The tabby cat on the windowsill flicked her tail.
The downstairs buzzer sounded, and Rebekkah glanced down at the street. The delivery driver was already headed back in his truck.
“Occasionally, it would be nice if deliveries were actually delivered rather than left behind to be trampled or wet or taken,” Rebekkah grumbled as she went down the two flights of stairs to the entryway.
Outside the front door on the step on the building was a brown envelope addressed in Maylene’s spidery handwriting. Rebekkah picked it up—and just about dropped it as she felt the contours of what was inside.
“No.” She tore the package open. The top of the envelope fluttered to the ground, landing by a bird-of- paradise plant beside the door. Her grandmother Maylene’s silver flask was nestled inside the thick envelope. A white handkerchief with delicate tatting was wrapped around it.
“No,” she repeated.
Rebekkah stumbled as she ran back up the stairs. She slammed open the door to the apartment, grabbed her mobile, and called her grandmother.
“Where are you?” Rebekkah whispered as the ringing on the other end continued. “Answer the phone. Come on. Come on. Answer.”
Over and over, she dialed both of Maylene’s numbers, but there was no answer at the house phone or the mobile phone that Rebekkah had insisted her grandmother carry.
Rebekkah clutched the flask in her hand. It hadn’t ever been out of Maylene’s possession for as long as Rebekkah had known her. When Maylene left the house, it was in her handbag. In the garden, it was in one of the deep pockets of her apron. At home, it sat on the kitchen counter or the nightstand. And at every funeral Rebekkah had attended with her grandmother, the flask was there.
Rebekkah stepped into the darkened room. She’d known Ella was laid out, but the wake didn’t officially start for another hour. She pulled the door shut as carefully as she could, trying to keep silent. She walked to the end of the room. Tears ran down her cheeks, dripped onto her dress.
“It’s okay to cry, Beks.”
Rebekkah looked around the darkened room; her gaze darted over chairs and flower arrangements until she found her grandmother sitting in a big chair along the side of the room. “Maylene ... I didn’t ... I thought I was alone with”—she looked at Ella—“with ... I thought she was the only one here.”
“She’s not here at all.” Maylene didn’t turn her attention to Rebekkah or come out of the chair. She stayed in the shadows staring at her blood-family, at Ella.
“She shouldn’t have done it.” Rebekkah hated Ella a bit just then. She couldn’t tell anyone, but she did. Her suicide made everyone cry; it made everything wrong. Rebekkah’s mother, Julia, had come unhinged— searching Rebekkah’s room for drugs, reading her journal, clutching her too tight. Jimmy, her stepdad, had started drinking the day they found Ella, and as far as Rebekkah could see, he hadn’t stopped yet.
Maylene’s voice was a whisper in the dark: “Come here.”
Rebekkah went over and let Maylene pull her into a rose-scented embrace. Maylene stroked her hair and whispered soft words in a language Rebekkah didn’t know, and Rebekkah wept all the tears she’d been holding on to.
When she stopped, Maylene opened up her giant handbag and pulled out a silver flask that was etched with roses and vines that twisted into initials, A.B.
“Bitter medicine.” Maylene tipped it back and swallowed. Then she held it out.
Rebekkah accepted the flask with a shaky snot-and-tear-wet hand. She took a small sip and coughed as a burn spread from her throat to her stomach.
“You’re not blood, but you’re mine the same as she was.” Maylene stood up and took the flask back. “More so, now.”
She held up the flask like she was making a toast and said, “From my lips to your ears, you old bastard.” She squeezed Rebekkah’s hand as she swallowed the whiskey. “She’s been well loved and will be still.”
Then she looked at Rebekkah and held the flask out.
Silently, Rebekkah took a second sip.
“If anything happens to me, you mind her grave and mine the first three months. Just like when you go with me, you take care of the graves.” Maylene looked fierce. Her grip on Rebekkah’s hand tightened. “Promise me.”
“I promise.” Rebekkah’s heartbeat sped. “Are you sick?”
“No, but I’m an old lady.” She let go of Rebekkah’s hand and reached down to touch Ella. “I thought you and Ella Mae would ...” Maylene shook her head. “I need you, Rebekkah.”
Rebekkah shivered. “Okay.”
“Three sips for safety. No more. No less.” Maylene held out the silver flask for the third time. “Three on your lips at the burial. Three at the soil for three months. You hear?”
Rebekkah nodded and took her third sip of the stuff.
Maylene leaned down to kiss Ella’s forehead. “You sleep now. You hear me?” she whispered. “Sleep well, baby girl, and stay where I put you.”
Rebekkah was still clutching the phone when it rang. She looked at the readout: it was Maylene’s area code, but not either of her numbers. “Maylene?”
A man said, “Rebekkah Barrow?”
“Yes.”
“Rebekkah, I need you to sit down,” he said. “Are you sitting?”
“Sure,” she lied. Her palms were sweating. “Mr. Montgomery? Is this ...” Her words faded.
“It is. I’m so sorry, Rebekkah. Maylene is—”
“No,” Rebekkah interrupted. “No!”
She slid down the wall as the world slipped out of focus, collapsed to the floor as her fears were confirmed, closed her eyes as her chest filled with a pain she hadn’t felt in a very long time.
“I’m so sorry.” William’s voice gentled even more. “We’ve been trying to call all day, but the number we had for you was wrong.”
“We?” Rebekkah stopped herself before she asked about Byron; she could handle a crisis without him at her side. He hadn’t been at her side for years, and she was just fine. Liar. Rebekkah felt the numbness, the need-to-cry-scream-choke grief that she couldn’t touch yet. She heard the whispered questions she’d wondered when Ella died. How could she not tell me? Why didn’t she call? Why didn’t she reach for me? Why wasn’t I there?
“Rebekkah?”
“I’m here. Sorry ... I just ...”
“I know.” William paused, and then reminded her, “Maylene must be interred within the next thirty-six hours. You need to come home tonight. Now.”
“I ... she ...” There weren’t words, not truly. The Claysville tendency to adopt green burial procedures, those that relied on the lack of embalming, unsettled her. She didn’t want her grandmother to return to the soil: she wanted her to be alive.
Maylene is dead.
Just like Ella.
Just like Jimmy.
Rebekkah clutched the phone tightly enough that the edges creased her hand. “No one called ... the hospital. No one called me. I would’ve been there if they called.”
“I’m calling now. You need to come home now,” he said.
“I can’t get there that quickly. The wake ... I can’t be there today . ”
“The funeral is tomorrow. Catch a red-eye.”
She thought about it, the things she’d need to do. Get Cherub’s carrier. Trash. Empty the trash. Water the ivy. Do I have anything respectable to wear? There were a dozen things to do.
