by Molly Harper
Marianne pulled Miss Maisie’s letter from her coat pocket. “But all that aside, you know, and I know, that is your mother’s handwriting. These were her final wishes, Lemm. And while you’re not legally required to carry them out, I would hope that out of loyalty to your mama, who raised you and loved you and sacrificed a lot of happiness to make you more comfortable, you would honor her wishes.”
Lemm’s magenta shade advanced to the more puce range. “You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, young lady.”
“Just cut the bullshit, Lemm.” Roy sighed, rolling his beady brown eyes. “This isn’t even about Burt. And you know it!”
Lemm cut his gaze toward his baby brother and glared. Roy, for the first time in his life, glared right back. Lemm actually looked away and cleared his throat. Marianne struggled to keep the dumbstruck wonderment off her face, for fear Lemm would see it and shut down.
“I— It’s not that I don’t like Burt,” Lemm started. Marianne raised an eyebrow. Lemm lifted his hands, defensive. “I did like him when I was a kid. He was good to me. Hell, he coached my Little League team. I thought he was a real nice guy. And me not wanting him to date my mama doesn’t have anything to do with him being a black fella. It just burned me, seein’ my mama so happy with him, knowin’ she never felt that way with my daddy. I know Daddy didn’t exactly go out of his way to make her feel that for him. Growin’ up, I just thought maybe they weren’t the type of people who showed off their affection—it just hurt, you know? Havin’ what you thought you knew as a child ripped up right before your eyes. Knowing she didn’t want to be layin’ next to my daddy until Judgment Day felt like one last kick in the teeth.”
“I get that,” Marianne muttered. “But denying your mama her last wishes because you’re tryin’ to protect your own feelings? That’s not something you can take back, Lemm.”
Lemm took a deep breath, his face returning to a more normal shade. “I know. It’s been botherin’ me since we came here the first time, but I kind of dug myself a trench here with Burt. If I back down now . . .”
“What, he’ll know you loved Mama more than you love yourself?” Roy snorted.
“Shut it, Roy,” Lemm snapped, but there was no real heat in it. “Since I’m bein’ honest, a lot of me not wantin’ to cremate Mama is that I don’t want to lose her.”
Roy frowned. “She’s died this mornin’, Lemm. We already lost her.”
“And if we sprinkle her ashes over the dam, we’re not ever gonna have a place we can visit her,” Lemm said, his voice growing whisper-thin. A film of tears gathered over his dark eyes, and for the first time, the grieving son peeked through the salesman bravado. “There won’t be any place where we can feel her there with us. When I go to the cemetery, I can sit there with Daddy’s stone and talk to him, tell him my problems, and I feel like he’s there listenin’. How in the hell am I gonna do that with Mama, knowing that she’s circulatin’ all the way down to the Gulf?”
“I’d never thought about it like that,” Roy admitted. “But Mama didn’t like the idea of bein’ in a box. We talked about it, before she got so bad off she couldn’t make sense. It didn’t have anything to do with Daddy. She just said, ‘I spent enough of my time in boxes when I was alive.’ She wanted to travel the world, Lemm, even if it was just what was left of her.”
Lemm’s head dropped and there was a tremor in his shoulders. Marianne knew enough to give him a few seconds before politeness demanded he raise his eyes to hers.
She pursed her lips, stalling. “If I came up with a solution that would satisfy your mama’s wishes, but still give you a sense of peace, do you think you could see your way to a compromise?”
Lemm looked to Roy, who nodded sharply. Carefully, Lemm nodded. “I would have to see what it was before you did anything permanent, but yes.”
MARIANNE HOPPED OUT OF DUFFY’S truck and clutched the catalogues for Creative Cremation Solutions to her chest. Frankie had been full of helpful suggestions to present to the Trinkitts, and she’d been nice enough not to make Marianne go into the morgue to talk to her. And for the first time since finding Miss Maisie’s loved ones dusting it up in the salesroom, she had some hope that she could make everybody in this situation content, if not happy.
She practically skipped up the steps to her parents’ house. She hadn’t felt this good in . . . years. Knowing that she might have found a solution, negotiated a peace between people who hadn’t been able to be in the same room without punches being thrown—it was a sort of high. She felt like she could do anything, fix anything. Maybe even talk to Carl without one of them stomping away mad.
This was what purpose was supposed to feel like, knowing at the end of the day that she’d done her best and made someone else’s life a little easier. This was what she was supposed to be able to do when she graduated law school. So why did that suddenly feel so far away and so improbable? Why couldn’t she see herself feeling like this after a long day in court?
Why was she always alone when she started asking herself these questions?
Marianne reached for the doorknob but caught the scent of cigar smoke on the breeze. Eyebrows raised, she put the catalogues on the porch swing and rounded the house, walking toward the lake. On the end of the dock, centered under a perfect pearly full moon, was her daddy. A plume of blue cigar smoke hovered over his head like a thought bubble. And that thought was probably something like I’m the world’s smartest man. I will never be caught.
“You know Mama’s gonna skin you if she finds you out here smokin’ that,” Marianne told him, plopping down next to him.
Junior startled a little but then grinned and nudged his daughter’s side. “She won’t do that. She kills me, there’s nobody to embalm me.”
“Frankie could do it, for practice.”
Junior choked a little on his cigar. “She probably would, which is why I haven’t shown her what the buttons on the furnace do.”
Marianne nodded. “That’s a solid plan.”
“So what’s been buggin’ you, butterbean?”
“I’m fine,” she protested. “I’m just tired, you know, from school and movin’ and . . . I’m fine.”
“That’s not your tired voice. That’s your worried voice. Don’t try to tell me any different. Now, what’s goin’ on? Is it school? Are you in some sort of trouble?”
“I’m not in trouble,” she said, immediately steering him away from any insinuation of her being pregnant. “Of any kind. With anyone. Not even dating, at all. And school is fine. I’m registered. I have money set aside for my books. I have new note-taking software ready to be installed on my laptop.”
“Well, that’s good to hear,” he said, lips twitching. “Though it makes me wonder how smart those college boys could be if they don’t want to date my butterbean. So if it’s not that, and it’s not school, what is it?”
Marianne stared at her daddy. She’d never been able to lie to the man. Even when she was a kid, she’d instantly fessed up to whatever she’d done because she knew he’d be more disappointed if he found out on his own. “The things I’m supposed to want, the things I wanted more than anything just a few days ago, I’m not a hundred percent sure I want anymore.”
Junior shrugged. “Okay.”
“What do you mean ‘okay’?” Marianne demanded. “Daddy, I’ve had these plans for so long. There’s not one person in Lake Sackett who doesn’t know I’m supposed to be starting law school this fall. It’s the course I’ve set for myself, but the idea of giving them up? It kind of fills me with this sense of relief. Like a stay of execution. You shouldn’t feel that way about your plans for your life, right? That’s not normal.”
Junior puffed on his cigar. “Well, it doesn’t sound like it would make for a very happy life, no.”
“But then, when I think about not following through, I wonder if that means I’m giving up on myself. Or I’m to
o scared to try. I think about telling people I’m not gonna go off and be a big-city lawyer, and I’m disappointed in me for them. I’m not anythin’ special, not different than anyone else who had big plans for herself and then didn’t follow through. What if I stayed in Lake Sackett, and I felt like I was walkin’ around with a big L sewn on my clothes?”
“For Lutheran?”
“For ‘loser,’ ” she said, smacking him. He chortled, dragging on his cigar.
“Sweetie, would you like me to give you some folksy wisdom?”
“Eh.” Marianne shrugged her shoulders, earning her a light elbow in the ribs.
“You want to know what I’ve learned about small towns? Nobody really cares about what’s goin’ on in your life as much as you think they do. I mean, there are special cases, like that Sara Lee gal, who keeps the gossip flowin’, but at the end of the day, the only one layin’ awake in their bed worryin’ about how you’re running your life is you.”
“All of my experiences these last couple of days say that theory is garbage,” Marianne told him.
“Yeah, there might be some talk if you don’t follow through with your plans. Look at your uncle Stan. Most people around here haven’t forgotten that he used to be a drunk or that his wife ran off with Margot, but it’s not like they think of it every time they see him. He’s just the same old Stan. Sure, if Linda came back or Margot showed up to see her daddy, the gossip bugs might get all stirred up, but even that would die down after a while and people would adjust. Someone else would do something more interestin’ and they’d forget all about them.”
“You can always count on the people in Lake Sackett doin’ something interesting,” Marianne agreed, chewing her lip.
“If you didn’t wonder if doing somethin’ different was the right thing, I would worry about you,” her dad said. “But plannin’ your whole life around somethin’ someone might say about you? That’s pure stupid. And I didn’t raise you to be stupid.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Just think on it,” he told her. “Try to imagine your life if you follow through and your life if you don’t. Try to figure out which option you can’t live with.”
“That makes sense,” she conceded as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders.
“Now, do you wanna talk about that boy?” he asked, using the same exasperated tone he always used when referring to Carl.
“No, I definitely do not.”
Junior grinned. “I will admit to feelin’ relieved when you broke it off with him before goin’ to school. But that wasn’t about Carl. That was about wantin’ you to achieve what you wanted in life instead of worryin’ with some boy.”
“I thought I just said I didn’t want to talk about it.”
“It’s my God-given fatherly duty to ignore that and talk about it anyway,” he told her. “Just like it’s my fatherly duty to despise all boys who come within ten feet of my daughter. Now, Carl’s a good man. I’ve gotten to know him over the years and I see some of the merits I was blinded to when y’all were kids.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, if some of this doubt you’re feelin’ about law school has anything to do with Carl, that doesn’t make your doubts less important.”
“You’re encouraging me to consider giving up law school because of a guy?” she asked.
“No, because I know that’s not what you’d be doin’. You said you were havin’ doubts about the life you wanted. That’s more than ‘some guy,’ even if he does factor into it. Besides, we only get so many great loves in our lives. Not includin’ something like that into your decision? That’s also pure stupid.”
“I don’t think it even matters,” she said. “I hurt him. Again. And just when he was starting to talk to me. Last night I told him the reason that I broke it off with him was because I thought he was gonna propose.”
“That’s why?” Junior cried.
“Well, Carl’s hurt all over again, because now he knows the thought of him askin’ me to marry him sent me runnin’. Nothin’ says ‘I don’t think you’re good enough for me’ like dartin’ off like a scalded cat at the first sign of commitment.”
“Was it because you didn’t think he was good enough for you?”
“No!” she cried. “You know I’d never think that. I dated Carl for two years and his family never bothered me. It just felt like what I needed to do at the time . . . and now it’s biting me in the butt. It is kind of unsettlin’ to hear you call him a great ‘love of my life,’ just so ya know.”
“Not half as disturbin’ as it is for me,” he told her. “As far as I’m concerned, you and your future husband, whoever he is, will sleep in bunk beds and find your babies under cabbage leaves. And if Carl is the kind of man I think he is, and the kind of man who deserves you, he’ll come around. You’ll talk it out.”
“Thanks, Daddy.” She slipped her arms around him and squeezed.
“That’s why I’m here,” he said, hugging her tight.
“Mama said I needed to talk to you? She said it was really important. Multiple times.”
Junior’s grip on her went slack. He patted her back. “Oh, your mama just gets wound up over nothin’.” He smiled at her, but it was a brittle, shallow expression that didn’t reach his eyes.
“Mama gets wound up about a lot of things, but most of them are important. What’s going on?”
“It’s nothing that bad, butterbean, really. I just got some tests back after my last physical and had to have some fancy scans. The doctor says there are some abnormalities around my spine, at my tailbone. Something to keep an eye on.”
“Like bone spurs?” she guessed. “Cancer? What?”
Marianne watched her dad flinch at the word cancer.
“It’s cancer?”
Junior opened his mouth and she could see the lie forming on his lips. When he met her gaze, he hesitated and said, “Prostate cancer.”
“Oh, Daddy.” His arms were around her again, and warm tears she hadn’t even felt forming were soaking into his shirt. Her daddy couldn’t be sick. She wasn’t ready for a world without him. She wasn’t ready to be an adult without the safety net of a parent. Most people didn’t lose parents until well into their forties. It wasn’t fair that she could lose him now. He was supposed to walk her down the aisle, to bug her to hold his first grandchild before the cord was even cut. He was supposed to help her navigate having a civil relationship with her mama. How was he going to do that if he was gone?
“Everything’s okay. It’s gonna be all right,” he crooned, patting her hair. She sat up suddenly and yanked the cigar out of his mouth, tossing it into the lake.
“Well, that was unreasonable.” He frowned.
“You are not gonna smoke those anymore. And you’re gonna stop eating Leslie’s deep-fried concoctions. It’s smoothies and kale from here out. And fiber and . . . and . . .” She pulled away, wrapping her arms around herself. “How bad is it? Did you catch it early?”
“No,” he said, taking her hand. “The doctor said it spread fast. And there’s no taking it out because the cancer’s metastasized to the bone. I should have gone to get checked out earlier, but I thought I was just getting old, feelin’ tired.”
“But there are treatments, right? Chemo and drugs and research hospitals?”
“Yeah, I’m already on some pretty good stuff. And I start chemo soon. I could have years yet, butterbean. But there is no gettin’ clear of this. I won’t get better. It will always be with me. It’s just an issue of not getting worse.”
“Why wouldn’t you tell me about this?”
“It wasn’t exactly the kind of news you want to give someone over the phone, hon. Plus I didn’t want to worry you until we knew how I’d react to treatment. I think your mama panicked a little bit at the idea of you startin’ law school. She knows ho
w busy you’ve been and that you probably weren’t gonna ease up, and she wanted to make sure that we spent some time together before classes started. I didn’t want to worry ya, but I’m selfish enough to admit I wanted you home for a little while, too.”
“Is that why you’re training Frankie so hard?”
He nodded. “I’m still gonna be supervisin’ her until she’s got all of her certifications. But the treatments are gonna run me down somethin’ awful and I won’t have the strength to be on my feet so much. It’s a godsend that Frankie’s there to pick up the slack. And I’d like to retire soon, spend the time I’ve got relaxin’ a little bit, try to figure out why your mama’s so crazy about this fishin’ thing.”
Marianne buried her face in his soggy shirt.
“Plus, you want to make sure the person who’s probably gonna handle your shuffling off this mortal coil knows their way around an autopsy table.”
“Oh, Daddy, no. Don’t make her prep you for the funeral,” she cried. “That’s just unfair to Frankie.”
“I won’t,” he promised. “I want to be cremated. And I want my ashes spread over the lake, so I’m always with you, hangin’ around, silently judgin’ you.”
Marianne snickered. Humor at a time such as this was inappropriate, but that was how the McCreadys coped. Death was a part of life, even when it came too soon. And her father was none too subtly trying to get her adjusted to the concept. It didn’t mean he wasn’t scared or that he didn’t take her feelings seriously. Just that he was trying to break the tension on their shoulders the only way he knew how. And he needed her to return the favor.
She leaned back so he could see the earnest expression on her sticky, tear-streaked face. She sniffed. “Can you do me a favor and put that in writing somewhere and sign it? And get it notarized?”