The Morbid and Sultry Tales of Genevieve Clare (2 page)

“Yeah,” was his simple reply. “My dad is downstairs. He said this wake sucks.” I could hear that he was smiling.

I took another swig. “Well, I didn’t plan this shindig, but the next funeral I host, I’ll make sure it’s a rager.”

“Gen—” he started, but I cut him off.

“You know what’s been the worst part of this week?” I didn’t give him a chance to respond. “I’ve been all alone. I mean, Rocky’s been wonderful, and Guava and everyone, really.” I turned to him with my hand on his arm. “Oh, tell your dad, thanks for the brownies. Brewster’s is always a good choice.”

“I’ll tell him, but Gen…”

“I was sitting there, Rocky next to me, and thought, I have no family left. That’s it. The line ends with me. No cousins twice removed. No one. And then I thought, who’s gonna come to my funeral? I suppose I might have a friend or two, but what if I outlive them?”

His hand suddenly on my knee stopped me from talking. “Gen, in what, sixty years or hopefully more, your kids and grandkids will be at your funeral. It’ll be an even bigger crowd than today; I guarantee.”

“I’m not having a family, and I don’t want to live that long,” I said firmly with the bottle an inch from my lips. I was determined to up my liquid courage before I went back downstairs. “You know, I’ve been thinking though, I could have used someone with me today, totally removed from the situation. It’s a small town and everyone from the pastor to the funeral home to the florist knew my parents and gran. There was no one there for just me. So, I think I should start a business as a professional mourner. I can wear this exact outfit. There are all these single, old people at The Elms who have no one. Gran told me how sad it was that some of them had outlived their husbands and kids, or didn’t even have husbands and kids. They could hire me to attend their funerals.” As I watched the people at the church, the cemetery and the house, dabbing their eyes, I was miles away, brainstorming on possible business ventures.

“You always were a little…dark.” He hesitated with a grin. Damn, even more good-looking than I remembered. Eyes that were brown with little amber specks around the iris. Thick brown hair I wanted to grab onto and go for a pony ride. And a body that promised he was no pony, but more like a stallion.

“I’m not dark,” I countered.

I was dark though. I’d gone around the house and covered all the mirrors and family photos with black cloth, not because we were Jewish—we were Presbyterian. I just liked the idea of it. And now, I was about to get a whole lot darker.

He then reminded me, “When the cemetery flooded after that big storm when you were, what, ten?” I was actually eleven. “You were right there, with big eyes, checking out the bones floating around, asking if you could keep one.”

I did. I wanted a skull, for no other reason than I thought it was cool.

“How did you remember how old I was? You’re only off by a year.”

He studied me a moment, and I noticed he only had a few more sips left in his bottle. “I’m good with details like that. But I remembered because I wanted a bone, too. My dad said it was disrespectful. I didn’t get it then, but I get it now, of course.”

There were so many things either of us could have said. But I asked, “Are you afraid to die?” The question had been on my mind all week long. It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you discussed around the dinner table. I’d had plenty of hours to think about my own mortality and was decidedly ambivalent about the fact I was one day going to die.

Ahren looked at the creamy-colored wall across from us in the hallway. “See? Told you. You’re dark. In answer to your question, I don’t want to be in pain,” he answered honestly. And bravely, I thought, because there was no doubt my dad had suffered horrific pain in that crash. And I knew for a fact he had watched his own mother deteriorate from cancer. “What about you?” His beautiful, brown eyes turned to me and waited for my response.

“It’s going to happen whether I want it to or not.” I took another sip of my beer and felt it slosh upward, telling me it was almost gone. “Would you like another beer? Granny Clare would be horrified if I didn’t offer you one.”

“Gen?” he asked, his hand still on my knee.

“Yep?” I replied.

“Have you gone in their room yet?” He asked me the question gently even though he already knew the answer. It was like he was prompting my tears to start, giving my head and my heart permission to let go, that he would make it all okay.

I could feel the cool air from the bottom of their closed door. I wasn’t ready to go in. Gran’s room was different; she’d been gone from the house for months. But they were never coming home again. Someone else had picked out their funeral clothes. No one asked for my input, and I was thankful for it.

Now, I felt pain. Unbelievable, searing pain I’d never before felt in my life. Heartache, unbearable.

He stood up and reached for my hand. “You don’t need to go back down there. Go up to your room. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“But I—”

He pulled me to my feet and squeezed my hand. His thick hair had grown past his ears, and I was dying to touch it, to push it away from his soulful eyes. “Five minutes, baby.”

I got to my feet and made my way to my room. Not because he told me to, not because I wanted to…because he called me “Baby.”

Ahren had probably come back in five minutes, but I was out cold the minute my head hit pillows. When I woke, it was dark outside, and Ahren was lying beside me, reading a book, The Stones playing softly in the background.

“What’re you reading?” I asked.

“Hey,” he responded.

“What’re you reading?” I asked again.

“It’s…” He smirked.

“Oh my God, is it porn?” My eyes wide with faux shock, I asked this question to remind him of the time when he and his cousin were caught looking at a dirty magazine in my cemetery.

He laughed, full, beautiful and warm, and that feeling filled my entire body with something I hadn’t felt in a very long time.

“It’s not porn. I don’t make it a habit to carry porn as reading material when I’m going to comfort a friend in her hour of need.”

“But you didn’t know you were staying here…did you?” I asked with a small smile. He, however, didn’t smile so I asked again, “Did you?”

He took my hand and laced his fingers with mine. It was the most intimate he’d been with me in years. “I was prepared to comfort my friend in her hour of need, Gen.”

My “friend,” as he put it, had gone to college in San Jose. He sent me regular emails and, at first, I diligently responded to every single one. After trying to seduce him on my twenty-first birthday, I finally gave up on my childhood crush. Ahren had brought his girlfriend, Sammy. She was pretty, blonde hair, almost as tall as him. Rocky called her the Amazonian. I thought she looked a lot like Cameron Diaz and that meant she was my polar opposite. Either way, it was clear that Ahren was unavailable and light years out of my league. Now, almost four years later, he was at my side like not a day had gone by.

I didn’t ask him if everyone was gone; I assumed as much. I wanted to know one thing though. “Why are you here, Ahren?”

He closed his book, and I noticed the cover.

“Stiff?” I asked.

The cover had a foot with a toe tag on it. He smirked as he answered, “This woman researched all the things you can do with your body when you die.”

“And you think I’m morbid?” I grinned.

“I think you’ll want to borrow it when I’m done.” He smiled.

I did, I totally did.

“In answer to your question, I’m here…because…” He started to talk, but stopped abruptly.

“What?” I stared at my feet, realizing I was still completely dressed, shoes and all.

“Because when Mom died, I had dad. I had my aunt and uncle who flew in the week she passed. I had my cousin, Clark. Remember him? He hung out with me to try to lift my spirits or whatever. I want to do that for you.”

I took in his words, and they felt amazing to hear, especially coming from those perfect, full lips. “How long are you in town?” And because I was insecure and still jealous where Ahren was concerned, I went on to ask, “Is Sammy okay with you spending the night here?” Even though I’d just buried my family, I also thought sex with Ahren Finnegan would be a great distraction from my grief.

I hadn’t heard they’d broken up. His dad would’ve mentioned it to my dad, told mom, and she – knowing the torch I held for Ahren – would’ve spilled the juicy gossip. I assumed, if he’d been dating her for over four years, chances were, wedding bells were in his future. That particular gossip would not have been shared. Mom knew, when that day came, it would be a trip to Brewster’s Bakery, seventy-thousand calories and many, many tears.

“She moved back to Iowa or Idaho or wherever. We broke up just after you came to San Jose for your birthday.” He turned his eyes on me with an intensity I didn’t recognize in him. “You would know this if you’d read my emails, Gen.”

I’d stopped correspondence with him. I didn’t think it was healthy, and neither did Rocky. Like that part in When Harry Met Sally—men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way. We were never going to have sex, and even though I wanted his friendship, I would always want more. Knowing he wasn’t with her though, hope sprang anew in me…briefly.

He watched me as the wheels in my head turned around and around. “She took jealousy to another level, that level commonly known as crazy.”

I smiled and pulled my knees up to my chest. I knew I was probably doing irreparable damage to my new comforter with my shoes, but I was not at all concerned.

Ahren put his hands behind my legs and pulled me toward him as he removed my heels, one at a time. He set them on the floor next to my bed then came back and held my stockinged feet in his hands. His thumbs rubbed along my arches, and a small moan of pleasure escaped me. “You’ve been in those killer heels all day. Looked fantastic, but your feet must hurt now.”

I took stock of my body, Ahren’s hands on my feet, and hoped to God he wouldn’t stop touching me. The last guy I’d dated was a high school physics teacher named Tony. He wanted to marry me even though I explained we were both only twenty-four and too young. My parents married when they were twenty-two. I considered it a miracle they hadn’t divorced. But they were very much in love, that I knew for certain, which made me ask the question: Why wasn’t I jumping at the chance to marry Tony? He was good-looking, smart, funny, pretty good with his hands—and other things—he even knew how to dance, something I couldn’t do very well. He’d asked me to move in with him, play it by ear, but again, something held me back, and it didn’t take me very long to come up with the answer. That answer was rubbing my feet. All the men in my life had been compared, unbeknownst to them, to Ahren Finnegan.

They never stood a chance.

My dad had owned Greer’s Rest Realty. When he started out, he’d put his inheritance into buying the building, which had an office downstairs and a two-bedroom apartment upstairs. He and Mom met at the community college in Santa Rosa, but when my Grandpa Clare died, my parents were concerned about Granny in that big house all by herself. That’s when they’d moved into Eden Hills, a two-story, four bedroom Victorian with a wraparound porch and its very own pioneer cemetery.

Grandpa Clare had been happy to buy a house with a bit of history. He’d taken care of the grounds as long as he could. Then Granny took over, pulling weeds and raking leaves. But when Mom and Dad moved in, Dad decided Eden Hills Cemetery needed more than a little TLC. He’d hired Adam Finnegan, a landscaper and gardener and, according to his resume, a groundskeeper at Evergreen Cemetery and Mausoleum down in Marin. It was Adam who had suggested my dad contact the Santa Rosa Historical Society. He knew they had a retired stonemason as a member who specialized in monument restoration. It was always on Dad’s list of things to do, but he never seemed to get around to it.

Ahren would sometimes meet his dad on Friday afternoons. He’d walk up the long curved drive and into the cemetery where he’d grab a pair of boots from his dad’s truck then get to work. He’d mow and rake the beautiful lawn that Adam had brought to life. He tended the flowers and shrubs that now dotted the landscape. And when he was done, he’d always come to the front porch where I just happened to be doing my homework. We’d talk until his dad told him, multiple times, they had to get home.

But Ahren had rarely spoken to me at school. Four years might as well be forty when you’re eight years old. He was lanky, just starting to sprout toward his eventual six-foot-whatever height. Light brown hair and perfect, tanned skin didn’t go with the name Finnegan at all.

My dad was pale, my mom was pale, and I was pale. Dad said that, even though our Irish ancestry prevented us from getting a tan, it also protected our livers. This made absolutely no sense to me at the time. The other girls at school happily went to the river, clad in bikinis, showing off their bronzed bodies. I tried self-tanner lotions, but they only made my skin turn orange.

I understood my dad’s words of wisdom when I realized I could drink all of them under the table, then dance a jig on it and still not puke. But Ahren had been there at the river with the older kids. He would make out with those girls in bikinis and sneak off behind the holiday cabins when he thought no one was looking. Meanwhile, I sat with Rocky, also of the porcelain skin variety, under the shade of a tree, both of us slathered in sunscreen.