt him so much, or why her coming to his house to catch him in a lie felt like the worst kind of betrayal.
He just knew he had to get the hell out of here.
“I’ll have my mother call you with my times. If there are conflicts, work it out with her.”
He stormed out of her office and into the June sunshine, fighting the anger in his blood as he jumped on his motorcycle. He’d vowed more than a decade ago that no one would hurt him. He had skin like concrete and nerves of steel. She has not hurt me. “Hurt” wasn’t a word in his vocabulary.
But “disappointment” was.
“Foolish” was.
He’d trusted her. Foolishly. And she’d tested him. Tested him. The only person in the world he’d confided his secrets to because he’d believed there was no one else who understood him, and she hadn’t believed him all along.
He shook it off, roared the bike up her street to Main. He turned left, in the direction of the open road, where he could burn off some of this unwanted emotion with speed and the rush of the wind. But only a few yards down the street, he saw the sign in front of the Borough Building: Water Authority. Mayor’s office. Borough Council. Police.
A thought so ridiculous, yet so profound, struck him. He turned the bike to the left, up Spruce Street, where he turned again so he could go back down to Main and the Borough Building. He’d feel neither disappointed nor foolish right now if he’d confided in the appropriate person.
He parked the bike and headed inside the Borough Building, walking past the door for the Water Authority, the mayor and Borough Council, to the very back.
Police.
He strode in. His mother didn’t want to call the police, but she was a victim, a frightened woman who had been suffering at the hands of his dad most of her life. He wanted to respect her wishes, but saving her life and maybe finally making his family whole were more important than protecting his dad.
Oh, hell, who was he kidding? Part of him wanted to shout this from a rooftop, so people would see that his dad wasn’t anything like the image he projected.
But it wasn’t time for that. This was one simple step. One important step. And, hopefully for his mom’s sake, one private step.
Since dispatch had been taken over by the 911 call center, there was no dispatcher at the front desk. Just a woman who looked as though she was the receptionist.
Before the words, “Can I help you?” were fully out of her mouth, old Red Garmin got up from his desk in the room in the back. With glass walls, his office afforded him a view of the door, and he’d obviously seen Finn come in.
“Well, well, if it isn’t the return of Finn Donovan.”
“Afternoon, Chief.”
“You were the smart one, right?”
“That was the rumor.” He caught the chief’s gaze. “Got a minute?”
Red motioned to his office. “Sure.”
Finn maneuvered around two empty desks to the door to Red’s office. Guilt about going against his mother’s wishes almost made him stop. But it was one thing not to air the family’s dirty laundry and another to protect the people he loved. He wasn’t confiding in Red to start trouble. He was going to do what he should have done a decade ago, when his dad kicked him out. And right or wrong, he and his family were going to have to live with it.
Chapter Ten
Three days later, an unusually hot June sun poured down and tried to bake the residents of Harmony Hills. Dressed in her black trousers and white ruffled blouse for Oscar Franklin’s funeral, Ellie barely noticed. Just when she believed she was firmly in the present moment, the hurt expression on Finn’s face would flit through her mind, and the warmth of shame would cascade from her head to her toes.
What would it feel like to live in a world of pain and fear? To be a boy too young to defend himself, let alone defend his mom? To be cast out into the world without money or anywhere to go? And then to finally trust someone with your secret and have that person not believe you?
She couldn’t imagine it.
But the knowledge that she’d hurt him was killing her, and rivals or not, she had to fix it. Three days had gone by without a word from him. She hadn’t seen him in town. There’d been no motorcycle roaring up and down her street. She’d driven by his office, but his Range Rover was never there. After the fiasco of her visit to his house, she couldn’t quite force herself to go there again. And he hadn’t tried to sell prepaid funeral packages at today’s funeral.
She couldn’t find him to talk this out.
With Barbara Beth taking the lead for McDermott’s at the services, she had no reason to stay after the graveside prayers, and she almost bailed. In the end, she drove to the church hall, watched as Barbara Beth stood by the minister, who said grace, and then paid the Dinner Belles.
Sliding the check into her apron pocket, Sandy said, “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” She turned to go, but Sandy stopped her.
“Can w
e count on you for Samantha’s funeral tomorrow?”
She almost told Sandy that she had to go to Pittsburgh the following day. It had been what she was planning, but she suddenly realized that the after-funeral lunch for his own client was the one place Finn couldn’t hide. She could find a private minute with him, quietly apologize, and then everything would be okay.
Plus, crass as it might make her feel, given how angry Finn was with her, she needed time with the Dinner Belles. She might not be ready with her funeral packages yet—the documents were with her dad’s lawyer for approval—but she would be soon.
“Yes. I’ll be there.”
Sandy’s face brightened. “Good. We’ll see you about eight.”
She nodded. “About eight.”
She walked out of the church hall feeling better, until she realized she didn’t know how to apologize to Finn, what to say. They had been two teens whose parents had screwed up their lives. Not that her dad and his mom hadn’t tried to fix things, but while other kids were enjoying the surface lives of going to parties, experimenting with alcohol and cigarettes and maybe even drugs, with their biggest worry being their current hairdo, she and Finn were struggling with adult issues. She was the child of the town’s scarlet woman and he was being beaten. He was hiding things. She was hiding from things.
It was why she’d sympathized when he’d talked to her that night in his Buick, but then they’d had sex when they should have been focusing on friendship. And, too young to know better, she’d misinterpreted everything because he’d never called her.
She wouldn’t blame him if he never spoke to her again. But she had to try.
The next day, Ellie showered and went to her closet in search of clothes to wear to help prepare the after-funeral lunch.
She considered wearing the black sheath, appropriate dress for a funeral, but she wasn’t the funeral home director this time. Finn was.
The thought of seeing him sent butterflies winging around her stomach, but she ignored them. She might be attracted to him, but she shouldn’t be. Plus, right now, he wasn’t too fond of her, and she understood why. She didn’t want anything from him except his acceptance of her apology.
Period.