“Your stash?” I asked. “Yeah, it’s in the knot in the tree out near the Ridge.”
She gave me an astonished look. “You knew?”
“Carver found it ages ago.”
“His is—”
“Under the woodpile in the backyard,” we said together, and laughed.
I took a sip of my drink. It was a lot stronger than the drinks Dana made. It personified Alice—she was there, in your face, unable to be forgotten. I admired that about her. She wouldn’t have let her ex-boyfriend steal her stories and publish them. She would’ve chased him down, and shit in his shoes, and penned an article for the New Yorker painstakingly detailing how much of a liar Lee Marlow was. Not just to me—but to his colleagues, to his friends, to journalists, and to colleges and deans asking him to be their guest professor.
She would have annihilated him.
As the sun began to sink across the evening sky, the shadows in the parlor grew longer and darker, but we didn’t get up to cut the lights on. There was a certain kind of softness to the way the golden light filtered in through the windows and kissed the dark corners. We knew this funeral home with our eyes closed, anyway, and the floor wasn’t that uncomfortable yet.
“So, I’ve something I’ve been meaning to tell you.” Alice shifted to sit cross-legged and downed half of her drink.
“This should be good,” I teased.
Alice squirmed. She did that when she was trying to keep a secret that was physically trying to escape her body. “Karen read most of the will before you arrived, so you missed this part of it.” She pursed her lips tightly together and was quiet for a long moment. “You had your ghosts with Dad, and I thought I had nothing. But . . .” She looked around the parlor, as fondly as Dad always did. “I had this place. Well, I have this place.”
I realized with a gasp. “Dad gave you the business?”
She gave the smallest nod. “After Mom dies, of course, but—he put it in his will. He said it went to me. And Mom said she’d happily turn it over before she kicks it but I really don’t want it that badly and—”
“Oh, Alice, I’m so happy for you!”
“Really?”
“Yes, really, you idiot! I’m so freaking happy! You’re the only one who understands this place—really understands it. I can’t imagine it in better hands.”
Her bottom lip wobbled, and then she threw her arms around me. “Thank you,” she said into my shoulder.
I hugged her tightly. “I know you’ll do a great job, Al.”
She finally let go and sat back on her feet, and wiped her eyes. “I think I met my crying quota for the year.”
“It’s okay to cry sometimes.”
“Not with thirty-dollar mascara on!”
“Well, whose fault is that?”
“Impossible beauty standards and my lack of thick eyelashes?” She sniffed indignantly, and took a drink of her whiskey. “So, what’re you doing with your secret stash? Afraid someone found it?”
“Oh, no. I guess I was just looking . . . for something,” I replied. She cocked her head in question. “An answer, I think. Someone who just left told me that my book was his favorite. He thanked me for it. That—that was why he was here.”
Alice’s eyes widened. “Oh, sis. Ben?”
For some reason, someone else saying his name made me sad all over again. Tears burned at the edges of my eyes, but I dutifully brushed them away. I’d helped dozens of ghosts in the past. Most of the time I just had to listen to them—to a story—before they left.