“I grew up with him,” I argued. “I think I know him a little better than you.”
“In some ways, yes,” Jerry agreed. “In others, though, it’s like you’ve never met him.”
I pondered the idea for a second, but forcefully pushed it out of my mind. “There’s no way,” I said. “I don’t even look like my mother. I look like him.”
“You all look alike,” Jerry agreed. “Your mom was all blonde and sunny, and you guys are all dark and broody, but it’s there.”
“What’s there?”
“The voice. The slope of your nose. The way your forehead furrows when you’re thinking really hard – like now. That all comes from your mother.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but Jerry silenced me with a look.
“Your dad is a good man, but he’s also a man haunted by your mother’s death,” he continued. “And, when he looks at you, he thinks about what could have been. What should have been. He wonders what would have happened if your mother had waited to go into that building until the fire was completely out. What would have happened if she had been ten feet away when the roof collapsed. What would have happened if he had gone instead of her, as he was supposed to.”
I felt my heart well up, even though I was fighting the sudden onslaught of emotion that was washing over me.
“Your dad feels guilt,” Jerry plowed on. “Your dad thinks that he should have died instead of your mother. Does he handle things well? No. Does he treat you the way he should? No. But you should know he always regrets it when he lashes out at you. He just doesn’t know how to say it.”
I pressed my face into Jerry’s side in an effort to hide the tears threatening to spill over. He patted my back.
“Just try to cut him some slack, Bug,” he said.
“I do,” I said, fighting back a sniffle.
“Try to get your brothers to cut him some slack, too,” Jerry suggested.
“I’m not a miracle worker.”
“Just try to get them to chill.”
“They can’t help themselves,” I said. “They’re loyal and I’m the only girl, so they’re protective. Don’t you remember when Dean Cooper dumped me on prom night and Tommy Wilkinson saw him making out with that girl under the bleachers and I came home crying?”
“I remember he looked like he’d been in a cage fight on graduation day,” Jerry said. “It wasn’t a girl, though. He was making out with Carson Franklin.”
Holy crap. “No way.”
“Yes, Carson told me the next day when we were at yoga.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Because I couldn’t decide if it made things worse that he was making out with a guy,” Jerry admitted.
I thought about it a second. “I don’t know either,” I said finally. “Now, I would have understood. Then? I probably would have freaked out more.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“I think it would have made a difference to my brothers, though.”
Jerry shrugged. “Ah, well, Dean was a douche. He had it coming for all those wedgies he doled out for the four years he thought he ran the school.”
“Yeah, but now it just seems mean.”
“Your brothers are mean.”
“They’re not mean,” I protested.
“Not to you, no. They love you.”
“They love you, too.”
“They didn’t always love me,” Jerry reminded me. “They used to laugh when you put makeup on me and then tried to force me into a dress.”
“They did that to Aidan, too.”
Jerry frowned at the memory. “You know, come to think of it, your brothers were douches in high school too.”
I wanted to argue, but he wasn’t wrong. Instead, I rested my head on his shoulder and lost myself in some Dorothy-induced sarcasm until my eyelids were too heavy to stay open.
Tomorrow was another day. It could only get better. I was practically sure of it.
Four
“Wake up, Buttercup.”
“Get off me, you freak.” I tried to shift Aidan’s weight from my midriff, but he was surprisingly solid – and determined when he set his mind to it. I was still rolled up and trapped beneath the blankets on my bed.
“It’s almost eight. We’re going to be late.” Aidan always was a morning person. It’s annoying. I didn’t see how anyone could be so chipper after the day we had survived yesterday.
“You’re a poet, and you didn’t know it,” I grumbled. I definitely need some coffee.
“No more rhymes now, I mean it.” Aidan wasn’t giving up – and a good movie quote never dies.
“Anybody want a peanut?” I pulled the blanket away and met Aidan’s wide smile with a scowl to match. “Get off me.”
“Are you going to get up?”
“Do I have a choice?”
Aidan’s frivolity melted away as he met my sleepy gaze. “Are you okay?”
I knew what he was referring to, but I pretended otherwise. “You mean am I fine after being jolted awake by my annoying twin? Yes. Now get off me.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Aidan looked determined.
“Yes it is,” I countered.
“No it’s not.”
“Yes it is.”
“No it’s not.”
“Yes … .”
“Leave her alone,” Jerry ordered. He was standing in the open bedroom doorway watching the two of us. Like me, he’s not a morning person. It’s another reason we get along so well. Aidan had obviously woken him up, too.
“I’m her brother,” Aidan argued, his gaze flitting to Jerry’s bare chest and chiseled abs. What is it with gay guys? They always have the best bodies. And, even though Aidan and Jerry had known each other since they were kids, there is a lot of faux flirting going on when they’re in a room together. “It’s my job to make sure she’s all right.”
“That’s the best friend’s job,” Jerry countered, fixing Aidan with a small smile while making sure to flex his muscles as he posed in the door frame. “Your job is to annoy her and beat up her boyfriends.”
“I’ve got that covered.”
“I’ve noticed.”
I rolled my eyes and pushed Aidan off of me, mustering enough strength to dislodge him while he was distracted by Jerry’s abs. “You weigh a ton.”
“I’m a prime piece of manly candy,” Aidan informed me, winking at Jerry for emphasis. “There’s no fat on this godly body.”
“Don’t make me throw up.”
“Get in the shower.”
“I need coffee,” I argued.
“You can have it after you shower.”
“Fine,” I grumbled. “But this is going on my list.”
“I can live with that.”
“MR. JOHNSON, it would be helpful if you could calm down.”
Aidan and I were on our third and final job of the day and it wasn’t going well, to say the least.
“Calm down? Calm down? How can you tell me to calm down?” Mitch Johnson was a wreck. He was forty-five years old and had worked out like a maniac his entire life. He didn’t smoke. He didn’t eat fattening foods. He had only one martini a week – and usually at a work function. And, yet, he had died of a heart attack while cooking his lunch before he returned to the office. He was in denial, there was no getting around it.
“I know it’s hard for you to understand.” I tried a different tactic. “These things happen, though.”
“Happen? I never drank. I never smoked cigarettes. I never ate anything with any fat content that could actually give my food taste. And now I’m dead? How does that even happen?”
“Genetics?” I really had no idea. I’ve never met a cupcake I don’t like, even when Jerry insisted maple frosting was awesome.
“My father is still alive. So is my mother. My grandparents lived until they were well into their eighties. How is it genetics?”
“A heart defect?”
“I go to the doctor every six months
. He would have found it if I had a problem. What else have you got?”
“Bad luck?”
“I don’t accept that,” Mitch said, his voice angry and full of hate. “You take it back and fix this, you bitch.”
I think I was starting to understand the problem. “You have a lot of rage, don’t you?”
“So?”
“That probably killed your heart.” Hey, I’m not a doctor, but it sounded plausible to me.
“I don’t like you,” Mitch seethed.
“Well, I think you’re a peach.”
Mitch glared at me, refusing to divert his gaze from my eyes, even though Aidan was noisily searching through his refrigerator in the next room for something to eat.
“I’m not going.”
“You have no choice.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Well, nonetheless, you don’t have a choice.” All of my grand plans to lead souls to the light with a smile and sympathy had gone out the window after less than twenty-four hours on the job. That didn’t say much for my follow through.
“I want to talk to the other one.”
“Who? Aidan?”
“I don’t know his name,” Mitch said. “I want to talk to the man. He’s obviously the one in charge.”
I gritted my teeth. Aidan was in charge during my probation, but I didn’t have to like it. “Aidan.”
“What?” Aidan walked into the room, an apple in his right hand and a Coke in his left. “What’s the problem?”
“He wants to talk to a man.”
Aidan smirked but ambled over to Mitch anyway. “What can I do for you, sir?”
“I want to lodge a complaint.” Mitch put his hands on his hips and plastered a reasonable look on his face as though that would somehow fake Aidan out. I didn’t know how to tell him that my brother would have simply sucked his soul without engaging in any of this pesky conversation I had stupidly insisted upon. I really didn’t think it would help at this point anyway.
Aidan rolled his eyes in my direction. “And what is your complaint?”
“There’s obviously been a mistake,” Mitch explained. “I’m a good man. I’ve lived a good and clean life. I wasn’t meant to die.”
“Bummer.”
“I don’t think you’re understanding me,” Mitch said.
“No,” Aidan countered. “I don’t think you’re understanding me. I don’t care that you think you shouldn’t have died. Ninety percent of the souls we collect think they shouldn’t have died. I had a ninety-year-old former mineworker lodging a complaint just last week.. You just need to stand there and let us do our job. Shutting up would just be a bonus.”
Tact is an acquired taste, one Aidan has no intention of acquiring.
Mitch crossed his arms over his chest and tapped his foot impatiently. “I want to talk to your boss.”
“My boss is my dad,” Aidan replied. “He’s going to be a lot meaner to you than we are. Trust me.”
“So, this is a family business?”
“Unfortunately,” I muttered.
“Well, then I want to talk to your father’s boss.”
That was an interesting thought.
“He doesn’t have a boss,” Aidan lied.
“Well, then, I’m not going.” Mitch was grasping at straws. I didn’t really blame him; hey, no one wants to die.
Even though he’d been through this a thousand times, Aidan looked surprised. “You’re not going where?”
“Wherever it is you’re taking me,” Mitch answered.
Aidan glanced at me. “Where are we taking him?”
That was a good question. I flipped the sheet on the file, found the appropriate line, and then gulped as I glanced back up at Aidan. “To a place.”
Aidan read my face. “You’re going to Hell.”
There was that tact again.
Mitch was flabbergasted. “Hell? Hell? How do I deserve to go to Hell? That’s not even remotely possible. Check again.”
I did as instructed. It hadn’t changed, though, not that I thought that was a reasonable possibility. I felt helpless. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say here.”
Aidan ignored me. “You’re going to Hell. Get used to it. You obviously did something to go there. You must know what it is.”
Mitch screwed up his face as he concentrated. “Nope, not a blasted thing. There’s been a mistake. Come back when it’s corrected. I’m busy this spring and summer, but I can probably schedule you for an appointment in the fall. I’ll just wait here.”
Aidan looked to me for help. I looked back down at the file, searching for the transgressions list, frowning when I found it. “It says here that you’ve date-raped three different women.”
“I have not.”
“Sandy Winston?”
“She wanted it.”
I gripped the file tighter. “Penny Lynn?”
“She was a slut. It’s not my fault she was so drunk she couldn’t remember begging for it.”
I pursed my lips in aggravation. “Joanna Franz?”
Mitch’s face contorted with rage. “She put her hand on my leg. She initiated the sex.”
Well, that was my breaking point. “You’re a dick.”
“And you’re another woman who can’t admit what she wants.” Mitch sidled up to me, trying to get a look down the vee in my shirt. I think he was trying to be charming, even though he was failing at a fantastic rate.
“Hey!” Aidan was pissed off now, too. “Don’t look at my sister like that.”
“Why don’t you leave the room,” Mitch suggested. “I’m sure your sister and I can come up with an agreement that benefits us both.”
“If you had a body, this is where I would beat you to death,” Aidan threatened.
I couldn’t wipe away the feeling of a million small insect wings flitting across my body. “You’re gross.”
“You’re hot. Are those things real?” Mitch asked.
“That did it!” Aidan exploded, moving toward me and pulling the scepter from my coat pocket. “I’m not listening to another second of this.”
Fear colored Mitch’s face. “What is that?”
“Your doom,” Aidan shot back.
“That sounds a little dramatic,” Mitch replied, although his voice had lost some bravado.
“I’m a dramatic kind of guy.”
“Aidan,” I started. “Maybe we should just … .”
Mitch seemed to realize he was out of options. Instead of accepting his fate, though, he did what came naturally to a woman-abusing coward: He ran.
Before we realized what was happening, Mitch bolted through the closed door of his apartment and was gone, leaving Aidan and I staring at some really ugly particle board, a flat-screen television and an otherwise empty room.
“Sonofabitch!”
Five
“I’m not going to say this is your fault.”
“That’s probably wise.”
“It’s your fault, though.”
I cast a scathing look in Aidan’s direction. “I thought you weren’t going to say this was my fault?”
“I changed my mind.”
Thirty minutes later and we were still searching for Mitch Johnson – something frowned upon in the reaper community. When a soul escapes, they prolong the inevitable. It may sound great – in theory, at least – to run and prolong your afterlife in the only world you’ve ever known. The problem is, though, that when it happens your soul slowly starts to lose cohesiveness with the real world and all that is left is an empty shell that goes through the motions. That’s where ghosts come from. No, seriously. Sometimes a soul is just lost – and that’s when we’ve failed at our jobs.
“Dad is going to be pissed.”
Aidan’s sympathetic eyes met mine. “This happens all the time. He can’t blame you for this. I’ll tell him that.”
“Like that matters.”
“I’ll make it matter.”
I reached over and squeezed Ai
dan’s hand; the comfort was for him as well as myself. “So, how long do we look?”
Aidan seemed unsure. “I don’t know. We might get lucky. If that jerk thinks he’s shaken us he might circle back and return to his home. He might still be hoping this is a nightmare and he’ll wake up and he can go back to his date-raping ways.”
That didn’t sound so bad – not the date-rape stuff, but the returning to his apartment stuff. “And if we’re not lucky?”
“Then we’re going to be in trouble when we get back to the house.” Aidan looked grim.
“What do you think he will do?” I didn’t say who the “he” was, but Aidan knew who I meant.
“Yell.”
“And then?”
Aidan shrugged. “And then? And then nothing. He’s a blowhard. He can yell. He can stomp. He can scream. He can pout. This is a danger of what we do. No one has a perfect recovery rate.”
“He does.”
“So he says,” Aidan scoffed. “I don’t believe it.”
“Why would he lie?”
“He’s a man,” Aidan replied. “He likes to inflate his numbers. It’s a man thing.”
I smiled, despite myself, at Aidan’s jovial smirk. I didn’t believe him, though. He was just trying to put on a brave face for my benefit. “So, what? We should hide behind the trash cans or something?”
Aidan didn’t look thrilled with my suggestion. “Let’s circle around the block again. I’m not quite ready to give up.”
I wordlessly fell into step with Aidan, letting him choose the direction. We were in downtown Detroit – one of the sections on Woodward that had seen some revitalization in recent years rather than the continuing dilapidation that seemed to be claiming a larger foothold in the city.
Aidan, never one for uncomfortable silence, couldn’t help from trying to fill the dead air. “Are you sorry you agreed to go into the family business?”
I considered the question. Was I? I still didn’t know. “Ask me that question again in a week.”
“You’re doing fine,” Aidan said. “You’re a little earnest; you need to build up a colder exterior. That’s normal for novices. Don’t sweat it.”
“I shouldn’t be a novice, though, should I?”
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