Page 17

Elliot Crane

This guy smells funny.

I barely managed to suppress the snort of surprise that wanted to come out when I read the text. Elliot was sitting next to me, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. He’d been fiddling with his phone, and I guess he’d decided to send me a message.

We were at the Augusta County Morgue, and the coroner’s assistant was droning through the procedure for claiming my mother’s body. I’d been listening just enough to get the important parts and sign the papers he shoved at me, but Elliot clearly had been thinking about other things.

The coroner’s assistant, a pale, skinny guy with lank brown hair and slightly tinted glasses who looked to be somewhere in his thirties or forties—around my age or Elliot’s—was explaining how once I’d claimed my mother’s body, they would only hold it for another twenty-four hours, so I’d need to get a funeral home to come and pick her up.

Elliot was right.

The guy did smell funny.

Kind of like boiled cabbage and raw fish.

The phone on the desk started to ring.

The assistant coroner ignored it, continuing to talk me through the very short list of mortuary options in Staunton, although apparently some of the places in Charlottesville would come all the way here if you got a full package from them.

Somewhere, I had Humbolt’s recommendation, although I couldn’t remember at the moment if he’d written it down or sent it in email or a text.

The phone rang again.

He ignored it, again.

Then his office door opened, and the woman from the reception desk stuck her head in. “Dr. Fisher?”

His expression was annoyed. “I am busy,” he told her.

“You really need to take this call,” she said.

“Denise—”

“You really need to,” she insisted, and I looked at her, surprised to scent fear. Elliot also sat up straighter, the lines of his face tight.

Denise looked at us, then at the phone, and it was clear she thought that not only did he need to take the call, but we shouldn’t be in the room when he did.

Fisher sighed audibly. “If you could excuse me..?”

“Sure,” I said, standing. Elliot hesitated, but then he followed me out into the hallway. I kept going, walking out into the summer heat.

“Are we leaving?” he asked, once we’d gotten outside and I’d pulled off the loose-fitting surgical mask that hadn’t actually done all that much to obscure the smells in the coroner’s office.

“I’d like to stop smelling preservatives and ammonia,” I answered. “While I call these funeral homes.”

Elliot shifted his weight, then pulled his sunglasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on his face. The mirrored gold lenses obscured his dark hazel eyes and the slight darkening of the skin under them from a mostly-sleepless night.

My fault for having nightmares and then not being able to let myself fall back into sleep. He didn’t complain, though. Just bought us both large iced coffees and breakfast.

Humbolt had texted to let me know I needed to go claim my mother’s body. Elliot had insisted on going with me, not that I had any objections. I’d felt exposed and vulnerable while he’d gone out to get breakfast, so I was glad he’d come with me.

“Do you want me to do it?” he asked.

I looked over at him. “Uh.”

He shrugged. “I’ve done it before,” he said, his voice serious and quiet, but not ragged.

“Mr. Mays?”

We both turned as Denise called my name.

“Yes?” I asked.

“You—can come back. Dr. Fisher is done with his phone call.”

“Go ahead,” Elliot said. “You finish up with him, and I’ll call the funeral homes and get one on board.”

I blew out a breath. “Thanks.”

But the minute I walked back into Fisher’s office, I knew something was wrong. His pale face was blotchy and red, and he looked extremely flustered.

“I—I’m sorry, Mr. Mays,” he began, although he didn’t sound particularly sorry. He sounded pissed off. “There has been a… dispute concerning the rights to your mother’s body.”

“A. Dispute.” At first, I was confused, but then it started to make sense. The Community was unlikely to let Momma’s heretic children claim her body.

“Yes. I—I’m very sorry, Mr. Mays, but?—”

“It’s fine,” I interrupted him. “I’ll contact a lawyer.” I stood. “I appreciate your time.”

I turned and left, and although I heard the slight scrape of chair legs on the linoleum tile floor as Fisher either pushed back his chair or stood up, I didn’t turn around again. There wasn’t anything he could do about it, anyway.

I walked back out into the sunshine, blinking until my eyes adjusted and I could see Elliot’s familiar silhouette. He turned to me with a sheepish expression. “The soonest I can get is next week,” he said.

“That’s fine,” I replied. “There’s a dispute, anyway. That was the phone call.”

“Dispute about what ? The police don’t want to release her?”

I shook my head. “He didn’t say, but I’m guessing the Community is trying to claim the body.” It was a little weird to call my mother the body , but the person she had been wasn’t in it anymore, and I wasn’t entirely certain I cared what happened to her remains anyway.

“That’s bullshit,” Elliot hissed.

I shrugged. “I mean, as far as they’re concerned, she was more a part of their family than mine and Noah’s,” I pointed out. “She lived with them. We left.”

Elliot studied me. “You’re not upset about this?”

“Not really,” I answered honestly. “I don’t… feel the need to say goodbye or anything.” I shrugged again. “It’s not like we could resolve any unfinished business.”

“Did she say in her will what she wanted?” he asked.

I grimaced. “I suppose I need to ask Humbolt if she left some sort of directive.”

“Next stop, Humbolt’s office?”

“No, next stop coffee,” I countered. “Humbolt’s office after that.”

As it turned out, Momma had left instructions to be buried next to the sister I’d never met.

Humbolt began working on filing all the necessary paperwork to make sure that happened—regardless of who was actually responsible for the burial itself.

He’d asked if I wanted him to fight for custody of the body, and I’d told him not to bother.

I wasn’t religious, so I had no need of any particular service to be done, and Momma herself might have appreciated whatever the Community wanted to do.

Or she might not have, I didn’t really know.

If she’d started trying to work around them—and, clearly, she had, since she’d visited Humbolt—maybe she didn’t want them doing it.

I asked Humbolt, but he said she’d only stipulated the where, not anything else.

Elliot and I were sitting in a booth at a Mexican place that had bright teal walls and a rainbow flag sticker in its window, which was a welcome relief from worrying about stares, at least for me. I was pretty sure Elliot never worried about stares or judgment. I envied him that a little.

I had fajitas with both shrimp and chicken, and they easily left the dairy—cheese and sour cream—out, giving me a generous helping of guacamole instead.

Elliot had something absolutely smothered in queso.

There were also chips and salsa, and I was making up for the fact that I hadn’t really eaten much the day before at all.

Most of my sandwich box was still in the hotel fridge, despite what little I’d picked out of it being fairly tasty.

“Is there a plan for this afternoon?” Elliot asked, cutting into the giant cheese-smothered burrito on his plate.

The original plan had been to figure out what you needed to do to reclaim a body from the morgue. Since that was no longer happening, I no longer had any clue what to do with our time. “Not anymore,” I told him.

“Back to the house? Or not?” His voice was hesitant, and I couldn’t really blame him for that, given how shitty yesterday evening had been.

“We probably should,” I replied, forcing myself to take another bite of fajita despite the pit that had started forming in my stomach at Elliot’s question.

I stared down at the cast iron skillet they’d put on the table, full of peppers, onions, shrimp, and strips of chicken.

It was good—I’d just suddenly lost my appetite.

Elliot saw exactly what was happening. “Not if it means you’re not going to eat,” he replied. “Helen is going to keep feeding the animals, and we are going out there tomorrow—there’s nothing that can’t wait another day.”

I let out a long breath, annoyed at myself both for being so transparent and also because I apparently couldn’t just be an adult about this.

Elliot reached out and put a hand over one of mine. “Baby, it took me more than a year to go back into Dad’s office. Don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s been a week .”

Technically, it had been sixteen years—at least since I’d last been there.

But it had been only a week since her death, even if it felt like a lot longer.

I looked up into those hazel eyes, warm and understanding.

I nodded, not trusting myself to be able to speak without breaking down in the middle of a Mexican restaurant.

Elliot squeezed my fingers, and I tried to think of something to say that would somehow convey my gratitude, but also not result in tears—and then my phone buzzed loudly, and I jumped a little in my chair.

The zipcode was from Augusta County.

“This is Seth Mays,” I answered it.

“Sethy!”

“Ohmygod Noah .” It all came out in one breath.

Elliot sat upright, alert.

“Are you okay?” I asked my twin, struggling to keep my voice even as tears slid down my cheeks. “Are they letting you out?”

“I’m okay,” he said, although his voice shook a little. “And no—not yet. But they are letting me see people. And call. Obviously. My lawyer did it, I think. Will you come?”

“God, yes, of course!”

“Now?”

“Yes. On my way.”

“Thank you,” Noah whispered.

“See you in a few minutes,” I promised, and then he hung up.

Elliot had already pulled my keys out and set them on the table. “Go,” he told me. “I’ll walk back to the hotel, okay?”

“Are you?—”