“Only a few,” I agreed, though in my heart I knew I would’ve been happier with forever, but just this moment would do for now.
39
Ghost Stories
WE DID NOT end up catching either of the bachelor parties that night, but I was very certain neither Carver nor Nicki remembered the night very well anyway. From what I heard, there’d been an impromptu concert where Bruno almost threw out his back howling the laments of Dolly Parton, Carver accidentally lit the bar counter on fire, and Alice mooned Officer Saget right in the middle of Main Street. Sad that I missed that part, but I was glad we didn’t end up going. Someone had to be coherent on the wedding day.
I busied myself with final wedding preparations, rearranging the flowers in the parlor rooms while sneaking tastes of desserts in the kitchen. I wasn’t sure how Carver talked Alice into letting them have it in the funeral home for free, so I made a mental note to ask him what sort of blackmail he had on Alice for her to be so agreeable about it all.
The Days Gone Funeral Home looked like it was decorated in a flower crown, with large sunflowers on the porch and white ribbons draped across the old wooden roofbeams, and the once-suffocating floral-and-formaldehyde smell was replaced with the scent of bright and beautiful sunshine. The windows were open, as were the doors, and every so often a clever, happy wind raced through the old Victorian house, and the foundation creaked and groaned in hello.
Ben looked so at home in the red parlor, helping me arrange the sunflowers in vases kept from Dad’s funeral, as if he’d been here all this time.
Alice elbowed me in the side and said, with all honesty, “Good catch, sis. Not my type, but good catch.”
“Yeah, I think so, too.”
“That does it for the flowers,” Ben said, finishing up the vase he was working on. He wiped his hands on his trousers and said to Alice, “Nice to formally meet you.”
Alice gave him a once-over. “You take care of my sister, you hear?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And no more cheating at cards.”
He raised his hands in surrender. “I wouldn’t dare.”
“Mm-hmm.” Her phone vibrated and she took it out of her back pocket and quietly cursed. “The caterers are here—ugh. Can you two finish setting out the decorations?”
I gave her a salute. “Aye, aye, boss.”
“Weirdo,” she muttered and left out the front door, shouting at the caterers to move the van around back—“No, not through the grass, you heathens.”
When she was gone, Ben took a sunflower out of one of the vases and tapped me on the nose with it. “Your sister’s doing a great job with the business.”
“She is, isn’t she?” I looked around at the parlors, strewn with colorful flowers and pearly white ribbons, and I wished Dad could have seen it. A wedding in a house of death. I kissed Ben on the cheek. “Thank you for being here.”
“Thank you for inviting me. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than beside you.”
I rolled my eyes and playfully shoved him away. “Stop being so sappy,” I complained, hoping he didn’t notice my reddening ears. If he talked like that much more, I was going to be in a permanent state of blush.
He liked me; it was still so hard to believe.
Benji Andor adored me.
And for the first time since Dad passed, everything felt almost perfect. The sky was this almost-perfect crimson—the color of Dad’s suit when we buried him—and the sweltering July heat had abated to a soft humidity that still felt sticky, but it was as close to perfect as you could get in the summer, and the entire town had come to watch my brother and his husband say their actually perfect vows.