Page 63 of Mourner for Hire

FIFTY-ONE

DOMINIC

I dig my feet in the sand and stare out at the ocean. “Why the hell did you do all this, Mom?”

“Well, it’s not like you would have agreed to it before I died.”

I jump and scurry back in the sand, screaming like a man with a chainsaw just attacked me in a haunted corn maze.

“What the fuck? Who the fuck?—”

“Language, Dominic.” She folds her arms and stares down at me.

“Who are you?”

“Mom. Duh.” She throws her hands up and slaps her thighs.

I rub my eyes and blink three times. “I’m hallucinating.”

“Sort of,” she says, and I furrow my brow, studying her. “I mean, I don’t know what this is or how else to describe it. I’m stuck in some ghostly purgatory, haunting everybody in this town and making sure everybody’s okay. But only Vada has been able to see me. It’s rather strange.”

I stare blankly at her while she rambles.

“Guess I wasn’t ready to crossover—decided to keep one foot in Heaven and one on Earth.”

She lets out a small laugh. She sounds exactly like Mom. Looks like her, too. She’s wearing her favorite red dress, and her hair looks healthy, not the shaved head she was rocking at the time of her death.

“Are you…” I begin, clearing the tightness in my throat. Hallucinating or not, if this is my last chance to talk to my mom, I’m going to take it. “Does it still hurt?”

Her eyes well with tears, and she tilts her head, a pursed smile on her lips.

“No, baby, it doesn’t hurt anymore. In fact, I feel great.

I miss you. But it’s different here. Less of a longing and more of a feeling of anticipation.

Like, I can’t wait for you to get here. But don’t worry, I can wait.

Time is different here. It’s long and short and all at once.

It’s measured in moments of hope and rejoicing.

It’s pretty beautiful, this side of life.

” She rocks back on her heels and fidgets with her hands like she’s unsure if she should reach out. “Are you okay?”

I don’t know how to answer that. “I miss you.”

“I miss you, too, baby.”

Mom was always my number one. She attended every football and baseball game and science fair project presentation.

I never had to look in the stands to see if she was there because I knew she would be.

When Dad died, I vowed to cherish my last moments with her no matter how many there would be.

It doesn’t matter that I’m twenty-nine now.

Losing Mom—my last living parent—makes me feel like an orphan.

I run to her arms, ready to wrap around her, but I fly right through, stumbling and spinning around to see if she’s still there or if it was all in my imagination.

She shrugs. “Should have warned you.”

“You can’t hug ghosts,” I reply, and she nods.

“You are taking this a lot better than Vada did.”

I chuckle a little. “It’s been a crazy day… Crazy couple of months.”

She pauses. “We had a good run, didn’t we? A good life.”

I nod. “It wasn’t long enough.”

She clicks her tongue affectionately and tilts her head. “Oh, honey, it never is. But I still expect you to go celebrate the shit out of my life tomorrow.”

I laugh through the tears streaming down my face.

“You’re going to live a wonderful life, Dominic. I’m proud of you no matter what.” With that, she turns and walks away, disappearing in a glint of sunlight.

I run back to the cottage, ripping the door open without knocking with a breathless, “You’re not going to believe this.”

Vada is curled on the couch with red-rimmed eyes, wet cheeks, and a soft smile on her face. Of all the ways I expected to find her here, this was not it.

I go to her immediately and take her in my arms. “What’s wrong?”

She wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her cardigan. “I’m not crying because anything is wrong. I’m crying because it’s all finally right. I remember everything.”

She goes on to tell me this was her childhood home with her mother until she went to live with her dad. The pictures, the memories, the nuanced familiarity between us all finally makes sense to her. All the puzzle pieces I’ve been putting together finally make sense to her, too.

“Hold on,” I whisper, heading out to my truck and returning with the manila envelope.

“What’s this?” she asks, already opening the lip. I nod, encouraging her to look at it. “The deed?”

Her emerald eyes are bright with disbelief as she looks at me.

“Look at the other ones,” I tell her.

She nods at the one with my mom’s name, and then her entire demeanor freezes when she sees the one on the bottom. She runs her fingers over the name.

“Claire Daughtry,” she whispers, her voice quaking on her last name. Then she laughs. “Your mother is quite elaborate.”

He shrugs. “She can be exhausting,” I reason, my tone teasing .

“It all makes sense, though,” she says.

“Does it? Because I feel like I’m still missing a few details.”

“Story of my life.” She laughs. “We often believe what we’re told, so if your mom said it was your new beach cottage and she wanted to keep it as is as much as possible because she loved it, you believed her.

You didn’t know she was just holding onto it in hopes that one day, she could give it back to me. ”

“I wonder why your mom didn’t leave the cottage to you to begin with,” I venture.

She smiles softly. “My dad. He would have sold it and taken the money—legally or not. He was that way. So your mom held onto it until one day, she found me, and here we are.”

I cup my hands around her face and kiss her forehead, my mind hanging on to the last three words.

Here we are.

A million more questions fly through my mind, but I don’t ask them now. No, now, I just run my thumbs over her cheekbones and tilt her face to my lips, kissing her softly. “Here we are.”