Alice, on the other hand, seemed to be having some trouble of her own.
“。 . . Never mind the wrong shade of concealer came in,” she was saying, spearing another egg. “Honestly—do you think one thing can go right for Dad’s funeral?”
That caught my attention, and I looked up from my first cup of coffee. The caffeine was beginning to fire off those synapses in my brain. “You ordered the wrong concealer?”
Alice glared at me. “No! The company sent me the wrong refill. And it’s stage makeup, so it isn’t like I can go to CVS and get a new jar. Ugh, this is a nightmare,” she added, putting her face in her hands. “First I ran out of embalming fluid last night, and now this.”
Mom patted her on the shoulder. “Murphy’s Law, hon.”
“Murphy can fuck off for this one funeral.”
Just as I always wanted to be a writer, my little sister always wanted to be a mortician. Ever since I could remember, she’d followed Dad like a shadow. She went to Duke for forensic chemistry, and on weeknights, just for fun, she got her mortuary sciences and funeral services degree online. A part of me always thought that it was Alice who should’ve inherited Dad’s gift. She would’ve been so much better at it, and I doubt she would’ve been run out of town because of it. She was the kind of person to tackle things head-on. Nothing frightened her. Especially after I solved that cold case, and everything got worse. She fought people on my behalf. Another reason why I wanted to leave as quickly as possible when I graduated high school—so she didn’t feel obligated to anymore.
“Anything I can help with?” I asked, poking at my waffle.
Alice said quickly, “No.”
“Are you sure? You don’t have to do everything alone—”
She looked up from her plate, and I instantly realized I’d said the wrong thing. “Oh? Are we going to talk about this now?”
“Alice,” Mom warned.
My entire body went rigid. “No—what does she mean? What do you mean, talk about this now? What’s your problem, Al?”
“My problem? It’s not my problem I have a problem with,” she snapped. “The second things get difficult, you leave. No matter what. We can always rely on you for that.”
“That’s not fair. You know that’s not fair.”
“Then why didn’t you ever come home?”
“Everyone visited me in New York!” I batted back. “Every year. You came up for the lights and the Christmas tree and—”
“Because Dad wanted to see you. And he knew you wouldn’t come home no matter how much he asked. You can ask Mom. We would’ve loved to stay home for Christmas just once.”
That wasn’t true. I knew it wasn’t true. They loved coming to visit me during the holidays—they’d said as much! And Dad never once asked me to come home, not once—
“Mom?” I asked, turning my attention to her. “Is that true?”
She turned her eyes to the ceiling tiles, then closed them and took a deep breath. “Your father never wanted you to come back when you weren’t ready.”
A sinking feeling burrowed into the pit of my stomach.
“No, we always catered to you,” Alice added and shoved herself to her feet. “We all’ve got ghosts, Florence. You just happen to be the only one who can’t handle yours.” Then she shoved her arms into her black jacket, and stalked out of the diner.
I didn’t feel hungry anymore.
Mom said patiently, “Florence, you know she didn’t mean that—”