“Nonsense! We were just getting to the good part, weren’t we?” Mom finally let go of my hands, and turned to Karen to ask her to start from where she left off again. Leave it to Mom to find a good part in reading Dad’s will.
Seaburn bumped his shoulder against mine and gave me a nod. “Nice to see you home.”
“Thanks.”
Karen gave me a sad smile and said to us, “It seems like Xavier left some instructions for his funeral.” She took out a list from the manila envelope on her lap, and showed it to us.
Carver gave a groan from his seat in the high-back velvet chair. “Chores?”
Alice massaged the bridge of her nose. “Even from beyond the grave, he’s making us work for free.”
“Alice,” Mom chided. “He’s not even in the grave yet.”
“Bless his soul,” Karen lamented, and pulled her glasses down a little to read from the list. I was surprised she could read his handwriting at all—it was revoltingly bad. “One. For my funeral, I would like one thousand wildflowers. Bouquets are to be organized by color.”
A murmur of confusion crossed the room.
A thousand? Why would—oh. Wildflowers, like the ones he picked every Saturday for Mom. I glanced over at her, and she hid a smile as she looked down into her lap. Alice and Carver were blanching at the request—they hadn’t realized its significance.
Why a thousand, though, I didn’t know.
“Two. I want Elvis to perform at my funeral.”
Seaburn murmured to his wife, “Isn’t he dead . . . ?”
“Very,” she replied.
Dad would’ve tsked at that and said, “Only mostly dead,” in that cryptic way of his. Because music was a heartbeat, too, in its own way, and death wasn’t a send-off without some good tunes.
I was beginning to get the worst sort of feeling.
“Three. I want Unlimited Party to supply decorations. I put in the order on January 23, 2001. You can find a receipt in the envelope with this will.” And then Karen Williams took the yellowed receipt out of the envelope.
I remembered Dad once saying, “When I go out, there’ll be streamers and balloons, buttercup. There won’t be any tears.”
My throat tightened. I curled my hands into fists.
Karen put the receipt back, and kept reading, “Four. I want a murder of twelve to fly during the ceremony.”
“A murder?” Alice asked.
“Of crows. Twelve crows,” I translated. The same murder that kept stealing our Halloween decorations, and gave Dad shiny things when he fed them spare corn on the cob, and sat on the old dead oak tree outside of the funeral home whenever a ghost appeared—how were we supposed to catch those birds?
They hated me.
Karen went on. “Five, my final request. Buttercup”—I felt my heart skip at my nickname, and even though Karen was reading, I could hear Dad in the words, the soft love there, the lopsided grin—“I have left a letter to be read aloud at the funeral. Not a moment before—”
The doorbell rang.
Seaburn asked the group, “We’re not expecting anyone else, are we?”
I checked my watch. It was 9:00 p.m. A little late for visitors.
“Could be flowers,” Carver pointed out.
“Or someone canvassing for mayor,” Karen added.
“Our mayor’s a dog. Who would want to run against a dog?”
Mom said, “Florence, you’re closest.”