Carver cocked his head. “It would be nice to have you home. But don’t come home because you think you should. Come home because you want to.”
I didn’t know exactly what I wanted.
But it wasn’t what I had.
“Let’s do a few more stones before the sun goes down,” I said, pushing down the restlessness in my head. Neither Carver nor Nicki pushed back, thankfully, and we managed to do three more tombstones before Officer Saget pulled up at the gates.
He eyed me. “Miss Day. Nice to see you.”
I strained to smile. “Lovely evening, Officer.”
As we left the cemetery, Carver tsked. “You’re not even back a week and you’re already getting Saget antsy. Scandalous! What’ll the neighbors think?”
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” I said dismissively. “I can’t help it that he’s suspicious.”
“You did release a rabid possum in the police station.”
“Why does everyone keep bringing that up? Possums usually don’t get rabies. It was a fluke! I don’t see why he can’t just move on.” Never mind the trespassing violations and probably the slew of other things I did as a teenager to help a ghost move on. “I just went for a moonwalk the other night. That’s it!”
My brother laughed. “You should’ve asked me to come with you. I love moonwalks! Nicki, one time when Florence and I were—what? Twelve? Ten?”
“Something like that,” I agreed, already knowing the story he was about to tell.
“Anyway, it was right after a storm and we were all up and pretty wired. The lights had gone out. So Mom and Dad took us for a moonwalk . . .”
I listened as we walked back along the side street to the main part of town. Most of the shops were emptying out for the evening. Nothing stayed open late here in Mairmont, aside from the Waffle House and Bar None. It was so unlike New York, where everything was busy and frantic all the time. Here it felt like the world was in slow motion. Everything took its time.
I felt like I’d already been here for a year, and it’d only been a few days.
“How’s the obit going?” Carver asked as they dropped me back off at the bed-and-breakfast.
“Great,” I lied. “I should be done soon.”
More lies.
“Can’t wait to read it. Dad’d be glad you wrote it,” he added. “He was proud of everything you wrote.”
“Oh, yeah, the one thing.” That he knew about, I added to myself.
Carver opened his mouth to respond, but I turned away before he could—I didn’t need consoling—and I walked into the bed-and-breakfast.
Ben wasn’t around, so I took my laptop out of my room and went down to the bar again, and ordered myself another rum and Coke. I slid onto my barstool and opened my laptop.
Deleted the paragraph I’d written. Cracked my knuckles.
And stared at the blank Word document.
I didn’t know how to form the words for what I wanted to write. I didn’t know how to take all the jumbled feelings in my head and put them onto paper. There weren’t words big enough or strong enough or warm enough to encompass Dad. He was untranslatable.
I was sure someone like Ben, who had words for everything—and always seemed to have the right ones—wouldn’t have had this sort of problem. I bet his brain was as neat and orderly as his desk had been, and his thoughts as ironed as his shirts.
Writing Dad’s obit was a different kind of failure than writing Ann’s books.
One had too many words I wanted to say, and one didn’t have any at all.