“Roy, pick up that chair y’all knocked over and sit down,” E.J.J. barked. He got up from his desk and righted a chair for Burt, glaring pointedly at both Trinkitt men. “Now, I don’t know what y’all were tusslin’ over, but I don’t tolerate that sort of behavior in my place of business. So y’all can either decide to behave like decent, God-fearin’ men, or you can walk out and stay out. I’ll be billin’ you for the urns you broke and any other damage you did.”
Lemm opened his mouth to protest but E.J.J. raised his hand. “You should count yourself as lucky I don’t call the sheriff in here to settle it out. As I see it, Burt still has a right to do that. What in the blue hell were you thinkin’ tryin’ to choke a man twice your age? Your mama raised you better than that.”
“Don’t bring my mama into this.”
Burt’s brow crinkled. “We’re here to plan her funeral services, Lemm.”
“You were nothin’ to her! I’m her son! You shouldn’t even be here!”
“I think we all know that’s not true,” E.J.J. said placidly. “Bob, we’re all good here, if you want to go help Stan and Frankie with Mr. Gaskill’s setup.”
Uncle Bob gave Lemm one last look, as if to say, I don’t know how many kicks it would take to whoop your ass, but I’m willing to figure it out. And then exited the room, leaving Marianne to continue to clean up the damaged displays on her own.
“Now, Burt, I understand Miss Maisie left you instructions for how she’d like her funeral services planned.”
Burt nodded and took a pretty pink envelope out of his shirt pocket. “Maisie wanted to be cremated. She wanted her remains to be sprinkled off the top of the Sackett Dam. She says here, ‘I always wanted to know what it would feel like to jump off of that thing, but I was never crazy enough to want to try it.’ ” Burt smiled fondly and slid the paper across E.J.J.’s desk.
“That’s horse shit and you know it!” Lemm yelled. “You need to get out of here before I—”
“Son, don’t go lettin’ your alligator mouth write a check that your hummin’bird ass can’t cash,” Burt said, pointing his finger in Lemm’s face. Lemm snarled. Burt blanched when he realized Marianne was still in the room. “Beg pardon for the language.”
Marianne shrugged.
“Don’t call me son! I’m not your son. And my mama wanted to be buried next to my daddy in the church cemetery. She wouldn’t want no hippie funeral.”
“You’ve got proof right here in her own hand that’s what she wants,” Burt said.
“I don’t know that’s my mama’s handwriting,” Lemm said with a sniff.
“You know good and well it is,” Burt retorted. “Didn’t your mama ever talk to you about this? Roy?”
Roy, a lanky man with thinning blond hair, swallowed thickly and opened his mouth. His small brown eyes glanced furtively at Lemm and he shook his head. “No. Not that I can recall.”
Burt rolled his eyes. “So you think I made this up? You think I want to dishonor your mama to get my own way? You think I want to be here? When she’s layin’ in a hospital bed, fadin’ from this world? I’m only here to make sure she doesn’t get railroaded by you one last time.”
“I think you don’t like the idea of her resting in peace next to our daddy, where she belongs,” Lemm spat. “And unless you can prove that’s my mama’s handwriting and those are her real final wishes, what I say goes. I’m the next of kin. I’m the oldest. You don’t even get to come to the funeral if I say I don’t want you there. In fact, stay the hell out of her room at the hospice—”
“Look, it doesn’t have to come to that,” E.J.J. said. “Let’s stay civil here. Boys, I know you want to honor your mother’s wishes. I think we can find a way to take everybody’s feelings into account. Now, Burt, did Miss Maisie leave a will? Maybe something official that designated who her executor was supposed to be?”
“She didn’t see the need in it, no matter how many times I talked to her about it,” Burt said. “The property was pretty much parceled out to the kids in Mr. Trinkitt’s will. I looked around to see if she left any other kind of legal papers at the house, but I couldn’t find anything.”
“Well, that does put the arrangements in Lemm’s favor,” E.J.J. said reluctantly.
“What are you doin’ pokin’ around in my mama’s house, lookin’ for her will?” Lemm demanded.
“Oh, for goodness sake, he lives there,” Marianne exclaimed, making the men turn in their seats. “He’s lived there since I was a little kid! The whole town knows! They only played dumb because you pretended not to know!”
“You keep your mouth shut, missy,” Lemm shot back. Marianne’s eyes narrowed, but she kept her mouth shut. Because she could see her grandfather glowering with a laser-like intensity over Lemm’s shoulder.
“Marianne,” Grandpa E.J.J. said, his voice quiet and steady, “why don’t you go get a broom for those broken urns?”
Marianne bit her lip, knowing that she’d gone a step too far. E.J.J. rarely corrected his children or grandchildren in public. “Yes, sir. Mr. Burt, if you need anything, please let me know.”
She retreated on quiet cat feet to the storage closet, where the family kept the cleaning supplies. She took a moment to breathe and pinch the bridge of her nose. She’d forgotten how easy it was to get drawn into the small-town dramas, the delicate ecosystem of rural politics. As much as she loathed Lemm Trinkitt, she knew alienating him was a bad idea. Favoring Mr. Burt’s side so obviously during the funeral arrangements would cause hurt feelings that could last years. She had to pull her socially appropriate nice-girl facade back together or she wouldn’t survive the summer.
After another steadying breath, Marianne exited the closet, broom in hand. E.J.J. and the Trinkitts had disappeared, most likely because E.J.J. was showing them the various chapels available for the service they wanted for their mother. Mr. Burt’s early-model green pickup was gone from the parking lot. The pink envelope was perfectly squared on E.J.J.’s desk blotter. Bob was right. He and E.J.J. had to respect Lemm’s wishes as the next of kin. And it chapped Marianne’s proverbial butt that Miss Maisie’s wishes might be ignored because she thought well enough of her children to believe that they might actually do what she asked instead of thinking of themselves first. Clearly a lifetime of their general stupidity had taught her nothing.
Marianne took the envelope and, in a moment of impulse, stuck it in her pants pocket. She began sweeping up the broken ceramic. It struck her that, while she wasn’t exactly in her element at the funeral home, she wasn’t at all bothered by the trappings of death. Having grown up in a family where funeral plans and autopsy results were regular dinner conversation, she didn’t get that cold, anxious feeling her friends described when they went to funerals.
She wondered if that made her more emotionally adjusted than the average adult or less.
Marianne picked up a lid made of swirly blue-green glass threaded with brassy gold veins and put it back on top of the matching container designed to look like a rolling ocean wave. Brassy dolphins frolicked in the ocean “foam,” lending the urn a cheerful, if incredibly tacky, air.
“I wonder, if I dropped you, would anyone believe it was an accident?” Marianne muttered.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
Marianne turned to find her cousin Frankie standing in the doorway, arms crossed over a neon yellow Pac-Man T-shirt. She’d paired it with her apprentice’s lab coat, a pair of black pants with white polka dots, and black Converse.
“Frankie, this urn’s been here for years and no one’s bought it. Your daddy only got it to appease you. I would be doing the business a service.”
“I was going through a dolphin phase! I thought it was awesome!” Frankie cried. “And it’s still a conversation piece!”
“A conversation about how damn ugly that thing is, you spoiled brat.”
“I am not spoiled
,” Frankie insisted.
“Frankie, when you were eleven, you told your parents you wanted your room to be painted ‘that pale yellow color that happens when you mix mayonnaise and mustard.’ And they spent two days mixing burger toppings until they found the color you meant.”
“Yeah, well, I’d just finished a particularly awful chemo treatment and they were driving me nuts. I was trying to keep them busy.”
“You are diabolical.”
“Daddy said the Trinkitts did some damage in here,” Frankie said, surveying the room. “He wasn’t kidding. You need some help?”
“No, I’m good. It gives me something productive to do.”
“Not exactly thrilled to be working at the family enterprise, huh?”
Marianne jerked her shoulders. “There’s just no place for me here, no niche where I fit in. Duffy’s job shouldn’t even be considered work, since he’d be fishin’ anyway. And you’ve got your work downstairs with my dad. I don’t have that.”
“Look, we get it, Duff and me. This business has never been your thing. No hard feelings. We just don’t want you to make yourself miserable over it.” Frankie smiled brightly. “We could add an estate planning service. If we asked nice, I’m sure Daddy and Uncle Stan would build on a wing.”
“Not exactly how I plan on using my law degree.” Marianne snorted.
“Well, it’s not like you’d have a lot of competition for legal services. George Pritchett is still pretty much the only game in town.”
“Mr. Pritchett is still practicing? Isn’t he like ninety?”
“He’s sixty-seven this year, but no plans to retire.”
Marianne grinned. “Yeah, because then he would have to go home and talk to Mrs. Pritchett.”
Both girls shuddered and got to work clearing out the broken funereal supplies.
The letter in Marianne’s pocket seemed to weigh her down, filling her head with questions and ideas. She’d taken a few property law classes as part of her prelaw major. But she needed someone with an actual law degree to answer those questions before she started making suggestions to her grandfather. Trying to tell Grandpa E.J.J. what he should do without the data to back up your suggestions was the very definition of an alligator mouth to hummingbird ass deficit.
Fortunately, her purse was big enough to hold keys for all the family’s vehicles.
Marianne opened the front door of the funeral home, preparing herself for the humid embrace of the midmorning air. She was not prepared for a thin bottle-blonde with an awful asymmetrical haircut to step into her path, surrounding her with an oversweet aura of Britney Spears perfume.
“Shit-fire!” Marianne exclaimed, wrapping her purse strap around her fingers as if to swing it in self-defense.
“Well, that’s not very professional language, now, is it, Marianne?” Sara Lee Cooper mewed at her through a thick layer of lip gloss too pink for her orange complexion.
Marianne cleared her throat. Sara Lee had been that special combination of gossip and instigator in high school, meaning she was responsible for spreading more manure than any cow in Sackett County. Marianne couldn’t help but recall Sara Lee’s triumphant smirk when she reported that she’d seen Carl looking at engagement rings at a pawnshop, of all places. That quirk in her lip, a silent See, you’re not any better than the rest of us. You’re going to end up stuck here just like all the other girls—engaged, married, and pregnant before you’re old enough to legally drink.
“Sara Lee . . . how are you?”
Sara Lee’s green cat’s eyes were just as sharp as ever, scanning Marianne from head to toe, searching for any sign that Marianne was stepping over that very thin line between “getting uppity” and failing at life. “Oh, just fine. I heard that you were back in town and I just had to stop by and see you for myself. I thought you were off to some fancy law school. Whatsa matter, you couldn’t make it in the big city?”
Marianne smiled as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. “No, I’m just home to visit the folks for the summer. You know, I’m gonna be so busy at school, I probably won’t be back for a few years. So I thought I should make time.”
“Have you seen anybody yet?” Sara Lee asked. “Besides family, that is.”
“No, I just got in last night.”
Excitement flared in those hateful green eyes. “Well, you should know, Carl’s kept busy. He’s dated a bunch of girls. None of them serious, just flittin’ here and there, social butterfly that he is.”
Marianne snorted. Carl had barely spoken to anyone in school until he’d befriended Duffy. And even then, Carl spent most football games and pep rallies standing in the back of the crowd observing, like he was watching for trouble. He was the same way at her family’s gatherings, hovering around the edges, watching, trying not to be obvious about the fact that he was shoveling food in his mouth. It took years before he joined in conversations, understood that the McCreadys’ gentle teasing meant that he’d been accepted into their circle. And given Carl’s family’s tendency to turn any celebration into a drunken brawl, she supposed she didn’t blame him.
Marianne had tried all her usual flirting tactics with him as a worldly fifteen-year-old, complimenting his muscles and asking about his interests—fishing, cars . . . more fishing. But that just made him retreat behind Duffy. So she’d waited until he (finally . . . sweet baby Jesus, finally) approached her and she talked to him like a regular person, instead of someone she liked. Even after she came to understand what a sweet, gentle guy was camouflaged under that rough exterior, it took months to convince him that she really wanted to date him. Months of stupid, random Elvis jokes that made her laugh, and of long talks into the night about books, old cartoons, and whether tales of the local Sasquatch were genuine or inspired by the actions of misguided lovelorn hillbillies. And it was months more before he was willing to anger her daddy and risk his place in her family.
So for months they snuck around meeting out on the lake, under the high school bleachers, on Frenchman’s Ridge on the edge of the county. She’d loved him the way only teenagers fall in love: whole heart, no embarrassment, no thought to consequences or the long term, just dumb-assed optimistic frenzy. And when he finally worked up the nerve to request permission from her parents to date her, she’d given him her virginity on the shore of Deer Tick Bay. Like a lady.
Sara Lee interrupted her musings with her awful nasal twang. “Well, all that was before Jessie Beele, of course. She’s just the sweetest little thing. And Carl’s crazy about her. My mama says that’s why he’s fixing up that big old place on Peachtree. To move her in.”
A large, sour weight gathered in Marianne’s throat, making it hard for her to squeak out, “How nice for them.”
She swallowed thickly. She refused to ask who Jessie was. She knew she wouldn’t have to.
“Jessie is just an angel straight from heaven. She teaches kindergarten at the elementary school, everybody just loves her.”
Marianne kept up her bland expression. “Well, bless her heart.”
“She just loves kids. Can’t wait to have some of her own.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I guess that’s why Carl loves her like crazy. She’s not focused on her career so much that she expects him to wait around forever, sittin’ on his thumbs.”
“I guess so,” Marianne said. “If you’ll excuse me, Sara Lee, I’ve got to run some errands.”
“Oh, I don’t want to keep ya. I’m sure just everybody is gonna want to see you today. But lucky me, I got to ya first.”
Marianne struggled not to roll her eyes as she strode past Sara Lee. She was certain that by the time she left the parking lot, Sara Lee would have activated her evil phone tree and spread the word of how sad and pathetic Marianne had looked at the news that she’d been replaced by a real live angel.
Marianne unlocked Duffy’s truck and climbed into the dr
iver’s seat. That explained why Carl had managed not to invest too much energy in cussing her out when he picked her up, why he was so reserved. Why be mad at her when he’d rebounded with the “sweetest little thing”? She wanted Carl to be happy. She wanted him to have a woman who longed to live in Lake Sackett and give him babies and iron his shirts. She didn’t want to be jealous. She didn’t want to be the petty girl who never wished to see her ex settled with anyone else. But she couldn’t help that cold, acidic feeling gnawing at her chest . . . or the desire to find this angel, Jessie, and run her down like roadkill.
4
MARIANNE WAS DRIVING Duffy’s brand-new pickup into town because she knew it would bug him. But she was being considerate enough to drive it gently down Main Street. Downtown Lake Sackett was just as she remembered, with Main Street slicing decisively between businesses built to resemble rustic cabins. Each boasted a fresh coat of wood stain and brightly painted signs. The tourists would be stampeding through soon and the local merchants wanted to make a good impression.
Driving past the Rise and Shine Diner, Marianne spotted Ike Grandy, the mustachioed purveyor of all things breakfast meat–related. She wanted desperately to pull into the parking lot and throw herself at one of his famous pancake platters. But she had an agenda, and very little wiggle room left in her Spanx after the previous night’s pork-stravaganza.
She parked the truck in front of the offices of George Pritchett, Esq., and fluffed her hair in the rearview. If there was a way to abide by Miss Maisie’s wishes without her family wasting time and effort arranging an unwanted service, she wanted to find it quickly. She was sure Uncle Bob and Grandpa E.J.J. weren’t going to be thrilled that she’d taken off with Miss Maisie’s funeral instructions. It was possible that she was just trying to duck out of McCready’s and the cremation debate had provided her an excuse, but honestly, this was something she could do and do well. She wasn’t great at helping people pick caskets or at customer service in general, really, but she knew how to get legal questions answered. Hell, she might not even have to generate billable hours for Mr. Pritchett if he let her have access to his Westlaw account.