“You remember me, boy? You miss me?” I asked, scrubbing him behind the ear, and in a happy reply, his tail went thump thump thump. “Of course you remember me, right, boy? Have you been keeping the town safe?” Thump thump thump! “Pass any good laws?” Thumpthumpthumpthump—
“There is now officially a water bowl in front of every shop on Main Street that is changed daily,” said a voice behind the dog.
I glanced up.
Seaburn, his owner, stood with his hands in his pockets. “Thought we’d find you here.”
I looked up as the mayor tried to go to second base with his tongue. “Mom sent you?”
“Nah. She’s busy with a funeral this evening. I asked to help but . . .”
“I also asked,” I supplied. After the florist, I’d stopped by the funeral home to help out with the visitation today, but Mom was having none of it.
In fact, she seemed a little bit angry. “It’s not like I can’t run my own business!” she cried. “I’ll be fine! I’ve been doing this for thirty years!”
It was all I could do to leave with my head intact.
Seaburn sat down on the stool next to me. “Your mom does things in her own way, on her own time. We should leave her to it.”
That didn’t mean I wasn’t worried. And focusing on my mother felt a lot more constructive than focusing on my own sadness. Hers I felt like I could at least try to fix. Mine? It was a hole in my chest filled with all of the things that made my grief so heavy, it was hard to breathe sometimes.
I gave the mayor one last good scrub behind his ears before I resumed my seat and took another long gulp of my rum and Coke.
Seaburn and I had graduated within a few years of each other. He was a junior when I started at Mairmont High. His family owned and maintained St. John’s of Mairmont Cemetery on the other side of town, so it felt only natural that, when Dad needed someone to help manage the funeral business, he asked Seaburn if he wanted to work together. For the last seven years or so, Dad and Seaburn had managed the funerals and the gravesite services for the majority of the town. And apparently Dad had started to train Alice in the same thing.
“You’re more than welcome to keep me company,” I said. “I’m not up to much. Just . . .” I waved at my Word document.
Seaburn asked Dana for a beer, and asked me, “Still writing?”
“Stubbornly.”
He barked a laugh. “Good! I liked your first book—Ardently Yours. So funny. Loved the romance bits, too.”
“Oh no”—I burrowed my face in my hands—“please tell me you didn’t read it.”
“Don’t worry, I closed my eyes during the sex scenes.”
I groaned into my hands, mortified.
“We even did a book club for it when it came out,” he went on. “Everyone loved it. It was—I dunno how to describe it.” He tilted his head, taking another sip of his beer. “Happy’s a close word.”
That was flattering, especially from Seaburn, who read so much and so widely my reading habits probably paled in comparison. “A romance leaves you happy—or at least content—at the end. Or it’s supposed to. I think.”
Because I didn’t know anymore.
“It was good. You’re a fantastic writer,” he added. “I think everyone in Mairmont bought a copy.” If only the sales in my small hometown could have changed the course of that book, my entire life could have been so, so much different.
I rubbed my thumb against the condensation on my glass.
The mayor came and put his head on my lap. I scrubbed him good behind the ears again, and his tail assaulted the floor. THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP—