by Молли Харпер
“A month or so. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. Dick asked me not to say anything.”
“Jane?” Dick came rushing through the door with Zeb on his heels. He skidded to a halt as he saw my tear tracked face, then whirled on Gabriel. “Why is she crying? If you made her cry, I’m going to kick your—”
“Why are you here?” Gabriel asked Dick.
“The clerk at the video store next door saw an ambulance over here and called me,” Dick said.
Zeb made a face. “The porn-store guy has your home number?”
I ignored this disturbing tidbit and wrapped my arms around Dick’s neck. “Dick, I’m so sorry. It’s Mr. Wainwright. He’s gone.”
Dick’s bravado melted away. “From where?”
“The earthly plane,” I said. “He died earlier tonight.”
His face contorted in pain. “I’ve been spending time at the shop—”
“No, no,” I said, clutching Dick’s hands. “Nobody ‘got to him.’ It was just a plain old heart attack.”
“I didn’t get to tell him,” Dick said. “I didn’t get to say good-bye.”
“Actually, he plans on sticking around for a while, so you could tell him right now.”
“Tell him what, exactly?” Mr. Wainwright asked, his transparent form sliding through the door.
It’s embarrassing to be surprised when you have vampire senses, particularly when the person who snuck up behind you is older than dirt. Also dead.
“What?” Mr. Wainwright asked, the gray tufts of his brows rising on his transparent forehead. “What’s wrong?”
“This seems like a private conversation. We should probably leave,” Gabriel whispered to Zeb, though both of them stayed rooted to their spots.
“OK, you two, out,” I told them.
“But, but, but—” Zeb spluttered pitifully as I shoved the pair of them into the office and closed the door behind us.
I waited while I heard Dick quietly explaining the situation. When Mr. Wainright didn’t respond, I poked my head into the room to make sure he was still there. There was an expression of relief around Dick’s eyes as Mr. Wainwright stumbled forward and hugged Dick in an insubstantial manner.
This was so strange, an ancient man calling this thirty-something fellow Grandpa; in a world where logic lived, the roles would be reversed. But years melted off Mr.
Wainwright’s face as he studied Dick’s features.
“You have my nose,” Dick said sheepishly. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s a good nose,” Mr. Wainwright said. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“Thought you’d be better off,” Dick said.
“But I wasn’t,” Mr. Wainwright said. “If you’d been around, if I’d known that vampires were real, I wouldn’t have felt so lonely. It’s no wonder my mother hated my interest in the paranormal. Every time I picked up a book on vampires, she was afraid I was going to turn out like you.”
Dick seemed ashamed, which was something I’d never seen before. “I never told your mother. I think she guessed, but she never asked, and I always figured it was better left unsaid. I’m sorry.”
“I have so much I want to ask you. About your life, about my father, and his father, and your son.”
“I can give you some answers,” Dick said. “The rest you may not want to know.”
“I’m not frightened,” Mr. Wainwright promised.
“This reunion is really touching,” I said, backing toward the office door. “But if I see one of you cry, I may actually implode. So I’m going to go elsewhere.”
How did I end up going to so many funerals in one year?
There was no one else to plan Mr. Wainwright’s service, which I found very sad. His nephew, Emery, sent a telegram from Guatemala saying that he wouldn’t be able to make it to town for weeks. Emery advised us to proceed without him. Seriously, he used those words. Real sentimental guy.
The nighttime service was held three days later, after the police finally released the body.
Mr. Wainwright had a hand in the planning, which definitely helped me cope with the grief. He was in attendance at the memorial, of course, though very few others were. It was just me, Dick, Andrea, Gabriel, Jettie, Jolene, and Zeb. Daddy came, though we neglected to tell him that we couldn’t speak ill of the dead, not out of respect but because the dead was standing right there.
Mr. Wainwright didn’t belong to a church, so there was no one to give a eulogy. In fact, he’d left specific instructions that he did not want to be buried. He wanted his ashes spread into the Ohio River, where they would “float downstream to the Gulf of Mexico and out into the oceans, circulating around the world.”
There was no visitation, no pimento cheese, no irritating relatives circling like vultures.
In other words, it was the best funeral I’d ever been to.
The riverfront in Half-Moon Hollow was a series of half-finished cement docks and inlets.
The county commission had started dredging to build a channel for a riverboat in the 1970s, hedging against the chances that riverboat gambling would be legalized in Kentucky. When the state referendum failed and the outraged populace voted the commission out of their seats, the project was abandoned, leaving a gap in the Hollow’s watery smile. Which, in a way, was fitting.
The one project that was completed and used was the public restrooms. I tried not to think about that.
The water, smelling of old pennies and new fish, lapped gently against the cement embankment. The moon was only half-full and half-mast, lending a soft, kind light to the proceedings. Mr. Wainwright asked that we avoid the traditional black in favor of cheerful colors, forgetting, of course, that Gabriel didn’t own anything in cheerful colors. Dick’s plain white T-shirt, sans sarcasm, lent an appropriate sense of solemnity to the proceedings.
The earthly remains of Gilbert Wainwright were stored in a hollowed-out copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls that Dick had purchased from a novelty store. Mr. Wainwright thought it was hilariously funny. I held the book in my hands and stood at the edge of the dock, shaking a little from the wind and the nerves.
“We’re gathered here today to say good-bye to the mortal body of Gilbert Wainwright. He was a good man and a good friend. I didn’t know him until late in his life. But he became very special to me in that time. He was a man with an endless thirst for knowledge. He asked the questions that other people are afraid of and never doubted that the answers were out there, waiting to be discovered. I’m going to miss you, Mr. Wainwright. You were kind to me when you didn’t have to be. You gave me a place to belong when I was adrift. Thank you.”
“You will always have a place there, my dear,” he said, chucking my chin with his clammy invisible hand.
I handed the book to Dick. “It’s only right,” I said, smiling despite the surreality of the situation. “He was your family.”
“Quite right,” Mr. Wainwright told Dick. “I’d be honored.”
“This is the weirdest funeral I’ve ever been to,” Zeb whispered.
“Shh,” I said as Dick stepped forward.
Dick cleared his throat. “It’s not right for a man to bury his children, so to speak. But this is the path we chose. It’s a vampire’s lot in life to watch those around him age and die.
Gilbert, I’m sorry we didn’t get to know each other better.” In a low voice, out of my father’s earshot, he murmured, “But I hope you stick around for a while, so we can make up for that.”
Gabriel was looking at Dick with a strange expression. The whole “Dick reproduced” thing had definitely thrown him for a loop. I slipped my hand in his and gave him an encouraging nudge. Gabriel stepped beside Dick and with a stiff arm patted Dick’s back as he sprinkled the ashes into the churning water.
“Good-bye, cruel world,” Mr. Wainwright wailed in a fading mock cry.
Everyone but Andrea, Zeb, and Daddy turned to stare at him. He grinned. “Too melodramatic?”
“Why is everyone laughing?”
Daddy asked.
“It’s a vampire thing. We laugh at death,” I told Daddy, who nodded sagely.
Mr. Wainwright insisted on a reading of his will right after the memorial. The funeral party, without Daddy, met Mr. Wainwright’s lawyer, Mr. Mayhew, the only male Hollow resident over seventy whom my grandmother had never dated, at the shop. He greeted us warmly and told us what nice things Mr. Wainwright had to say about us all.
“I’ve known Gilbert Wainwright for forty years. In that time, he spoke of two things ad nauseam: the supernatural and you. He enjoyed spending time with you, very much,” he assured me. “You made the last year of his life very comfortable and happy.”
“Is he here now?” Mr. Mayhew asked.
I looked from Mr. Wainwright’s apparition to Mr. Mayhew’s wry smile. “Yeah. How did you know?”
“He always said he would make appearances after death. I thought it was part of his wild
‘creatures of the night’ talk. Then, after the Coming Out, we found out that creatures of the night actually exist, so my mind opened a little bit.”
“Is it open enough to handle vampire wills?” I asked. “Because I’ve got some grabby relatives.”
He handed me his card. “Give me a call.”
“So, how do we go about this?” I asked. “I wasn’t allowed to attend any of my stepgrandpas’ will readings.”
“Well, I need y’all to sit down and have a listen. I think you should know that Gilbert changed his will quite recently. When an elderly man changes his will to include a group of recently acquainted young people, it can be of some concern for someone in my profession. But Gilbert spoke very highly of you, and he wasn’t the type to gush.” He cleared his throat and used an official voice. “The will goes something like this. ‘I, Gilbert Richard Wainwright, being of sound mind and body as defined by the commonwealth of Kentucky’—a lot of legalese y’all are more than welcome to look over later, so we can skip to the good part—’do bequeath the following items to my loved ones:
“ ‘To Zeb Lavelle, I leave a copy of Mating Rituals and Love Customs of the Were, plus the entire stock of self-help guides related to inter-were-species marriage.’ “
“That was thoughtful,” Zeb said.
“That stock includes several illustrated antique marital guides which you will find in a locked box in the storeroom,” Mr. Wainwright whispered to me.
“Oh, ew.” I shuddered.
“He just made a joke, didn’t he?” Mr. Mayhew asked.
“Why don’t you just let him see you?” I asked Mr. Wainwright.
Mr. Wainwright chuckled. “It’s more fun this way.”
“ ‘To Jolene McClaine, I leave the rosewood box in my bedroom. It contains a collection of best-loved recipes I have collected from werewolf friends all over the world.’ “
“That’s very sweet.” Jolene sniffed.
“I thought you could put it to the best use,” Mr. Wainwright said.
“ ‘To Andrea Byrne, I leave my silver claddagh ring.’ “
“Oh, thank you,” Andrea whispered.
“It should have been included in my personal effects when my remains were collected,” Mr. Wainwright said.
“Actually”—I reached under the counter and grabbed the velvet pouch where I’d stashed the ring—”I didn’t think it was smart to send you to the funeral home wearing it.”
“This belonged to a lady who was very special to me,” Mr. Wainwright said as Andrea slipped it on. “Her name was Brigid, and she was special and beautiful, like you. And I loved her very much.”
Knowing that Andrea couldn’t hear him, I said, “That belonged to the love of his life.”
Andrea smiled.
“You’re going to want to be careful how you handle that around us,” Dick told her.
“Might as well be wearing barbed wire around your finger.”
“Well, that has possibilities,” Andrea said, wiggling her finger at him. Not the rude one.
Dick muttered something I couldn’t quite make out.
“ ‘To Gabriel Nightengale, the selection of his choice from my personal literary collection.
To Dick Cheney, my personal spirits collection, including the wine and brandy.’ “ Dick and Gabriel smiled.
“ ‘To Jane Jameson, I leave the Specialty Books shop located at 933 Braxton Avenue and all of its contents, including the apartment upstairs and my personal effects contained therein. I trust you to allow my nephew, Emery, to look over my personal effects and select what he would like to keep as mementos.’ “ My jaw dropped. I had expected a few books. Maybe a memento or Mr. Wainwright’s personal collection of Ouija boards. I had not expected him to leave me anything as important as the shop.
My eyes stung as I smiled shakily at Mr. Wainwright. I really didn’t want to start crying again. I’d just managed to stop. “This is too much. I didn’t do anything to deserve this.
And I don’t know anything about running a store. Look, with your nephew coming soon, I think maybe we should consider—”
“No one will care about the shop the way you will,” Mr. Wainwright insisted. “No one will take care of the books, take care of the customers, such as they are.” He turned to Dick. “If I had known about you, I would have planned differently—”
“Not your fault,” Dick interrupted. “And you left me the booze, so it shows how well you knew me, even before you knew we were related.”
“And anything you want from the personal effects is yours,” I told Dick. “The store stock will be available at a twenty-percent bereaved-ancestor discount.”
Mr. Wainwright guffawed. “See, you’ve got the makings of a brilliant entrepreneur.”
I protested, “I don’t know anything about running a business.”
“Then sell it. Do whatever you think is best. I trust you.”
Those words, combined with Mr. Wainwright’s earnest, ghostly gaze, left a weird, heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach.
17
When an undesirable suitor is unwilling to accept a werewolf female’s refusal, her family is likely to step in to help communicate her feelings more clearly. It can take said suitor six to eight weeks to heal up from the clan’s communication skills.
—Mating Rituals and Love Customs of the Were
We all adjusted to our grief in different ways.
On this particular Tuesday, Jolene and Zeb were doing a family thing with the McClaines.
I think it involved wrestling Jolene’s father. Andrea had a standing appointment with a client who was not afraid of Dick. Gabriel was in London. I didn’t bother asking why.
This left me with Dick.
No pun intended.
Dick seemed lonely, spending nights at the shop, talking to the ever-more-sprightly ghost of Mr. Wainwright, and helping me sort through boxes. We had a running bet about when Emery would show up. I had two weeks; Dick had six weeks and four days. Mr.
Wainwright, who lovingly referred to his nephew as “a bit mealy-mouthed and milquetoast,” had twenty dollars on an even month, though how we were going to collect it from him, we had no idea.
I’d dropped my investigation into Wilbur’s background for the time being. I told myself that it would help me to step away, get a fresh perspective, but the truth was, I was getting nowhere. Instead, I worked from sunset to the wee hours of the morning cleaning areas that Mr. Wainwright had never let me touch: a rear storeroom, the area behind the counter, his office. For his part, Mr. Wainwright entertained himself by moving various objects around, walking through walls, and making videos float at the adult store next door, scaring several locals off porn forever.
Despite my recently developed fear of Realtors, I’d had one come by and appraise the shop. He suggested burning it to the ground and going for the insurance money. While my destructive urge was just as healthy as the next girl’s, I didn’t consider that a viable option. I was going to have to close.
It felt like packing up Aunt Jettie’s room after s
he died. Something important had ended, and I was left to pick up the pieces. Fortunately, Dick and Andrea seemed to pick up on this and somehow ended up at the shop every night to help me. On this particular evening, Dick was boarding over windows and putting a “For Sale by Owner” sign in the window.
With Andrea quietly boxing up books, I went upstairs to Mr. Wainwright’s apartment, something I hadn’t been able to do since the funeral.
The air was dry and smelled of cinnamon and Lipton tea. As one would expect, the place was a wreck. Good antiques were covered in Mad Hatter-style stacks of books. Almost every surface not occupied by books held picture frames. There were photos of Mr.
Wainwright’s mother, his sister, his nephew, Emery. There was a framed photo of a beautiful redhaired woman, who I assumed was Mr. Wainwright’s lost love, Brigid. There was a picture of a very young Mr. Wainwright in his Army uniform, one of him in a pith helmet exploring what looked to be an Egyptian tomb, and pictures of him bundled up against Canadian cold during his endless search for Sasquatch.
The latest addition seemed to be a picture of our Christmas party. Zeb had set up the camera timer to take a shot of the whole group. My eyes were closed, of course, but everyone looked so happy. Jolene had turned that million watt smile on Zeb. Gabriel had his arm around me. There were two little white orbs where Aunt Jettie and Grandpa Fred had stood. Andrea was wedged between Mr. Wainwright and Dick, who had his arm flung around both of them. Mr. Wainwright had placed it on the nightstand next to his lowslung single bed. It was the only photo from the last ten years in the apartment.
I felt him materialize behind me.
“It was the best time I could remember in a long time,” I heard him say as I put the frame back in its place. “You were a family to me, one I sincerely wish I’d had more time with.”
I smiled at him, even when he asked, “How’s the packing going? I saw that Dick has put up the ‘For Sale’ sign.”
I felt tears bubbling up, threatening to spill. I wiped at my nose as I focused on staring at the Christmas photo.