Page 2 of Mourner for Hire

TWO

VADA

My head nearly smacks the steering wheel as I slam on the brakes. The old highway is slick with October rain, and I half-expect my bald tires to skid—but somehow, they hold.

The highway is making an abrupt slowdown that quickly transitions into a standstill. The screen on my GPS quickly turns from green to yellow to orange to red to…

“Burgundy? That’s not good,” I mutter, thankful my meeting isn’t until tomorrow morning.

I tilt my head back on the headrest as the memory of the accident surfaces—hazy and fragmented, like emotion strung through static.

I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to push the visions away.

If I let them in, even for a second, my brain will start digging for the rest, only to hit the same blank wall.

It’s the only memory I have of my childhood.

My therapist says it’s a trauma response called dissociative amnesia, which is just a fancy word for inconvenience.

I crane my neck and see nothing but brake lights. It’s a complete standstill. It’s clear I won’t be going anywhere for a while, so I put my pretty black Volkswagen Beetle in park and take a deep breath. The truck behind me honks, and I sit on my hand so I don’t flip him the bird.

It’s shocking how, from the heights of his suped-up truck, he still can’t see the line of cars completely stopped, nor does he have the ability to be a decent human being.

I narrow my eyes in my rearview mirror, noticing his flailing hands and self-absorbed nature.

Wonderful.

Traffic is one of the best ways to read people—it’s very telling. I love that. Not because I enjoy the adrenaline of road rage, but ever since I lost my mother in a car accident when I was eight, every accident I come across is met with unhinged empathy.

It may just be a fender bender, or it could be a little girl in the backseat who doesn’t realize her entire world is about to change.

Her mother is dead, and her next of kin will be called in an hour to pick her up from the hospital.

She’ll sit at the hospital for an hour with a social worker until they finally get a hold of her father in Seattle and he drives down to pick her up.

Even though up until that point, he’d been a stranger to her, he’ll raise her the best he can.

Though his best only created muddled memories.

She’ll grow up eating microwaved dinners for Thanksgiving without a breath uttered about family.

Her dad won’t speak of her late mother, and she’ll live a lot of her life wondering.

Wondering about her mother. Wondering about what could have been.

Wondering why no one came to the funeral.

Wondering why she couldn’t stay in this small beach town.

Wondering why she can’t remember anything beyond that in her childhood.

At least, that’s what happened to me.

I was born here in Shellport but had to live with my dad after my mother died.

We lived in Seattle, Portland, and Denver.

Bouncing from city to city and job to job.

Dad never wanted me to begin with, but he was my only next of kin and took me in with a reluctant pledge to always do the right thing.

There were rumblings behind closed doors of my mother’s friends wanting to take me in, but that’s a distant memory.

One I often wonder if I made up to replace everything else I’ve forgotten .

I don’t remember much from my childhood.

Just fuzzy memories of the beach and a second-grade teacher named Mrs. Nettles, so returning doesn’t feel like a big deal.

It isn’t profoundly emotional. It’s been over two decades since I lost her.

I miss her in the sense that there are memories I should have been able to make as a child growing up.

It’s as if a piece of my heart was scooped out when I was a little girl and I just learned to live with the hole.

Death is the absence of someone. But really, death is an unwelcome houseguest.

Death also pays my bills, which is exactly why I’ve returned to this town twenty years after my mother’s death.

I inhale and grip the steering wheel, watching the enraged lunatic hop out of his lifted truck to examine the long line of stopped cars from the center barrier while rain quickly soaks his gray hoodie. I wait for him to come stalking toward me.

He doesn’t, though. Thank God.

He takes in a deep breath, wipes a brow, and gets back in his truck.

As it turns out, my life won’t end in road rage today.

I exhale the tension from having an angry man just one car length away from me and check the GPS again.

The minutes until I reach my destination of Rocky’s Motel are steadily climbing as daylight quickly disappears.

I’ve been on the road for two hours, and I realize that’s how long it will be until I can relieve my bladder.

Shellport is only two hours from the city, but since leaving Jeremiah’s funeral, I’ve had a sixteen-ounce latte and twenty ounces of water because I am a part of the hydration generation.

My bladder will not make it. The barrier between East and West traffic prevents me from flipping a U-turn, but there’s a sketchy bar perched on the hill on the right side of the road.

The drab, concrete exterior makes it appear prison-like, and I snort when I read the name of the bar. Daylight .

It does not fit the bar’s aesthetic whatsoever. Small towns can be weird.

I’m sure it will be dirty and questionable, but it will at least have working plumbing. I pull onto the shoulder and drive several yards before pulling into a very empty strip of parking, leaving the traffic jam behind me.

I jump out of the car, the rain pelting my skin, and as soon as I stand, I realize how desperately I have to pee.

I start running toward the entry, fully aware I look like a kindergartener in a funeral dress running to the toilet. I follow the neon beer signs to the side of the building and through a questionable gate and slam straight into a solid wall of man.

“Oh! Sorry,” I mutter, bouncing back as he grabs me by both elbows to steady me under the awning.

“You good?” he asks, looking down at me with eyes the color of honey. Though, that is the only sweet aspect of his appearance.

He is all muscle and hard lines. He’s wearing a black shirt with the bar’s logo over the right side of his chest, his arms are dripping in tattoos, and his trimmed beard screams small-town loyalty. The towel thrown over his shoulder would indicate he’s probably the bartender.

He’s more attractive than any man I’ve ever seen in real life, but I am a most respectable adult and shovel that objectifying thought out of my brain, then clear my throat. “Can I just use your restroom, please?”

“Of course.” He turns, gesturing the way inside the bar, but otherwise not caring about me either way.

I escape into the bar and immediately find the metal sign indicating where the restroom is before taking in my surroundings.

When I finish, I exit the restroom and am completely surprised by the sight of the bar and how many people stuck in traffic have trickled in during the time it took me to pee. I’d thought it would be dark and sticky, considering the outside looks like a prison, but this bar is… fun?

The oak floors are lacquered and clean, and old diner- style chairs and tables are scattered throughout half of the room. The other half is packed with pool tables and arcade games, and an entire wall of liquor lines one wall lit in blue LED lights.

But the real show-stopper is the back wall.

It’s entirely made of windows with a wrap-around deck with string lights.

The bar is perched on a hill so the view of the valley and the ocean beyond is breathtaking and truly unexpected.

The valley below is a mixture of suburban homes, fields, and rolling hills that bleed into the rugged terrain of Pacific Northwest coast.

I smile a little to myself. Apparently, you can’t judge a bar by its parking lot.

“What’ll it be?” the bartender I body-slammed outside says, now behind the bar after flipping on the neon sign that reads Open on the front door.

I slip my phone out of my pocket to check the GPS. “Well?—”

“Trust me. You aren’t going anywhere for a long time…” he tells me before I can even respond, drawing out the sentence so I fill it with my name.

“Vada,” I answer.

“Dunner.”

I raise my brows. It sounds like a dog’s name. “That’s your name?”

“It’s what my friends call me.”

“So I’m a friend?”

“If you want to be.”

The depth of his voice sends shivers over my skin, and I let my dark hair fall forward to camouflage the blood rushing to my cheeks.

I clear my throat. “Red wine, please.”

He cocks an eyebrow, and I glance at the shelves and the chalkboard menu behind him. The list of drinks seems to just be names. The Billie. The Carrie. The Lucifer.

I withhold a laugh. “Ah, not that kind of bar?”

“Not unless you want the cheap stuff my grandma used to drink out of a box.”

I let out a laugh and decide to not decipher the drink list behind him. “Fine. A pale ale, please. Whatever you have on tap.”

He nods and immediately fills the mug, his attention being drawn to the other traffic jammers trickling through the old wood door. He slides me the beer and a menu.

“Stay a while,” he says.

His voice is expressionless but also… dreamy? And I am well aware this little crush I’m developing on the bartender is ridiculous.

I scan the menu while he hustles behind the now-busy bar. After several minutes, he returns and leans over the counter on his elbows. While the space is large, so is he, and I find myself instinctively sitting straighter.

“You hungry?”

“Starving,” I admit, realizing dinnertime struck an hour ago. “Can I get the burger? Medium with grilled onions?”