“You never know. I mean, when we were kids—”
“How are you and Nicki?” I interrupted.
“Good,” he replied, annoyed that I’d changed the subject, but he took the hint as he led me back into the parlor. “So, did you figure out what to do with the editor for Christina Lauren?”
“Christina and Lauren write their own books,” I replied automatically. “But no, I didn’t.”
“So what happened?”
“Dad died. I came home.”
“You never turned it in?”
“Can’t turn in half a book.”
“Do you think you could—I don’t know—copy and paste the same chapter fifty times, turn that in, and by the time your editor realizes you turned in the wrong thing, you’d have the book done?”
I stared at my brother in surprise. “That’s . . .”
“A great idea, right?”
“A terrible idea,” I replied. Then I frowned, and thought about it for a moment. “It might work.”
“Ha! See? You’re welcome. I’m a genius.”
Maybe Carver’s ploy could give me enough time. Not much—but enough. The ghost I saw at the door—it wasn’t a ghost. It was a hallucination. Benji Andor couldn’t be dead. I’d kissed him last night! And he looked healthy, and he wasn’t that old, and as far as I could tell, it would take a lot to murder someone akin to a tree trunk.
He was fine.
It was a trick of my brain—the imaginary ghost of my new editor whom I’d accidentally made out with in a back alley in Brooklyn coming to haunt me because I was already stressed out and chugging along on three hours of sleep and four cups of airplane coffee.
That was all.
“Uh-oh, what now?” Carver murmured under his breath as we came back into the parlor. Everyone had left their seats and was huddled around Karen and the will. Mom was pacing back and forth on the other end of the parlor, her heels clipping on the hardwood floors like a metronome, never missing a beat. That was bad. She rarely paced. Most of the time she just floated between rooms like an ethereal Morticia Addams.
“What’s the commotion about?” Carver asked, looking around.
Nicki looked up from the will, and handed it to Seaburn. “Well, we’ve sort of got a problem.”
“What kind?”
Alice sighed, massaging the bridge of her nose. “Dad didn’t give anyone instructions on any of this,” she said in her deadpan voice. “He just—I guess—thought we could read his freaking mind.”
“We’ve got a receipt for the party stuff, but that’s it. I’m not sure about the wildflowers or the murder of crows or . . . Elvis? I dunno what to do about that one.” Seaburn shrugged and handed the will off to me.
Dad’s script was long and loopy, and all I wanted to do was move my fingers across the words, memorizing the way he dotted his Is and crossed his Ts. It was written on the yellowed cardstock that I’d gotten him a few years ago for Christmas.
“He always liked live music—maybe he meant an Elvis impersonator,” I thought aloud to myself. “And the flowers . . .”
Carver snapped his fingers. “He always picked them out on the old walking trail.”
The Ridge. I didn’t want to think about the Ridge.
“Murder of crows, then?” Alice asked, crossing her arms over her chest. Everyone shrugged.
Mom joked, “Perhaps we could use the crows he always fed in the evenings. They’re never very far.”